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FCC Claims Regulatory Power Over Home Computers
Pointing to Assistant Professor of Law Susan Crawford's blog, iman1003 writes "The FCC has filed a brief where it claims regulatory power over all instrumentalities, facilities, and apparatus 'associated with the overall circuit of messages sent and received' via all interstate radio and wire communication according to a blog published by Susan Crawford. The blog can be found here and the brief here (in PDF format). Kind of scary if you ask me." Ars Technica has good commentary on this, also referencing Crawford's findings.
When they pry it from my cold, dead fingers!
"Congress hasn't said that we DON'T have the power to do this, so we're going to go ahead on the assumption that we do."
Uhhh, that's not the way the government works. A government agency must be given the authority to regulate by Congress, which is ultimately accountable to the People. A government agency can't just do whatever the hell they please just because they feel like it. They must have a mandate and be granted Congressional authority to do so.
All Your Computers Are Belong To Us
The Cure for 1984 is 1776
If there is one industry that does not need regulated, it's the computer industry. We are doing fine without you. Kind of makes you wonder what the state of radio, telecommunications, etc... would be without the FCC locking us into paradigms that are literally older than most of the people reading this message.
Get the hell out FCC we don't want or need your help.
-- the entire computer industry
-- $G
another step in regulating voIP may be a driving instrument behind this.
http://dont.spam.me.anymore.com
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the FCC??!
So if the FCC has regulatory domain over PCs, does that mean they're the ones to contact so i can download Janet's Titty Shot ? If they can regulate the content on Radio, Television, Print and Cable, does that mean they're willing to step up to regulating content on the Internet? Ha! Will I have to get an "Internet User License" like ham/cb hobbyists? Does that mean my TCP/IP driver will require little stickers of FCC compliance like my modem does? Just when I think that the economy is really suffering, and begin to stress about layoffs and outsourcing, I re-assure myself that beuracracy always grows, and so creates a never ending employment trough. I should start studying for my GSA exam.
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
Shame that the head of the FCC doesn't have the same grace, dignity, honour and intelligence as his father.
Stop posting here and WRITE to your congressional representatives.
Congress defines the mandate of the FCC, and without your input, all they hear is the clatter of change from the entertainment lobby.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Jan, 25th 2005:
The FCC announces that all computer equipment sold in the USA must now incorporate CCC (Complete Control over Content) technology.
CCC is, by the most incredible coincidence, almost equivalent to Microsoft/Intel Palladium specifications.
Early Feb. 2005:
Dell, IBM, HPaq and most other computer manufacturers quickly announce their support for the initative and the tech industry goes into an orgy of upgrading. All machines not incorporating CCC are then outlawed and/or barred from connecting to the Internet.
Dec. 2005:
FCC, in its capacity as Internet regulators, introduces the "Great Homeland Firewall", which bars USA citizens from connecting to foreign sites deeemed dangerous and/or terrorist. Some people note that Democratic blogs also appear to be rejected by the FCC Firewall.
Liberal cries about "freedom of the press" and "right of information" are promptly dismissed by Fox News and Republican lawmakers as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic".
In 2008, after successfully repelling the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, President George W Bush is triumphantly re-elected as President for a 3rd term.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
And, whether we like it or not, the Federal Communications Commission does have regulatory authority over interstate communications. It was set up specifically to regulate interstate communications.
The question (and the lawsuit) is, does this authority extend to what is done with a broadcast after it has been transmitted and received?
Best Slashdot Co
I guess you'd better buy any hdtv equipment at the mid 2005 'non compliance' sale. I always find that early generations of any given new technology are easier to use because they have fewer copyright type restrictions on them.
...let's all call the FCC with complaints about viruses/worms/crackers/etc. They should be able to "regulate" it.
FLR
Maybe the brief linked to in the posting was the wrong one.
...
... IANAL
There is a mention of associated with the overall circuit of messages sent and received but it is just a small quote.
From the PDF brief
The issues presented here are:
* Whether the FCC reasonably concluded that the Communications Act provides authority for it to adopt broadcast flag rules.
* Whether the particular rules the Commission adopted were reasonable and supported in the record
* Whether the rules conflict with copyright law.
Although the expansion of FCC authority is of valid concern its neither the topic of, nor addressed in, the brief mentioned.
But
Unlike Radio, it doesn't make a difference where I transmit from.
While we are on the subject, what constitutes using an IP. Do I need a "license" for a dial up account? Will I have to license every stinking moron in my building if I decide to do NAT translation? And what if someone hijacks my IP? Do I get fined?
The Internet is working very well as it is, thank you very much. If it's not suitable for some secure purpose, or it's not some idealic playground where we can set our kids loose and abdicate our responsibility as parents, then maybe we out to look at the wisdom of those 2 ideas. prima face they are stupid, and no amount of regulation is going to change that. Parents DO need to a) know what their kids are doing and b) prepare them to meet and overcome the temptations of this world.
As far as security goes, putting the FCC in charge is not so much to protect the integrity of messages sent, as to filter the content of what can't be. I refuse to live in a world where 7 words can't be sent over email.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The real issues are interference and interoperation. The FCC has long been accepted as being in charge of layer 1 - the physical stuff. But in another way of thinking, one could consider DDOS attacks to be analogous to RFI. I'm not saying it's a perfect analogy, but it's certainly one that could be sold to a bureaucrat, maybe even to a legislator. So by this reasoning, the FCC may be trying to extend their authority into layer 2 and even layer 3, in order to meet their real requirements of interference and interoperation.
Now think about how they implement their authority over layer 1. There are things like FCC Type Acceptance, FCC Classes, and FCC Certification. You know that modem that operates over controlled wires, or that transmitter that operates over controlled frequencies... You can't TOUCH them without a LICENSE. So far, so good. If you touch it, you may change its operation, and make it cause interference. The device's FCC Type Acceptance is to guarantee that it will interoperate correctly. Your FCC License is supposed to guarantee that you know how to touch the device without breaking its FCC compliance.
Now extend that to layer 2. That means the FCC owns your ARP, and the bottom of your TCP stack. No more compiling from source without an FCC License, in fact you'd probably need signed modules. For that matter, you'd need a layer of the OS that guarantees that you can't load anything other than FCC certified modules for layer 2 - unless you've got an FCC License.
Now extend that to layer 3.... and the FCC owns the rest of your stack. And the part of the OS that checks its FCC signature and loads it.
This sounds terribly heavy-handed, but the Internet has become enough of a mess that the general public might well accept it. I see several major issues here:
1: Do the FCC and Congress realize what it *really* means to regulate PC communication. Do they understand that it also means requiring DRM Operating Systems to guarantee that an FCC Type Accepted stack is loaded.
2: What will licensing look like? How expensive will it be, and will it be truly knowledge based, or more interface based. (like MSCE) Will there be some sort of "Amateur Internet" equivalent to "Amateur Radio" and what will its requirements and capabilities be.
3: Will the Corporate Linux presence really care about ANY of this, because they'll just license their developers.
4: Finally, to they even understand that NONE of this MATTERS, because you don't stop DDOS or spam at layers 1, 2, or 3, anyway. To really stop DDOS and spam, you need to FCC certify *every single executable* that can connect to the stack, and that includes networked games.
4a: In reality, this probably means inserting the layer 3.5 shim, that *attempts* to police network connections, and prevents direct communication to layer 3. Of COURSE we all know how well that would work in practice, that it would preserve performance, as well as stop DDOS and spam.
As for anti-regulatory philosophies of Republican administrations, I don't buy it having any bearing here. In practice, I see two pieces of anti-regulatory agenda, owning weapons and making money. Allowing FCC increased domain over PCs does not directly affect either of those, so it could well happen. In fact, including FCC certification probably improves corporate control/profitability, so that's a plus.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You're equating getting the signal in your house and being allowed to do whatever you want with it. That's not the case. If you read your HDTV contract, you'd notice that there are many, many provisions in it. They state that the signal (and copyrighted material it contains) ISN'T yours, and that you are only allowed to display it on agreed hardware, and use it in ways they see fit. Just because you have the cable running into your house doesn't mean you can then burn it to CDs and pass out to friends, or even burn to CDs and keep for yourself.
You see, copyright is a weird thing. You are getting a copy of the media, not the rights to copy it yourself. You can get those rights if you want, they are available - you just have to buy the copyright holder's permission for whatever it is you want to copy. Simple.
By your logic, if I come over to your house, you can take my wallet. "Heck - he was in my house! my wallet!". It could be argued that your stance is pure greed (as in you want to have the rights to copy something, but not pay for them).
Only to the extent that your computer emits RF interference, and/or communicates over phone lines. You're confusing the issue.
There's an FCC ID on almost all electronic equipment. Does that mean the FCC can regulate what bread you put in your toaster? What food you heat in your microwave? Can the FCC tell you you cannot record a phone message on your answering machine? or what you can do with that recording?
The FCC regulates the physical transmission of information, and to some extent the content in the case of public transmissions. Once you receive the transmission, its out of their hands.
I'm not trying to be rude here, but it's thinking like that which has allowed the US to become what it has. You really think the politicians turn away from their lobbying groups and say "You know, thanks, but no thanks. You keep the $1,000,000, and I'll do what Mr. X asked me in his letter". No, he'll write you a letter saying he takes it very seriously, that he values the voices of his constituants, that democracy is the best, and America is great. The letter will be sent to you, and he'll forget it. It won't affect anything he does.
You don't get it. This isn't about regulating computer misuse or spam, which have laws already in place. This is about regulating all forms of transmitted communication. If this is upheld they'll start censoring the web just like they do broadcast TV. Look at the WWW and see how many cases of "Fuck" are on the web. Googling the word fuck brings up 40,000,000 hits. At five grand a hit, you've got enough in fines to fund the war on the world. As far as FCC regulating equipment interference, it's been done for years. Modems, TV's, monitors, computers, all comply with FCC regulations for electronic devices.
So you put up a web site with a comments section like Slashdot. The FCC will then come by and say... Hmm Casualposter put up the word fuck three times and so we've got to fine that ripe little bastard fifteen grand, and slashdot as well for "broadcasting" the whole rotten lot. Oh yeah, did I mention that broadcasters have to have FCC liscenses. How about the same thing for websites?
And then we've got that anonymous fellow. He's a potty mouth and owes the FCC several billion for the f-word. So cough up his ID oh slashdot or else we'll haul comander taco off to jail, just for starters, for contempt you see. We can't have this immoral stuff on the net. It's bad for the kiddies. You see the internet is just like TV or radio. Somebody sets up a website (like a radio station), and anybody with the right kind of equipment (like a radio) can find the URL (like dialing in the radio station) and load up the website (like a radio program). As you can see, the website folks are just like radio stations and therefore they should be FORCED to protect our precious children from the dreaded f-word.
And all that porn, why that doesn't belong where anyone who isn't willing to drive out into the boonies or a dangerous part of town to hang out at a sleazy theater with other scummy people to see some really ugly, stoned people doing bad things. Put the porn back in the ghettos where it belongs.
So the real effect is to do though regulation what the courts have not allowed congress to do via laws like CIPA. The FCC already regulates the content of broadcast TV and radio, and with the power grab will be regulating what ever gets put up on the web. That should reduce the web to little more than static TV for your computer.
As to regulating spam and viruses. Since when has the FCC ever gone after international criminals? All the laws in the world won't reduce spam as long as a few billion dollars can be made. It's like drugs. Outlaw Spam and the spammers will be criminals and the spam will get worse, not better, just like the war on drugs has made little dent in the drug problem, but it has made a lot of folks more dangerous to the rest of us.
Oh yeah, I could be wrong. But I've never ever seen a government do GOOD regulations of communications content. Aircraft reliability and equipment reliability and non-interference? Yes the regulation is good. But why the fuck should I pay twenty grand for typing 16 characters in a comment? Or howard stern pay fines for saying fuck on the air? That's content control.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
I hate to turn your dream into a nightmare, but all of my experience screams that this claim has nothing to do with the broadcast flag. It's a naked power grab to control the internet within the US, cloaked in the semi-defensible argument that it's merely ensuring that the (controversial itself) broadcast flag is enforceable.
Consider this: our theocracy has resumed obscenity prosecutions. The defense, in a nutshell, is that the "community" that establishes "community standards" no longer exists in the era of the internet - the porn palace is not some seedy theater that you need to keep your kids from, it's a consumer viewing porn (via subscription, encrypted channels or the internet) in the privacy of their own home. The alternative is to allow the most repressed community in the country to define what's acceptable for the rest of the country.
Maybe this defense will succeed. Maybe it won't. But if it succeeds the feds won't have much authority to go after porn sites - or anything else that offends them. (I'm especially concerned about a latter-day Pentagon Papers case. There's a staggering disconnect between what this administration claims is true and what's the ground reality... and the incoming cabinet and Congress looks like it's moving even further into fantasyland.)
Enter this brief. Even if the government loses this obscenity case, the FCC can step in and say that it's shutting down any site containing "obscene" material as it, alone, defines it. There's far, far too many sites to monitor manually so they'll undoubtably turn to secret lists like the kiddie filters - and besides hard and softcore porn we'll undoubtably discover that the filters block breast cancer and chicken recipes, sites that discuss your rights under the Bill of Rights (except for the second, oddly), the Constitution itself, websites critical of the incumbent president or supportive of the challenger....
In these circumstances, discussing and criticizing The List itself will undoubtably be verboten. That might give the nasty porn guys (and liberals) ideas on how to circumvent the restrictions.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Here's the letter I wrote my rep:
.blarg.
If you are alone in your views, you are right. Money talks. However money is a means to the ends. At the end of the day, if they notice that they sent more of letter #24 than anything else, and a quick database search reveals that most letters were opposed to something, that means more than money from lobbiest.
Congressmen have been known to go against those lobbiests with all their money when enough letters are written. They know that following the will of people who write letters (which is also the people more likely to vote) is likely to give them a vote next time, while ignoring those letters is likely to cost them the election.