Great! Let’s buy cable and net from the provider we think provides the best service at the best price. Congress can take care of com monopolies.
I’m still not sick of winning.
They ever failed at reducing excessively loud TV commercials that was mandated by their failure counterparts in Congress.
The “watchdog” has morphed into Smaug.
A better bet is to break up the corporate oligarchy that controls the vast majority of the media.
Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany and Viacom. That’s it. And just 15 billionaires own it all.
This is why news about our elections were so corrupted, that and the fact that almost all the major pollsters are “Friends of Bill and Hillary Clinton”.
So how do you break up the “big five”?
People thought it was impossible to break up the giant oil trust Standard Oil. Its controversial history as one of the world’s first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was an illegal monopoly.
It was based on The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). It prohibits certain business activities that federal government regulators deem to be anti-competitive, and requires the federal government to investigate and pursue corporations that engage in them.
However, things change, so Sherman is seldom invoked, but the problems it was designed to address have evolved beyond it, avoiding those conditions that force the government to act.
So a new, anti-oligopoly act is needed. And while the MSM would be its primary targets, there are other industries that would also profit from having *their* oligopolies broken up.
The original motivation was controlling what the public could hear. Arch-Progressive Herbert Hoover was Commerce Secretary at the time and wanted to head off the progress the courts had already made through common law to establish and define property rights in electromagnetic spectrum.
With the internet’s effectively infinite channels, the FCC is an anachronism.
Nice. Markets sort this kind of thing out quickly.
I know some radio engineers who will be thrilled. Soon you’ll be able to hear their stations on Jupiter.
CFPB also.
DEFUND/DISMANTLE.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
But wait, there’s more...
https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/a
Federal regulation of Internet coming, warn FCC, FEC commissioners
Abolish the FCC
We actually need spectrum management more than ever.
Having been a licensed Amateur Radio operator for 60 years, I was thinking the same thing.
The FCCs move to regulate the internet and to bring back any kind of equal time is very disturbing. There is a need for band assignment and interference control. Maybe conducted emission control, but the FCC has become a tool for censorship. This needs to come from Congress with a big hammer on their heads.
Agree....
A private consortium like the IEEE would do a much better job than the FCC.
And the FAA, FDA, DoE, etc...
>> that would be interesting in regards to amateur radio <<
Yes. If this policy should be carried to its logical conclusion, hams would end up having to pay for their frequencies. Bad for hams, but probably good for everybody else.
The FCC should only be involved in RF communications, the disruption of which can be dangerous. Cable and Internet do not “broadcast” in the traditional sense of the word, and should no more come under the control of the FCC than a newspaper.