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You're mistaken on this point. The courts already rejected the ancillary jurisdiction rationale, and rather than wait for Congress to make a decision on net neu
by trythis 16y ago
You're mistaken on this point. The courts already rejected the ancillary jurisdiction rationale, and rather than wait for Congress to make a decision on net neutrality, the FCC adopted a new rationale (which, as I recall, hinged upon reclassifying broadband traffic) to justify imposing their net neutrality rules. All of this is in grellas' post. The issue grellas is raising is whether it's acceptable to let a regulatory body like the FCC make such broad assertions of authority at all. The matter of ancillary jurisdiction is already done and settled.
When I said we're not in any real danger of the FCC having a "broad, unchecked power to control what happens on the internet," my point was that irrespective of whether Congress denies the FCC this authority right now, it always has the power to do so. And though it's irrelevant to my point, if the courts had upheld the ancillary jurisdiction rationale, Congress could always strike that down, too. This situation isn't like the executive branch jockeying with the legislative branch for power: the FCC is not a peer of Congress.
- lukeschlather 16y agoIn the next few years, it's looking like the vast majority of telecommunications will move over to the Internet. If the FCC doesn't have the authority to regulate the Internet, they will have no regulatory authority whatsoever over land-based telecom. I don't see how that is reasonable, and I don't see how the initial decision to classify Internet as something other than a wire communications service was justifiable. It's disingenuous to say the FCC is claiming any authority they don't have under the law.