Regulation

For an FCC that so assiduously respected the integrity of process to produce a consensus National Broadband Plan just a few short months ago, how could this same FCC come to abuse the integrity of process in its pursuit of Title II net neutrality authority, just a few months later? 

• What's wrong with this picture?

How could the same FCC go from the predictable, open, consensus-driven process of developing the National Broadband Plan to the most unpredictable, closed, and non-consensus approach of the Title II net neutrality NOI? 

How can an FCC, which supposedly heard loud and clear from Congress about the importance of the integrity of process in confirmation hearings held just last year, completely ignore letters to the FCC from a majority of Congress imploring the FCC to respect the Constitutional process that empowers the Congress, not the FCC, with the authority to set communications policy for the Nation? 

Does not all integrity of process come entirely from respecting the Constitutional processes of separation of powers, due process, rule of law, equal protection, etc.?

How can the FCC maintain that they respect the integrity of process with the small "p" of the Adminstrative Procedures Act, when they disrespect the integrity of process with the large "P" of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights? 

What's wrong with this picture? 

• This FCC's apparent disregard for the integrity of Constitutionally mandated process.      

   

   

   

   

   

For anyone wanting to better understand the big picture threat to our Nation's communications and media infrastructure/business models, please don't miss Randy May's outstanding post: "Not Mao Zedong or a communist... but a Socialist."

Building on the great foundation of work laid down by Adam Theirer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation in this area, Randy adds another laser spotlight on how there are powerful ideological forces championed by FreePress' leader Robert McChesney that seek ultimate government control of both the media and the communications infrastructure. 

The disturbing common thread here that deserves much more attention from freedom-loving people everywhere, is the deeply (and scarily successful) anti-free-enterprise, anti-property, anti-individual-freedom efforts by FreePress in promoting a de facto government takeover of both the media and broadband communications infrastructure.   

• Look no further than the FCC's proposal to turn the competitive free enterprise of the broadband sector into a de facto public utility over the objections of a majority of members of Congress.

  If you want to learn and appreciate what is really going on ideologically here, don't miss reading Randy's and Adam's important work on this. They are spot on.

Clearly proponents of net neutrality and public-utility regulation of broadband, have learned how to manipulate language and metaphors to mask and move their agenda; what they haven't learned is that the language and metaphors used to promote policy changes must be true in order to make legitimate, successful, and lasting public policy.

• The communications plan for the FCC's proposed broadband regulation of the Internet is full of fiction, fantasy and misdirection.
• What's increasingly obvious is that proponents of preemptive proscriptive broadband regulation think people are stupid, that they don't know what words mean, and that they will gullibly swallow whatever is said without thought or question.
• Broadband regulation proponents are fantastically claiming that:
  • An obviously heavy-handed regulatory approach is really a "light touch;"
  • The FCC's most extreme and sweeping regulatory proposal ever is really just a "middle ground" compromise;
    

At its Thursday meeting, expect the FCC to adopt Google's PR script to try and better sell the FCC's upcoming "Extreme Makeover" of Internet regulation.

• The centerpiece of the FCC and Google's "extreme Internet makeover" plan is the creation of an entirely new, Google-inspired, regulatory classification called "Broadband Internet Connectivity Service" or BICS.
• The BICS extreme makeover is designed to:
  • Enable the promotion of integrated "edge" products and services like Google Voice, Google TV, and Google's Chrome/Android operating systems; and
  • Empower the FCC to implement its National Broadband Plan on its own without additional Congressional authorization or action. 

Predictably, the FCC's Google-oriented-BICS-scheme has three fatal flaws -- making it a disaster waiting to happen. 

American consumers clearly want online privacy, per a national poll conducted over the weekend by Zogby International, that was commissioned by Precursor LLC. 

• In a nutshell, over 80% of Americans are concerned about the security and privacy of their personal information on the Internet; about 90% of Americans consider some common industry behaviors to be unfair business practices; and about 80% of Americans support a variety of stronger consumer protections of their privacy online.

More specifically, this Zogby poll asked eight timely questions that are highly pertinent to:

The FCC has a ready-made opportunity to protect consumers by approving the simple rule updates recommended in the pending Retransmission Petition.

• The FCC has the authority and the obligation to protect consumers by updating the FCC's Section 325 rules with a functional dispute resolution framework and a mandatory interim carriage agreement during negotiations.
• Without these common sense consumer protections, consumers unnecessarily will continue to be unintended collateral damage in someone else's commercial fight.

The petition is laser-focused on updates to the FCC's rules to protect consumers from being used as pawns or hostages in commercial disputes not of their making or interest.

It is highly instructive that opponents of the retransmission petition focus most all their argumentation on protecting the status quo, that unnecessarily puts consumers directly in harms way, and that does not directly address why consumers should not be protected as recommended in the petition.

Often stepping back to gain perspective and to try and see the forest for the trees, can be highly instructive. However, if one steps back to see the big picture of how this FCC is attempting unilaterally to change U.S. Internet policy, the view is surreal.

• Increasingly, this FCC is becoming an island.
  • It is insisting on self-asserting its exceptionalism and its supremacy over the Internet; and
  • It is ignoring an overwhelming amount of important and contrary input, advice and evidence from Congress, the Courts, DOJ, FTC, past FCCs, industry, and the public. 
• Simply, this FCC increasingly appears to view itself as exceptional and as the supreme authority on and over the Internet, unconstrained by Congress, the courts, law, economics, markets, or the public.

The FCC's retransmission rules now perversely cause consumers to suffer unnecessary collateral damage in retransmission negotiations -- the exact opposite outcome the FCC wants -- in large part because the FCC's retransmission rules have not kept pace with dramatic competitive and technology changes over the last two decades.  

• The FCC should, and easily can, protect consumers from becoming unnecessary collateral damage in retransmission negotiations by simply updating their nearly twenty-year-old FCC regulations with petitioned common sense modifications that ensure consumers never find themselves unnecessarily in the "bulls-eye" of the FCC's out-dated retransmission rules again.

To better understand how rules that possibly made sense in 1992, could produce predictably perverse and dysfunctional consumer outcomes today, think of the retransmission rules, like a regulatory "gun" that was originally and permanently pointed directly at a 1992 cable monopoly and no one else.