Good. FCC caught its own tail with Pai getting the taste of his own medicine. They reclassified ISPs under Title I, and lost any ability to impose such kind preemptions in result.
The most important information in this piece is the FCC making rules favoring the very telecoms they are supposed to be regulating. Not that anyone familiar with this administration (or that scumbag Pai) is surprised.
So, my ashamedly limited historical understanding of this, brought to me by John Oliver, is that the FCC was assumed to have the powers of the whole Title II thing prior to losing a court case.. Is this the case?
If that's the case, Pai's rationalization is very hand-wavy.
Worth reading this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/three-myths-telecom-in... -- essentially, there was a court decision that moved privacy enforcement of ISPs from the FTC to the FCC. The FCC took up the mantle with the new rule. Now Congress is undoing the FCC regulation, ISP privacy won't be governed by either the FCC or the FTC.
I think the gist of it is that the FCC exceeded it's authority in deeming ISPs Common Carriers. Legislation from congress and signed by the executive will be needed.
I think that the FCC under Michael Powell would've approved this with nary a second thought. His M.O. was paying lip service to the disruptive adaptive powers of free markets and modern technology when people accused him of unfairly granting natural monopolies. IIRC this happened when he exempted cable ISPs from common-carrier regulations.
To be fair, the previous FCC tried that. The courts struck it down and told them if they wanted to regulated ISPs in that manner they had to go Title II.
Non-Title II regulation of ISPs would require an act of Congress, a Republican-held congress with a Republican President. Good luck with that. :P
Is there anything that can be done here? Pai and his little buddy O'Rielly have an easy majority on the FCC here, and I doubt they'll listen to any comments. Short of like, the Trump government being dismantled before then, how do you get rid of such a transparently corrupt head of a federal agency?
I'm all for hating on Ajit, but from a cursory look at the prison case, the FCC just never really had the jurisdiction to regulate intrastate calls and repeatedly lost in court on that question. There was already a 50 cent cap on interstate calls under Pai, and this year under Rosenworcel it's been lowered to 14-21 cents[1].
No doubt this will pass. Short of Pai resigning and Trump deciding to appoint a Democrat I don't know why this wouldn't. The FCC has made it clear that they don't value public comment.
The current situation is a mess. The FCC derives its power to regulate telecommunications from the Congressional power to regulate interstate commerce.
However, the FCC believes it is limited to interstate telecommunications—when it suits them. They refused to defend their own price caps on intrastate prison calls because it was not a matter of interstate commerce. However, despite this, they purport the reclassification of ISPs preempts state law with regards to net neutrality. I find the logic behind this mind-boggling.
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