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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!
All Your Computers Are Belong To Us
The Cure for 1984 is 1776
another step in regulating voIP may be a driving instrument behind this.
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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.
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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)
Actually Bush and his party have little if any effect on this. Sorry, but both parties have collected power to the Federal Government through out our history. This process accelerated after the Civil War and continues today. The Constitution is rather clear when read with the 10th Amendment, most of what the government does these days is unconstitutional. But depending on where your ideology stands, you approve when it is your group accumulating power but disapprove when it is the other group. After both sides get their way long though, most every area of our lives are now controlled by the Federal Government. I don't think the average citizen today even realizes that the states are supposed to be the controlling authority in most aspects of our lives, not the central government.
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?
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The rules are what the Bush admistration and their FCC, Supreme Court buddies say they are.
We're all going to have to drop the liberal/conservative paranoia if we're going to stop the power grabs like the continued FCC expansion. This is not an "evil Bush" thing, nor is it an "evil Clinton" thing or any administration in particular. The FCC has been an increasing problem ever since Carter's era where it felt underappreciated, and Reagan when deregulation of Bell gave it a whole new world to flex its muscles in.
Instead of pretending evil Bushies/Clintonites are out to get you, take it to its foundation and fight from there. Do we want unchecked power in Federal bureaucracies, such as the FCC, DOE, FBI, CIA, etc, or not? The 10th Amendment of the US Constition has been gutted in practice; just as "interstate commerce" has been interpreted as anything in order to provide Federal jurisdiction, these agencies are completely unchecked in their empire building power drives.
Frequency auctions (a lousy "let's bring in a few extra bucks" measure by Congress) have corrupted the FCC immensely. It is so driven by money that it makes decisions based solely on lobby. Legalized bribery and influence has paralized its ability to do its basic charter. Look at BPL (Broadband over Power Line) for instance - while agreeing BPL studies conclusively show it fundamentally interferes with other licensed services, the FCC waves a magic wish wand and declares that BPL may continue. It's almost like the scene out of the Producers where the same company has been sold a hundred times over. BPL interfers with the frequency purchased by others previously, but as long as the FCC can sell it again, they go ahead. The Nextel fiasco is another good example of this nightmare, as well as unbundling requirements of monopoly service (e.g. DSL unbundling) being thrown aside.
If anyone else was doing it, they would be called fascist.
Lets hold the criminals themselves accountable in these bloated, money/power hungry bureaucracies. Look at the CIA as an example - their top brass is suddenly quitting because Congress sent a new boss who doesn't say 'pretty please' when scheduling meetings, and is not mindful that you never have meetings on Monday or Friday (WTF?) unless it is a mixer with cocktails. And we're surprised we have a deficit, with Federal agencies acting like this with our money?
Both sides need to start kicking some administrative ass and quit falling sucker to each party's finger pointing at the other.
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.
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.