Zitat des Tages über FCC:
Almost everything the FCC does is challenged in court. There is no clean solution because we have a Communications Act that wasn't written for broadband.
For years, my colleagues and I - primarily Republicans but also some Democrats - have introduced legislation and written to the FCC asking the commission to cease attempts to regulate the Internet unless given the clear authority to do so by Congress.
The FCC sided with the public and adopted extremely strong net neutrality rules that should be a global model for Internet freedom.
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell has said that several foreign dignitaries personally spoke to him about creating a new Internet user fee to subsidize an international universal service fund at the expense of traditional end users.
There was a time when the FCC tried to require a certain amount of television and media to be educational, a certain amount to be newsworthy and a certain amount of it to be public access.
We love having the freedom that we have with the web; I mean, we don't have to answer to anybody. We have complete creative control; we don't have to worry about FCC regulations.
The Open Internet principles were not legal rules adopted by the FCC; they were effectively a press statement posted on the FCC website.
For those broadcasters who are less than responsible, the FCC needs to have sharper teeth to enforce the law.
At its core, the FCC's plan to regulate the Internet will force businesses and people to check first with the government and get permission to innovate.
The FCC can't enforce press-statement principles without adopting official rules, and those rules must be based on the legal theory of reclassification.
Currently under FCC policy, indecency determinations hinge on two factors. First, material must describe or depict sexual or excretory organs or activities. Second, the material must be patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium.
Thinking about free speech brought me to media regulation, as Americans access so much of their political and cultural speech through mass media. That led me to work on the FCC's media ownership rules beginning in 2005 to fight media consolidation, working with those at Georgetown's IPR, Media Access Project, Free Press, and others.
The FCC banned throttling for good reason, namely that Internet service providers should not bias their networks toward some applications or classes of applications. Biasing the network interferes with user choice, innovation, decisions of application makers, and the competitive marketplace.
The FCC has made it clear it would punish a cable or phone company for deviating from providing 'neutral' access.
Do we really want the FCC to conduct investigations and issue warnings to radio talk show hosts nationwide who simply discuss the important issues of our time? The Constitution says 'freedom of speech,' not 'freedom of government-approved fair speech in rationed amounts.'
The current FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, is highly regarded, but some distrust him because he is the former head lobbyist of both the cable and wireless phone industries. He's also made some statements suggesting he doesn't understand or opposes network neutrality.
