Posts Tagged ‘ FCC ’

Big Brother Loves You, Will Text You to Prove It

May 11, 2011
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Big Brother Loves You, Will Text You to Prove It

By Jim Lakely Worry not, scared Americans. The government bureaucracies that brought you the eternal “Orange Alert” in airports are now stepping up their efforts to protect you from a terrorist attack by plugging into your cell phone: Emergency officials will soon be able to blast critical alerts to anyone with a cell phone in a certain section of the city. If Times Square needs to be evacuated because of a bomb threat or if a hurricane is bearing down on Queens, warnings will be bounced from cell towers. . . . The system — called PLAN or Personal Localized Alerting Network — uses cell phone towers to send messages to everyone currently in a certain area, regardless of whether they’re visiting from out of town or have a phone registered elsewhere. People won’t have to register in advance to receive the alerts. Gotta love the creativity of government busy-bodies, especially when it comes to anagrams like “PLAN.” Seems fitting, but they could have done a lot better. How about PANIC, the Personal Alert Nonsense In Cellphones Or: Plying Asinine Nanny-state Intrusions Casually? ? Or maybe: Prying About, Not Including Consent? The program starts in New York, but will quickly spread nationwide — and will be pretty

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FCC Report: Shot With Its Own Gun

August 21, 2010
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FCC Report: Shot With Its Own Gun

By Bruce Edward Walker File under duh! The Federal Communications Commission Broadband Performance OBI Technical Paper No. 4, the report issued this month, isolates some very pertinent facts, which in the aggregate indicate its attempts to evade federal law in order to grab regulatory power over the Internet are utterly unjustified. Among these important facts released by the FCC are: 1. Data hogs account for about 1 percent of residential Web users but 25 percent of all online traffic. 2. For 2009, the median Web surfer used about 2 gigabytes per month on home connections, while the average was 9 gigabytes. 3. The extreme difference between average and median data usage is principally due to a relatively small number of users who consume very large amounts of data each month–sometimes terabytes per month. 4. The most data-intensive 1 percent of residential consumers appear to account for roughly 25 percent of all traffic. 5. The top 3 percent generate 40 percent of traffic; the top 10 percent, 70 percent; and the top 20 percent generate 80 percent of all traffic. 6. While half of all users consume less than 2 GB per month, the last 6 percent of users consume more

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FCC Can’t Force Net Neutrality, Court Rules

April 7, 2010
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FCC Can’t Force Net Neutrality, Court Rules

A federal appeals court struck a blow against the desire of the Federal Communications Commission to enforce net neutrality rules on the Internet, ruling the FCC must first get Congress to approve such a sweeping expansion of its regulatory power. The decision made it clear that the FCC has no authority to force Comcast to stop managing its broadband network as it sees fit—in this case by throttling back the speed of a relative handful of “bandwidth hogs” who use bitTorrent programs to share enormous files. Comcast said it throttled the “hogs” to ensure speedy service for the majority of its customers in 2007, but no longer does so. The United States Circuit Court for the District of Columbia handed down the 36-page decision on April 6. Commonly referred to as Comcast v. FCC, the ruling stated that the FCC’s “ancillary authority” over the broadcast and cable industries “is not the equivalent of untrammeled freedom to regulate activities” on the Internet, too. Comcast said in a statement after the ruling was issued that “our primary goal was always to clear our name and reputation.” “We have always been focused on serving our customers and delivering the quality open-Internet experience consumers

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Discovery Files Amicus Brief in ‘Must-Carry’ Challenge

March 1, 2010
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The Discovery Network has joined a legal challenge to a longstanding FCC ruling forcing cable systems to carry local broadcast TV channels. Read it here. Discovery and the cable systems are right.

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Alert:: FCC Accepting Comments on Proposed Net Neutrality Rules

November 6, 2009
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Alert:: FCC Accepting Comments on Proposed Net Neutrality Rules

                You can make your voice heard on whether the federal government takes away your right to decide how Internet Service Providers manage your traffic, James G. Lakely writes.

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Court Upholds FCC Authority over Broadcast Indecency

April 28, 2009
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Court Upholds FCC Authority over Broadcast Indecency

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the FCC’s authority to impose fines on broadcasters for allowing obscene language on the air. S. T. Karnick analyzes the implications.

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FCC Authority over Indecency Challenged—but Govt. Agency Is Right for Once

September 11, 2007
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FCC Authority over Indecency Challenged—but Govt. Agency Is Right for Once

When it comes to regulation of communications, usually the FCC and the Congress have it all wrong. They want to regulate speech but let indecency have a free pass. That is the exact opposite of their Constitutional mandate. Here is the truth about the matter. The federal government has no constitutional authority to regulate speech. Period. If somebody wants to say something Congress or the Executive or Judicial branch doesn’t like, that’s just too bad. The states have much broader authority to regulate speech, though even they are not allowed to suppress political speech. But there is one aspect the Congress does have the authority to regulate, and that is indecency. The Supreme Court’s extension of the word "speech" to include nonverbal expression notwithstanding, the Congress definitely does have the authority to regulate the broadcast of indecent materials. This is the one area where Congress can and should step in.

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Net Neutrality Is a Very Bad Idea, Justice Dept. Says

September 7, 2007
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Net Neutrality Is a Very Bad Idea, Justice Dept. Says

So-called Net neutrality, a concept favored by statists, under which Internet providers would not be allowed to price their services according to how much various customers want them but would instead be subject to what amounts to price controls and business plan micromanagement by the national government, has been lambasted by the U.S. Justice Department, which has dominion over antitrust issues, in a comment to the Federal Communications Commission, which has jurisdiction over telecom regulation. Variety reports:

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“Fairness Doctrine” Defeated Again–for Now

July 5, 2007
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“Fairness Doctrine” Defeated Again–for Now

The Fairness Doctrine, which allows Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to interfere in broadcasters’ programming decisions, was established in the early 1930s and finally cast aside during the Reagan administration. Since then, media diversity has blossomed impressively, notably through the proliferation of talk radio programs. This increase in diversity proves that the original point of the Fairness Doctrine was government control over political speech, and that it was quite effective. Little wonder, then, that Democrats tried to reinstate it in the current congressional session. Fortunately, their effort was soundly defeated, as James Gattuso reports at National Review Online:

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Media Getting Dirtier But Easier to Clean Up

June 20, 2007
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Media Getting Dirtier But Easier to Clean Up

The media are exposing children to too much overly sexual and violent content, but parents are increasingly finding ways to shield their children from programming of which they don’t approve. That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Los Angeles Times reports:

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FCC’s Claims of TV Violence Problem Are Phony, Records Show

May 10, 2007
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The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s claims that excessive television violence require it to trample the Bill of Rights are contradicted by the commission’s own records, a new study says. As Broadcasting and Cable reports, "violence did not even make the list of top programming complaints to the commission, which did include complaints about indecency/profanity and obscenity, as well as in two catch-all categories for general criticisms." As I noted in my earlier piece on the FCC mentioned above, the public is much more concerned about indecency on television than violence in the medium. 

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