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FCC Forces California To Drop Plan For Government Fees On Text Messages (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: California telecom regulators have abandoned a plan to impose government fees on text-messaging services, saying that a recent Federal Communications Commission vote has limited its authority over text messaging. The FCC last week voted to classify text-messaging as an information service, rather than a telecommunications service. "Information service" is the same classification the FCC gave to broadband when it repealed net neutrality rules and claimed that states aren't allowed to impose their own net neutrality laws. California's legislature passed a net neutrality law anyway and is defending it in court. But the state's utility regulator chose not to challenge the FCC on regulation of text messaging. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) was scheduled to consider the text-message fee proposal at a meeting next month but pulled the item off the agenda after the FCC action. "Under California law, telecommunications services are subject to the collection of surcharges to support a number of CPUC public programs that subsidize the cost of service for rural Californians and for low-income, disadvantaged communities, and provides special services for the deaf, the hard of hearing, and the disabled," the commission said in a statement Friday.
On the one hand, taxing SMS texting is stupid. On the other, it's hard for me to imagine anything good coming out of this FCC. Is there some virtue to taxing SMS texting that I am missing?
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Let's impose a surcharge on each breath you take.
I know it's not popular to agree with the FCC, because Ajit Pai seems highly corrupt. However, it's reasonable for the FCC to have authority over telecommunications using systems that extend beyond state lines. I don't have a problem with that being classified as interstate commerce.
The real issue is that the FCC has made some very corrupt decisions, not whether they should have authority over these matters. For example, if the FCC doesn't have full authority over matters like net neutrality, they don't have the ability to prevent ISPs from throttling their customers or blocking access to content. Even if they made a rule requiring net neutrality, states could override the FCC's authority in their own state, and that would be bad for consumers and for a lot of businesses. While states like California might choose to require net neutrality for customers in their state, Oklahoma might choose to allow ISPs to throttle or block content.
I don't think the issue is whether the FCC should have the authority -- they should. The issue is that the current leadership of the FCC has severe conflicts of interest, and are far less than transparent about it. Their decisions generally align with telecommunications lobbyists, so they seem highly corrupt.
Letting states overrule the FCC is a double-edged sword. Let's instead focus on eliminating the corruption, so the authority they claim is used judiciously.
this was a perfectly safe thing for the FCC to do. It was intensely unpopular, unlikely to pass. The whole thing only exists because California's right wing made it difficult to raise income taxes but the state needs money to fight the drought. So they come up with insane things to get around the rule that they can't just raise taxes when they need to.
Seriously, their taxes are like a one way ratchet. You can lower them with a simple majority but it takes a super majority to raise them. It's part of that whole "Starve the Beast" thing meant to crash the government so everything can be privatized.
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Maybe the dirty fucking communist state should consider spending less money to fix budget woes instead of creating new taxes.
I wish the government had the power to significantly tax every unsolicited SMS message, phone call, and email I receive! Especially the ones where they are spoofing the caller id!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
they want Californians to pay through the nose for water. While you're busy shit posting mildly racist right wing nonsense to Slashdot a small group of billionaires are buying up increasingly valuable water rights which they'll rent back to us.
If you're a Russian troll this doesn't concern you, but if you're in America you're about to get fucked. And yes, even if you're on the east coast since you'll have "water refugees" leaving the west and flooding your job market, lowering your wages...
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That's your favorite pollution-spewing factory who can't be regulated according to rightwing freedom specialists.
Enjoy your death penalty.
...the first one being California for thinking it was a good idea to tax communication. The second, the FCC, for declaring what is clearing a telecommunication service an "information service".
I'm in the camp that says states/localities should be taxing "information services" in an attempt to goad ISPs into declaring themselves telecoms instead. But no one listens to me...
(It's bizarre that states can tax telecoms which are clearly in the federal zone of regulation, but they can't tax "information services".)
If Californians can't be taxed for it, how will 10% of the population of Honduras get subsidized phone service?
> Disclaimer: I live in San Jose, California, one of the brownest cities in America.
Did you mean whitest? According to the census, the entire state of Texas is 39% of *Mexican* descent, then add all of central America on top of that. Providence, Rhode Island has a higher percentage of Hispanics than San Jose does. Bridgeport, Connecticut is more Hispanic than San Jose. If San Jose were in Massachusetts, it would be the second-brownest city in Massachusetts.
> I believe immigration is a good thing
I've never heard anyone disagree with that. The question of the day is whether, when we make laws about immigration (or any other subject), we should follow those laws, or just pretend they don't exist. Republicans pretty consistently say don't make a law if you don't plan on following it. Follow the law, and if the law needs to be changed, change it. Democrats go back and forth on this about four years. In his first term, Obama was for strong enforcement of immigration law. In his second term, it was his official policy to unconstitutionally ignore the law. Hillary voted for a wall on the Mexican border, then later when she was invited on Univision she ridiculed the plan she had supported a couple years earlier. What's your stand on that, should we as a country DECIDE on immigration law, or should each politician do whatever they feel like today, ignoring the law?
Google, Apple, and Facebook made about $75 billion in net profits in 2017. So why not take 10% of that? That would provide about $156 per month per California State resident - we could give EVERYONE free 4G connectivity! Why tax texts - just tax those big companies benefiting from the Internet and communications!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That's about FIVE TIMES as much as the current request for border wall funding.
That's about $4BILLION more than the entire nation spent on NASA - we don't have bases on the moon, but the rich in Hollywood and Silicon Valley have cheap gardeners and nannies.
The very same morons in CA who complain that Wallmart is effectively subsidized because its workers are underpaid and therefore are on government aid for healthcare and food refuse to face the fact that by this very logic all the liberals who hire illegals are equally subsidized.
When politicians are this corrupt and reckless, it's no surprise that they will look to tax ANYTHING to get more money (to buy more votes).
Surely this action must be reversed and CA must be allowed to retroactively tax all text messages going back five years. After all, we know this is being done by Ajit Pai's FCC and he and his boss, Mr Trump are ray-cysts who do nothing but evil. Where are all the screams that he is a puppet of Verizon and as a result he needs to be stopped?
Republicans pretty consistently say don't make a law if you don't plan on following it. Follow the law, and if the law needs to be changed, change it.
Let's talk about speeding tickets then, shall we ... ?
Or, in a form less polite ... bullshit.
Now we should see an outburst of effusive praise for Ajit Pai from the always vocal Slashdot crowd, right?
-Styopa
at this rate, we'll have a yellow vest protest of our own soon
moving for better digs. When I say "water refugees" I mean the dirt poor leaving the state because there's no water. There'll be millions of them. Supply and demand dictates that a large influx of labor (supply) lowers demand (wages).
Heck, even the middle class won't be coming with tons of money. Those condos will be worthless when there's no potable water. It'll be like Detroit x1000. Assuming nothing is done about it. California's moving left, so they might actually step up and fix it.
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