SEATTLE — My overall impression of the Federal Trade Commission Town Hall meeting held here at the U. of Washington School of Law regarding digital rights management? Too many lawyers and technologists.

Nothing against lawyers and technologists; some of my best friends are lawyers or technologists, or both. But the nature of those professions is to burrow in on minute details — a provision of law, a distinguishing characteristic of code or hardware — and then extrapolate the big picture from that narrow examination.

I think I spent too many years as a trade reporter. I had to cover issues more deeply than a general-assignment reporter, but I still had many, many issues I had to cover. By definition I had to be a generalist, and I only really served my broad readership when I provided a broad perspective.

There were very few broad perspectives at the FTC Town Hall, at least not many that incorporated many of the narrow rabbit holes into which the panelists dug.

From someone who feels it would be inappropriate for the FTC to regulate — continuing their policy of individual enforcement is wise, in no small part because it’s working — all of those burrowing panelists simply made my point. How can the FTC do encompassing regulation when thirty different panelists want thirty different “problems” addressed in thirty different ways? Answer: they can’t.

Thus it was no surprise when Rick Quaresima, an assistant director in the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices, said at the end of the day that the FTC didn’t anticipate regulating unless Congress specifically instructed it to do so. (That led someone in Twitterland to tweet “OK, so why are we here?”) That is actually all Mr. Quaresima can really say. The FTC is an independent agency that reports to Congress. The “problems” reported by panelists all are in the past; three of them were addressed by the FTC through individual action, one resulting in a consent decree.

The Federal Communications Commission, another independent agency reporting to Congress, has at times thought independent meant independent of any outside authority (as opposed to independent of the Administration) and has become pro-active, only to be slapped back by both Congress and the courts. The Federal Trade Commission, to its everlasting credit, has been far more responsible, protecting consumers within the mandate it is given.

It was a long day in that mock courtroom. A long day. A lot of dust was kicked up by all of that rabbit-hole burrowing, and the clouds obscured any real light. But that really isn’t any surprise when we’re talking about an issue like DRM, where emotion often outpaces reason.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 11:29 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under FTC, drm, events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.