News 2001
 
December 20 | October 1 | June 25 | June 13 | May 22 | March 2 | February 20 | February 13 | January 24 | January 16

December 20, 2001

 

  • The Chairman of the FCC has announced 6 pillars that will guide the Commission's agenda during his tenure. Click HERE for more details.

October 1, 2001

June 13, 2001

May 22, 2001

  • A Reform Agenda for the New FCC

Three new FCC commissioners are expected to come aboard within a couple of weeks, and the agency has a new Chairman at the helm. In a newly-released paper entitled, "A Reform Agenda for the New FCC", Randolph J. May, Senior Fellow and Director of Communications Policy Studies at The Progress and Freedom Foundation, suggests that in order to carry out the "pro-competitive, deregulatory" professed vision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the new commission should do the following as quickly as possible: 1. Change its strategic objective from "market facilitation" to deregulation; 2. Establish a technology-neutral deregulatory regime for broadband services; 3. Reduce excessive forced facilities-sharing requirements on telecom networks; 4. Limit the scope of the "public interest" doctrine; 5. Establish an economically efficient regime for intercarrier compensation that gets rid of most of the subsidies built in to today's access charge and reciprocal compensation regimes. The full paper may be found at http://www.pff.org/POP8.9ReformAgendaFCC.pdf

  • Adam Thierer, director of telecommunications studies at the Cato Institute, wrote a briefing paper on "A 10-Point Agenda for Comprehensive Telecom Reform." He writes, "The Telecom Act, with its backward-looking focus on correcting the market problems of a bygone era, has been a failure. Instead of thoroughly clearing out the regulatory deadwood of the past, legislators and regulators have engaged in an effort to rework regulatory paradigms that where outmoded decades ago. In short, it was an analog act for an increasingly digital world. The new leadership in Congress and the FCC should adopt a fresh approach based on deregulation and free markets. Read the full report at http://www.cato.org//pubs/briefs/bp-063es.html.

March 2, 2001

  • Recently, there have been suggestions by AT&T and others that the incumbent local exchange carriers should be split up into separate "wholesale" and "retail" units. This idea is put forward as one that would create a so-called "level playing field" between the Bell Companies and the their competitors in the local services marketplace. In identical February 26 letters to the leadership of the Senate and House Commerce Committees, Seven telecommunications policy analysts from "think tanks" said that "the wholesale/retail break-up proposal would constitute a setback to the clear vision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to achieve competition in all telecommunications markets, including the local service marketplace." In their letters, Randolph J. May (Progress & Freedom Foundation), Adam Thierer (The Cato Institute), James Gattuso (Competitive Enterprise Institute), Sean Duffy (The Commonwealth Foundation), Jerry Ellig (Mercatus Center at George Mason University), Kent Lassman (CSE Foundation), and David Theroux (The Independent Institute) said: "Make no mistake, the 'structural separation' proposals now being floated are, virtually by definition, proposals to concede the local loop indefinitely will remain a monopoly." For the entire letter, see http://www.pff.org/SeparateSubLetter022701.htm
  • On Wednesday February 28, 2001, the Department of Justice filed a petition with the Supreme Court asking for certiorari in the case of Ashcroft v. ACLU [the name of the case has changed as a result of Bush's appointment of a new Attorney General -- it was formerly ACLU v. Reno]. DOJ is looking for a reversal of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals' June 2000 decision to uphold the injunction against the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) due to constitutional violations. COPA imposes criminal sanctions for posting material that is "harmful to minors" on the Web.

DOJ's petition is available at: http://www.usdoj.gov:80/osg/briefs/2000/2pet/7pet/2000-1293.pet.aa.html

The Third Circuit's decision is available at: http://vls.law.vill.edu/locator/3d/Jun2000/991324.txt

A copy of COPA is available at: http://www.cdt.org/legislation/105th/speech/copa.html

February 20, 2001

  • The FCC's January 22 order approving the AOL/Time Warner merger subject to conditions takes the agency down the path towards regulation of the Internet in a way it previously had resisted. The commission required AOL to make its instant messaging system "interoperable" with those of its competitors and required Time Warner to provide unaffiliated Internet Service Providers with "open access" to the capacity on its cable systems. For the FCC's decision see, http://www.fcc.gov/aol_tw.html.
  • For a critique of the regulatory overreaching of the FCC's majority decision in the AOL/Time Warner case, and a view of new FCC Chairman Michael Powell's dissent, see Randolph J. May commentary, "A Federal Nuisance", in the February 12 edition of Legal Times.

February 13, 2001

  • Recent Federal Communications Law Journal Articles by FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth and Staff, Volume 53, Number 1, December 2000

The Art of Writing Good Regulations: by Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth

The FCC’s Implementation of the 1996 Act: Agency Litigation Strategies and Delay: by Rebecca Benyon

Too Much Power, Too Little Restraint: How the FCC Expands its Reach Through Unenforceable and Unwieldy "Voluntary" Agreements: by Bryan Tramont

Communications Media and the First Amendment: A Viewpoint-Neutral FCC is Not Too Much to Ask For.

January 24, 2001

  • On January 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in a unanimous decision written by Judge Douglas Ginsburg, vacated the latest version of the FCC's EEO rule. The rule did not require the hiring of minorities or women, but it did require broadcast licensees to engage in "broad outreach" efforts in their recruiting, and one of the two options for satisfying this mandate required the licensee to report the race and sex of each job applicant and the source by which the applicant was referred to the station.

The court held that the FCC's rule had the effect of pressuring licensees to recruit on the basis of race and sex without a predicate finding that the broadcaster has discriminated in the past or reasonably could be expected to do so in the future. Therefore, it failed to meed Adarand's strict scrutiny test for race-based classifications. (The court held that although sex-based classifications are subject to intermediate rather than strict scrutiny, it was sure the agency would not have wanted the special requirements relating to women to stand alone.)

For the D.C. Circuit's decision, see http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/Fed-Ct/Circuit/dc/opinions/00-1094a.html

January 16, 2001

  • With the conditions placed on its approval of the AOL/Time Warner merger in its January 11, 2000 decision, the FCC has taken a significant step towards regulation of the Internet. By imposing conditions which require AOL's instant messaging system to "interoperate" with competing IM systems and which require Time Warner's cable systems to carry on a nondiscriminatory basis unaffiliated Internet Service Providers that compete with AOL, the FCC has, in effect, imposed a public utility-type regulatory regime on Internet services. For a view objecting to this new regulatory intrusion into the Internet accomplished through the FCC's merger review process, see Randolph J. May's op-ed in Washington Times, "Internet into FCC clutches?" http://www.pff.org/RM010701oped.html

   

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