5 ms·

A less sensational and more accurate headline might be: "FCC Losses Battle to Preempt State Law"

by choko 10y ago

eutropia 10y ago
Or: 'Yet again, cable lobbies succeed in legislating the market out of their way'
- goda90 10y ago
  I agree that the existing state laws are bad and clearly a product of cable lobbies, but the FCC not being able to preempt state laws is a good thing.
  - balabaster 10y ago
    Agreed, nobody should be able to preempt the law... however, what's crazy is that there are many anti-monopoly laws that exist for exactly the reason of increasing competition in favour of the consumer... what I don't understand is how none of these laws appear to apply to cable and telecoms providers. It's the same up here in Canada. Anti-monopoly laws prevent you from establishing a monopoloy, but it still appears to be fine for cable and telecom providers... and Government run businesses such as the LCBO... and in BC, ICBC and I'm sure a wealth of other monopolies that don't appear to fall inside the jurisdiction of anti-monopoly laws that literally apply to everyone else. One law for one, one law for everyone else doesn't appear to be the way the law is supposed to work, I can't fathom why it works this way in this case.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - Bluestrike2 10y ago
      There are a few reasons, but one of the most difficult is that federal legislators and bureaucrats (hell, we could even include those at the state level) are in a position where they don't actually see that there's a problem. There are a number of telecom companies. Not a lot, but we're certainly not talking about the situation with Standard Oil. At a macro level, there's clearly competition: Comcast, Verizon, Google Fiber, etc. No one can deny that, and that's the level where legislators interact with them. But the problem is that consumers don't actually get to choose between companies; they're largely locked into a particular provider based on geographic location. Franchise agreements, high barriers to entry, etc. all see to that. That's not really an antitrust issue. Utilities, by definition, are functional monopolies. The problem is that broadband is a utility, but a unique one. You can't really differentiate water service or sewage, for instance. But there can be a drastic difference between ISPs and the type of broadband service they provide. At the same time, it's still subject to the same economic factors as any other utility service, making new competition very unlikely. So you wind up with a very dysfunctional market, despite the competition at the macro level. It's a somewhat counterintuitive distinction, but what you wind up with is basically an industry with multiple competitors that don't actually compete with one another at the consumer level because they're just like any other utility at that level. You don't get a choice in water providers, sewage, etc. Everyone is locked within the confines of their particular borders, and while those borders can and do shift, when they do it's more like the trading of pieces of territory than encroachment via competition. And all of this is made worse by the sheer scale of the barriers to entry. As Verizon FiOS and Google Fiber both learned, fiber rollouts are a capital-intensive proposition.
  - mhurron 10y ago
    > I agree that the existing state laws are bad and clearly a product of cable lobbies, but .. you don't believe anything should be done about it. Local monopolies were created because local and state politicians were paid to make it that way. The FCC was acting as one of the few groups that would be funded and large enough to stand up to that, but the laws of the land are for the corporations not the people. Here you are praising a move to keep it that way.
jessaustin 10y ago
This proposed headline raises more questions than it answers. Which state laws? Does that refer, perhaps, to the state laws that forbid cities from building their own broadband? Where did the "Battle" take place? Gettysburg? What would it mean for an agency to "Loss" a battle anyway? All in all, TFA's title seems more informative.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Indeed. It seems weird that Wickard v Filburn deemed that growing corn for your own use was "interstate commerce", but a city building a broadband network in competition with multi-state companies is not "interstate commerce". The states-rights argument might swing more weight if each state had its own commercial broadband providers, rather than national companies locking up the market state by state.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Indeed. It seems weird that Wickard v Filburn deemed that growing corn for your own use was "interstate commerce", but a city building a broadband network in competition with multi-state companies is not "interstate commerce". That's not what the court found. The Sixth Circuit did not say that the subject matter here was not interstate commerce that Congress could regulate and preempt state law by regulating. They said that Congress had not acted to preempt these particular state laws, and that the regulatory authority the FCC had under laws passed by Congress did not extend to preempting the particular state laws in question. There is a vast difference between finding that an action is not within the Article I powers of Congress and finding that an executive action, whether or not authorizing it would be within the Article I powers of Congress, is not, in fact, authorized by Congress. This ruling found the latter, not the former. Now, I'm not saying that I agree with the finding, but it doesn't help to mischaracterize it.

A less sensational and more accurate headline might be: "FCC Losses Battle to Preempt State Law"

by choko 10y ago

A less sensational and more accurate headline might be: "FCC Losses Battle to Preempt State Law"

eutropia 10y ago

Or: 'Yet again, cable lobbies succeed in legislating the market out of their way'

goda90 10y ago
I agree that the existing state laws are bad and clearly a product of cable lobbies, but the FCC not being able to preempt state laws is a good thing.
- balabaster 10y ago
  Agreed, nobody should be able to preempt the law... however, what's crazy is that there are many anti-monopoly laws that exist for exactly the reason of increasing competition in favour of the consumer... what I don't understand is how none of these laws appear to apply to cable and telecoms providers. It's the same up here in Canada. Anti-monopoly laws prevent you from establishing a monopoloy, but it still appears to be fine for cable and telecom providers... and Government run businesses such as the LCBO... and in BC, ICBC and I'm sure a wealth of other monopolies that don't appear to fall inside the jurisdiction of anti-monopoly laws that literally apply to everyone else. One law for one, one law for everyone else doesn't appear to be the way the law is supposed to work, I can't fathom why it works this way in this case.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Bluestrike2 10y ago
    There are a few reasons, but one of the most difficult is that federal legislators and bureaucrats (hell, we could even include those at the state level) are in a position where they don't actually see that there's a problem. There are a number of telecom companies. Not a lot, but we're certainly not talking about the situation with Standard Oil. At a macro level, there's clearly competition: Comcast, Verizon, Google Fiber, etc. No one can deny that, and that's the level where legislators interact with them. But the problem is that consumers don't actually get to choose between companies; they're largely locked into a particular provider based on geographic location. Franchise agreements, high barriers to entry, etc. all see to that. That's not really an antitrust issue. Utilities, by definition, are functional monopolies. The problem is that broadband is a utility, but a unique one. You can't really differentiate water service or sewage, for instance. But there can be a drastic difference between ISPs and the type of broadband service they provide. At the same time, it's still subject to the same economic factors as any other utility service, making new competition very unlikely. So you wind up with a very dysfunctional market, despite the competition at the macro level. It's a somewhat counterintuitive distinction, but what you wind up with is basically an industry with multiple competitors that don't actually compete with one another at the consumer level because they're just like any other utility at that level. You don't get a choice in water providers, sewage, etc. Everyone is locked within the confines of their particular borders, and while those borders can and do shift, when they do it's more like the trading of pieces of territory than encroachment via competition. And all of this is made worse by the sheer scale of the barriers to entry. As Verizon FiOS and Google Fiber both learned, fiber rollouts are a capital-intensive proposition.
- mhurron 10y ago
  > I agree that the existing state laws are bad and clearly a product of cable lobbies, but .. you don't believe anything should be done about it. Local monopolies were created because local and state politicians were paid to make it that way. The FCC was acting as one of the few groups that would be funded and large enough to stand up to that, but the laws of the land are for the corporations not the people. Here you are praising a move to keep it that way.

jessaustin 10y ago

This proposed headline raises more questions than it answers. Which state laws? Does that refer, perhaps, to the state laws that forbid cities from building their own broadband? Where did the "Battle" take place? Gettysburg? What would it mean for an agency to "Loss" a battle anyway? All in all, TFA's title seems more informative.

pjc50 10y ago
Indeed. It seems weird that Wickard v Filburn deemed that growing corn for your own use was "interstate commerce", but a city building a broadband network in competition with multi-state companies is not "interstate commerce". The states-rights argument might swing more weight if each state had its own commercial broadband providers, rather than national companies locking up the market state by state.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Indeed. It seems weird that Wickard v Filburn deemed that growing corn for your own use was "interstate commerce", but a city building a broadband network in competition with multi-state companies is not "interstate commerce". That's not what the court found. The Sixth Circuit did not say that the subject matter here was not interstate commerce that Congress could regulate and preempt state law by regulating. They said that Congress had not acted to preempt these particular state laws, and that the regulatory authority the FCC had under laws passed by Congress did not extend to preempting the particular state laws in question. There is a vast difference between finding that an action is not within the Article I powers of Congress and finding that an executive action, whether or not authorizing it would be within the Article I powers of Congress, is not, in fact, authorized by Congress. This ruling found the latter, not the former. Now, I'm not saying that I agree with the finding, but it doesn't help to mischaracterize it.