The FCC is structured in such a way that the chairman calls all the
shots on policy matters. In this instance, the former chairman, Kevin
Martin, was responsible for the Comcast order but the current chairman,
Julius Genachowski, had to defend it in court. Some wags insist that the
defense was a bit lackluster because Genachowski didn't much care for
the legal basis of the Comcast order, which relied on a lot of smoke and
mirrors to regulate aspects of edge network behavior that Congress never
told the FCC to regulate. The defense relied on some legal theories that
weren't used in the order itself, and that's a no-no in an appeal. The
court took the rather extraordinary step of suggesting arguments that
the FCC could have used in the appeal that it didn't use.
The murky status of Internet regulation is actually quite enjoyable to
network operators and to policy wonks alike because it allows maximum
freedom of action. This will continue, of course, until Congress tells
the FCC to go regulate the Internet according to some yet-to-be-defined
framework.
RB
On 4/10/2010 1:36 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
On Apr 9, 2010, at 7:04 PM, Jared Mauch wrote:
> I believe you are doing a disservice to the FCC by making these inflammatory
statements.
And here I thought I was defending them for being different& better than the
last group.
The point is, joe asked about the FCC that made a ruling. The staffers who
work hard (and deserve lots of credit for working hard) do not make those
rulings. The political appointees and their handlers in the administration
make those rulings. Those appointees are very different than the last group.
And I think this is a very good thing.
For instance, could you in your wildest dreams have imagined the last group sending their
top people to NANOG, and those people standing around asking people to talk to them?
That was AWESOME, and very different than the "last FCC".
And I don't think there is anything wrong with thinking of it that way.
-- TTFN, patrick
> There are plenty of GOOD people at the FCC, I'm guessing you may not have
spent much time talking to them. (I met with the FCC about CALEA due to concerns
about there being no mature 10G intercept platforms. There are vendors that are
shipping devices that are not CALEA compliant, but may be compliant under other
lawful intercept methods/statutes).
>
> You have to understand that there are political appointees (that must be confirmed) and the regular staffers that operate in this space. The federal register and comment process is abundant, allowing people to file comments on nearly anything the government is discussing.
>
> If you've not engaged in getting the daily notices from the Federal Register, and did not file form 445, you may want to take a look at it. Phone the FCC. Phone the DoJ and ask for the "CALEA Implementation Unit", the folks there are behind thehttp://askcalea.net website.
>
> As with many things, there is a lot of (mis-)information out there.
>
> (Gotta run kids are bleeding!).
>
--
Richard Bennett
Research Fellow
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Washington, DC
