Earlier this week, NCTA’s President & CEO Michael K. Powell, spoke at one of The Media Institute’s Communications Forum luncheons. Powell, a former FCC chairman, spoke about the topic of simplicity, especially as it applies to telecom regulation.

Broadcasting & Cable‘s John Eggerton reported some of the key points made in his remarks.

“Congress and the FCC are on the verge, perhaps for the first time, of declaring that the highest and best use of spectrum is not broadcasting, but broadband,” [Powell] said in a speech to the Media Institute in Washington. While a speech about communications and jobs is common these days, Powell’s was linked to Steve Jobs and his mantra of simplicity. Like the less-is-more approach to Apple products’ elegant functionality or rail thin TV sets, regulators should also look to pare back, he suggested.

Powell’s speech touched on broadcasting, the Internet, spectrum availability, common carriage. He also addressed concerns about broadband speeds.

Powell suggested that the rap that current broadband speeds are not fast enough, no matter how fast they are, is a bad one. “Internet evangelicals constantly profess the end of the world because there is not enough capacity for some future magical set of applications that they have imagined and drive us to feel national shame because we don’t measure up to some otherwise unremarkable Baltic Country,” he said, as laughter erupted in the room. “If you really want to go to Latvia for broadband, go down to Dulles airport and head on out.”

You can read the entirety of his remarks on NCTA’s website. You’ll also find references to the world-renowned designer John Maeda, Barry Schwartz’s book Paradox of Choice, William of Ockham, and Talladega Nights‘ NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby.

Last night, NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow received The Media Institute’s Freedom of Speech Award during the organization’s annual banquet. That honor “recognizes an individual who has made important contributions to the advancement and protection of free speech.”

B&C’s John Eggerton was there and filed a report:

[McSlarrow] pointed out that the Media Institute does not have the funding to match a lot of other organizations and think tanks, and that the Progress & Freedom Foundation, another Washington-based First Amendment/free market think tank, had just shut its doors due in part to lack of funding.

He contrasted that with "large donors and philanthropic groups" pouring "millions of dollar"s into groups and organizations that have "a very different view of how they would shape the media and telecommunications landscape."

McSlarrow said he was not saying that the sky was falling or that there was not funding for the values his side is promoting. His point, he said, was: "We are in a serious fight and we need intellectual firepower from groups and organizations that have the integrity and willingness to focus in ways that they can bring their talents to bear to be joined in this fight."

For me, the most powerful section of his remarks came when he spoke about those well-funded groups who seem to have a “severely cramped view” of the role of entrepreneurs and innovators and a “very expansive view” of the role of government.

“The First Amendment? Well, if [these groups are] even thinking about it, they’re probably thinking about it as a sword in the hands of government to promote some values that seem important, as opposed to the way I think it should be properly understood, which is as a shield against government encroachment.”

I strongly recommend you read Kyle’s recent 7-part series on the First Amendment and its relationship to telecommunications policy.

Patrick Maines over at The Media Institute’s Media & Communications Policy blog has an interesting post up today about some of Google’s policy positions.

He points out that both Google’s position on net neutrality and copyright infringement pose serious First Amendment problems.

… as with net neutrality, Google’s posture regarding copyright infringement seems to be driven more by its own interests than by any sense of a community of interests.

By the standards of those of us at The Media Institute, which is primarily a First Amendment organization, Google’s lack of any meaningful concern or action regarding freedom of speech and of the press is the most troubling aspect of the company.

We would not have this concern if Google were just a small affair, or if the legacy media were fat and sassy. But neither is the case. Google is a giant while newspapers, for instance, are in a fight for their very survival.

The Media Institute is a nonprofit organization that is one of the preeminent defenders of the First Amendment, so these remarks bear some close attention.