Silicon Flatirons, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, and Public Knowledge today are hosting a forum in Washington titled “An FCC for the Internet Age: Reform and Standard-Setting.” The second panel focuses on regulatory reforms, standard-setting and mediating institutions. This entry includes live coverage of the panel.

• Robert Atkinson, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation: The last three years has been “a period of more heat than light” for telecommunications policy, especially on the issue of network neutrality.
• Pierre de Vries: “Principles are much more appropriate than rules when you have this kind of system [the Internet].”
• Rick Whitt: “The notion of self-regulation has certainly gotten a dirty connotation these days. … Co-regulation, I think, is a stronger term.” It involves having the government as a “backstop” to experts outside the bureaucracy.
• Kathleen Wallman: “The standard-setting process at its best is chaotic and cacophonous, and in some ways it’s amazing that it works as well as it does.”
• Wallman: “Principles of transparency and non-discrimination” need to be applied to the standard-setting for network neutrality as the FCC considers network neutrality rules.
• De Vries: Successful self-regulation works when there are “strong norms that will lead to enforcement” and when bad actors are “marginal.”
• Paul de Sa: The “in-between” of “co-regulation,” which theoretically falls somewhere between self-regulation and full government regulation, is not as obvious as its advocates seem to think.
• Whitt: Co-regulation is most applicable in areas like transparency. “Everybody has some different idea of what transparency looks like. They should all have a say.” The FCC can take note of the industry standard that is adopted and also say it’s not right, if necessary.
• Wallman wondered whether creating a new mediating institution would simply create another meeting for people to attend and new barriers for them to overcome.
• Kathryn Brown: “Why is it that we don’t want to hold on to the self-governance ethos of the Internet?” She said the discussion is “a little bit discomforting to me.”