Comcast

In an ominous development for the FCC, the Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear the legal question of whether a Federal Court must give "Chevron deference" to an administrative agency (FCC) when an agency interprets a law in a way which could determine its own jurisdiction. I believe this presages that the Supreme Court will decide next year that regulatory agencies cannot be the effective final arbiter of their own power and jurisdiction under the law, because that constitutional power rests with Congress and the courts.

"Chevron deference" is a 1984 Supreme Court administrative law precedent that directs courts to defer to a regulatory agency's expertise in interpreting statutes directing regulatory action unless their interpretation is unreasonable.

Unfortunately, the FCC Chairman's remarks to a Silicon Valley audience last week -- trumpeting his new concern for "anything that depresses broadband usage" -- are creating abundant uncertainty for broadband businesses and investors.

Specifically, Gigaom reported: "When asked about the impact of data caps on broadband innovation by my colleague Janko Roettgers and how his thinking had evolved on the topic, the chairman said he was concerned about data caps. He added, “Anything that depresses broadband usage is something that we need to be really concerned about.” And he further said, “We should all be concerned with anything that is incompatible with the psychology of abundance.”

This appears to signal a stupefying 180-degree reversal of the FCC Chairman's well-established policy position on broadband usage pricing.

Please don't miss my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "U.S. Government's Obsolete and Wasteful Spectrum Hoarding and Rationing" here.

This is part 11 of my Obsolete Communications Law research series.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "The FCC's 1887 Railroad Regulation Mindset" here. This piece is part 10 of my Obsolete Communications Law research series.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Part 1: "Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers"

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "The FCC Showcases its Growing Obsolescence" here. This piece is part 9 of my Obsolete Communications Law research series.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Part 1: "Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers"

Part 2: "The FCC's Public Interest Test Problem"

Please see my latest Daily Caller Op-ed: "Google Fiber: Modern Technology, but Obsolete Policy Thinking" here.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Part 1: "Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers"

Please see my latest Daily Caller Op-ed: "FCC's Over-Reliance on Obsolete Law" here. It spotlights the FCC's clear pattern of relying on obsolete law and non-existing statutory authority.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Part 1: "Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers"

Pay attention when FreePress is quiet about something it was ear-splitting loud about before. Without fanfare, FreePress apparently has mothballed its old SaveTheInternet.com agitprop campaign apparatus by redirecting www.SaveTheInternet.com to a refreshed FreePress.net site that reboots under a variety of "Internet freedom" agitprop sub-campaigns. Mandated net neutrality government regulation has now transmogrified into an "Internet freedom."

And FreePress/Public Knowledge have cloned a SaveTheInternet twin, the comic-book-inspired, "Internet Defense League," which apparently will be the new front group responsible for much of the online community organizing and stunt-staging that FreePress/SaveTheInternet became infamous for. Think of the FreePress 1.0 email list of ~500,000 activists pinging around in a social media 2.0 echo chamber, in order to defend the Internet from capitalism, profit and private property.

FreePress' "Internet freedom" reboot apparently is in the process of getting the people and organizations which signed the original oath of allegiance to SaveTheInternet, to sign the new FreePress 2.0's Declaration of Internet freedom.

Listed below are pertinent questions to ask Google at its Google Fiber announcement July 26th, given Google's "launch-first, fix-later" philosophy, and its PR practice of omitting material facts and information. (See the Google-Kansas City Agreement here.)

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "FCC's Slippery Slope to Regulating Content, Speech, and the Press" here. It urges the FCC to swiftly overturn their Administrative Judge's ruling in the wrong-headed Comcast-Tennis Channel decision.

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Obsolete Communications Law Op-ed Series:

Part 1: "Obsolete communications law stifles innovation, harms consumers"