Posted on 12/07/2010 2:40:25 AM PST by Scanian
The First Amendment forbids Congress from infringing on Americans' right to free speech. But the Federal Communications Commission is not Congress. And Michael Copps, one of four FCC commissioners reporting to Chairman Julius Genachowski, seems intent on ignoring that pesky part of the First Amendment about "abridging the freedom of speech" when that speech is sent out over the airwaves.
In two American Thinker articles earlier this year, I discussed possible FCC attempts to force progressive programming into broadcast media. Now, in addition to a nasty Christmas present that Genachowski wants to give Americans on December 21 (Net Neutrality), Copps wants government to control private-sector broadcast content.
In a December 2 speech, Copps proposed that the FCC conduct a "public value test" of commercial broadcast stations.
"If a station passes the Public Value Test, it of course keeps the license it has earned to use the people's airwaves. If not, it goes on probation for a year, renewable for an additional year if it demonstrates measurable progress. If the station fails again, give the license to someone who will use it to serve the public interest."
Stations that don't comply with FCC demands would lose their licenses to organizations willing to do the agency's bidding.
The "Public Value Test" didn't fly extemporaneously from Copps's lips. Since Barack Obama became president, there have been growing noises about reinstituting the effects of the repealed Fairness Doctrine without calling any new regulation by that name. Progressives long to stop the resurgence of traditional American values that has taken place after two years of economy-killing, freedom-robbing Obama rule. Republicans blew out Democrats in the midterm election. Lefties are in quite a state, desperate to shut down opposition speech.
—————No, I’m convinced that fairness doctrine and other content control regimes are a threat. I remain convinced that threats to net neutrality-—————
Copps, Sunstein, Lloyd and others are making it clear enough that they are one/the same. “Net Neutrality” is just as orwellian as a doctrine for “fairness”.
————— which include corporate controls to content access, threaten the Internet and our freedom.———————
Governmental control -—————> Net Neutrality - is not the solution.
-—————otherwise quit pretending I agree with other agenda.-—————
No, I know you aren’t interested in silencing people’s free speech, which is why I know there’s hope.
I still don't buy the slippery slope argument. Net neutrality does not lead to fairness doctrine. The ability of the government to implement a fairness doctrine was established long before, and separately from, the net neutrality enforcement issue. They don't need net neutrality in place to help establish a fairness doctrine. There's no slope to be slippery.
In addition, people are worried over the precedent of net neutrality establishing control over the telcos. Sorry to tell you, but that precedent has been there for a very long time. Not only that, but fairness doctrine is about control over the content producers, not the telcos, so any net neutrality precedent is in the wrong place to be part of a slippery slope.
You don't have to. It's still a fact.
Slippery slope is a logical fallacy when there is no chain from beginning to end. Fairness doctrine absolutely has no need for net neutrality in order to be established. In fact, fairness doctrine existed decades BEFORE the Internet. The chain of this slippery slope is not even necessary, thus it is a fallacy.
Slippery slope is also a fallacy when one does not naturally follow from the other. Net neturality is a restriction on the conduct of network carriers. Fairness doctrine is a restriction on the conduct of content publishers. The only thing that connects these two issues is the historical regulatory agency for the telcos and for the content publishers happens to be the same.
Given our modern over-reaching government, slippery slope is usually valid in a "cat out of the bag" scenario, where if you give the government power to do A, they may do related B. The problem here is that the cat is already out of the bag on both fronts: The government has established that it has the power to regulate the telcos, and it has separately established that it has the power to regulate content publishers*. There can be no valid "cat out of the bag" slippery slope argument because the cat's already out of the bag.
* The constitutionality of the fairness doctrine was very narrow and is wholly inapplicable to the Internet. The Supreme Court case of Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC critically hinged on the fact that the broadcast spectrum was a limited public resource that is denied to others. The reasoning was that if only a few entities could be the ones to broadcast news over that limited public resource, then they could be made to use that shared resource "responsibly" in the supposed public interest. The Internet is not a limited shared resource in this sense. There is no practical limit to the number of news and commentary resources available to the public. There are already close to 300 million web sites and over 120 million blogs on the Internet, and there's room for far more than that. The term "net neutrality" has Google giving me 3,790,000 individual results of news, commentary and discussion from different sides of the issue in .12 seconds.
You do know that the BATFE started out as a TAX agency right? Give the FedGov a power and they will find the most amazing ways to over step their bounds and expand their power.
You give one agency the kind of power you are asking for, it will be used to the benefit of whoever is in political power at the time.
I like that, because their use of the word "liberal" was a corruption of classical liberalism, which stood for limited government and individual freedom. Maybe one day I can proudly call myself a liberal without invoking the shadow of their socialism.
And I do know that the FCC has already been charged with implementing the fairness doctrine. We're already at the bottom of your slippery slope.
Give the FedGov a power and they will find the most amazing ways to over step their bounds and expand their power.
You've missed the most important point: the government already has that power. The cat is already out of the bag. There can be no slippery slope. The FCC could arbitrarily re-establish the fairness doctrine today if it wants to. Remember, it was only abolished by an FCC vote, not by law. Net neutrality is not even a necessary link in that chain.
Your use of slippery slope here is a logical fallacy for several reasons. You'd do best to stop using it.
So as long as they are off the rails, may as well pile on?
This helps restore the Republic how?
So you're admitting the slippery slope argument was a fallacy?
The FCC itself already has regulatory power over the telcos and cable companies. The FCC itself earlier classified broadband as an information service to go hands-off on the companies in the beginning. It is already within the FCC's power to reclassifify those services as the telecommunications services that they are, fully bringing them within the FCC's authority.
Personally I don't like that angle. I preferred the net neutrality bill that clearly laid out what the FCC is allowed to do. But the telco lackeys in Congress stopped it.
What's really funny is that Comcast was sued over blocking P2P and successfully argued in court for it to be stayed on the grounds that the issue was subject to FCC authority, and thus the court needed to wait for the FCC to make a decision. Then the FCC did so, and Comcast claimed the FCC had no authority. It took them some serious lawyer weaseling to get around that. I read the decision. That twisted logic made my brain hurt more than Kelo.
This helps restore the Republic how?
Ensuring that corporations don't have control of the free flow of information is a good start. Promoting advances in Internet technology and commerce by not allowing the telcos to restrict them is a good thing too.
Not at all. The vermin infesting our FedGov always seem to be able to dig ever lower.
Ensuring that corporations don't have control of the free flow of information is a good start. Promoting advances in Internet technology and commerce by not allowing the telcos to restrict them is a good thing too.
And as we have already discussed, giving the FedGov more power is the opposite of this.
The claimed slippery slope is from the power to implement net neutrality to the power to implement fairness doctrine. But they already have the power to implement fairness doctrine. Any "lower" is irrelevant to the argument. We are already at the claimed end of your slope; therefore, no slope from anything to it can logically exist.
giving the FedGov more power is the opposite of this.
By its very nature the Internet is not only interstate, but international. It is also commerce, as not only is commerce done on the Internet, but the elements of the running of the Internet itself are in themselves commercial. Monies, goods and services constantly flow not only across state borders, but across international borders too. Indian reservations also do business on the Internet, and the telcos do business on the reservations. That means the Internet fulfills the full trifecta of the Commerce Clause: "with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."
Now we have entities that want to interfere with that commerce, and you don't think that's within the constitutional purview of FedGov? Very, very strange.
Currently I pay a New York company (Time Warner Cable) to use their services in my state to connect to a nationwide network run by a Colorado company (Level 3) to for access to video I pay a California company (Netflix) for. It is delivered to me by a server in who knows what state and played on my PS3 through a business agreement between Netflix (CA) and Sony USA (NY), a subsidiary of a Japanese company. One click to watch a video just invoked business relationships among at least four states, leveraging one international business relationship.
If that doesn't invoke the Commerce Clause according to pre-New Deal terms, I don't know what does.
And every Congresscritter's daughter should be an FCC commissioner (after "serving" in a high paying State of S.C. Budget and Control Board position for 11 years).
Ain't nepotism grand?
One more entitlement.
the whole system is screwed, its not just obummer, pelosi and reid, it is the system of business
needs to totally be removed immediately
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