The incoming Republican FCC chairman, Michael Powell, appears to believe that technology will work its own way through any potential bottlenecks, which indicates that he is positioning the FCC to keep a low profile as new rules on ownership are hammered out over the next few years.

Freedom Threat

Powell is the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell. The 37-year-old replaces Democrat William Kennard, who resigned last Friday. Powell has served as one of two Republicans on the five-member commission since October 1997.

"This could well pose a threat to the freedom of information on the Internet," Cheryl Leanza, deputy director of the Washington, D.C., Media Access Project, told NewsFactor Network.

Leanza said the Internet appears to be going the way of commercial television, with only a few owners and a concentration of content information coming from a limited number of places.

Media Ownership Disputes

Of particular to concern to Leanza is Powell's apparent dislike of government interference in media ownership disputes.

"There a large number of Web sites out there, but if you look carefully they are all getting the same content from the familiar organizations," Leanza said.

Local elections and information leading up to them are a chief concern. She said a survey of a large number of small-town online guides revealed that virtually all the information was coming not from the local news outlets but from a few national companies.

"Being a commercial success means you have to have strong financial backing, which is what companies such as CNN bring to the table," Leanza said.

The group is not giving up hope just yet, as Leanza says Powell is "a very bright person" who might change his opinion "after studying the facts" her group and others will present.

Wishful Thinking

But that may be wishful thinking. Powell has been critical of earlier FCC actions that imposed conditions on transactions that he felt had no direct bearing on the deal itself.

During the recently concluded merger between America Online and Time Warner, Powell voted against most of the conditions the agency imposed. He disagreed vehemently with the agency's ruling requiring the combined company to develop open standards for advanced instant messaging services.

Trust-Busting Past

Before joining the FCC, Powell served as chief of staff in the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) under Democrat Joel Klein, one of his former law school instructors and the man who led the government's effort to break up Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MFST).

He joined the DOJ in 1996 after working as an attorney with O'Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C., specializing in telecommunications, antitrust and employment law.