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News
2001 |
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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 FCCs 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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2003 The Federalist Society
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