Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, the FCC strengthened its transparency rule so that Internet service providers must make public more information about their network management practices. They are required to make this information available either on their own website or on the FCC's website.
When the Obama administration passed the net neutrality rules in 2015, even when we were winning, I favored trying to get these rules in a statute, because I feel that the best way to establish predictability for the marketplace is to make sure they're not subject to the whims of a partisan vote at the FCC.
People whose terms go for five years or longer, like FCC commissioners. That's a higher standard. Then district judges, who are appointed for a lifetime but can be overruled. Then Court of Appeals judges. They're not the highest level, but they're almost the final word. And then, of course, the Supreme Court.
Although the FCC has tried to introduce net neutrality rules to avoid abusive practices like favoring your own services over others, they have struggled because there has been more than one court case in which it was asserted the FCC didn't have the authority to punish ISPs for abusing their control over the broadband channel.
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.
Michael J. Copps, acting FCC chairman, has denounced the lack of racial and gender diversity in the broadcast industry as 'a shameful state of affairs.' Unsurprisingly, his proposed corrective is to force the transfer of station ownership to greater numbers of minorities, who are statistically more likely to carry liberal talk shows.
