FCC regulates communications that uses the public resource of the broadcast spectrum. The internet is not such a resource, and the FCC has avoided any steps in the direction of regulating the interent for this reason.

I don't see this ever changing. If we don't use a public resource, we don't get their regulatory service. But that doesn't mean the law won't get involved, by corporations suing Podcasters who violate copyrights that those corporations own. I just would not expect the FCC to be involved.

I think yours up until recently (see, e.g., http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2004/11/11/180969.html ). The FCC has claimed fairly broad powers with regard to certain new services. I wouldn't expect the FCC to jump on podcasting now. It will be incremental. First, broaddcast flag and small pieces of digital distribution. Next, perhaps aspects of VOIP. Then.....

Bret -- I doubt very much the FCC would want to get into podcasting content control. They're having enough difficulty as it is -- have you been following Jeff Jarvis's findings that most indecency complaints come from the same source? And the commentator is right that FCC's content control is based on spectrum allocation. But, at the same time, "social policies" under consideration by the FCC for IP-enabled services come very close to things like content control, and include "consumer protection," access for the disabled, and CALEA. We'll see. Susan