FCC Claims Regulatory Power Over Home Computers

[donsu]

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/11/16/0518234.shtml?tid=158&tid=103&tid=153&tid=17&tid=219


Posted by timothy on Tuesday November 16, @07:50AM
from the when-power-hungry-bureaucrats-attack dept.
Pointing to Assistant Professor of Law Susan Crawford's blog, iman1003 writes "The FCC has filed a brief where it claims regulatory power over all instrumentalities, facilities, and apparatus 'associated with the overall circuit of messages sent and received' via all interstate radio and wire communication according to a blog published by Susan Crawford. The blog can be found here and the brief here (in PDF format). Kind of scary if you ask me." Ars Technica has good commentary on this, also referencing Crawford's findings.
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tick, tick, tick

[merh]

1. Not surprising, new they would come after the blogs

and try to shut down our access to the internet.

How I hate this evil group of bastards.

But, do you think their base will put up with it? FR et al will have a field day if they shut them down.

[lightbulb]

2. they can kid themselves all they want

the bulk of the internet will always slip through their fingers like sand.

[aquart]

3. They know. They want to be free to arrest Americans at will.

Computer sedition will do fine.

[tridim]

4. Yea, and if they catch you slipping through their fingers

You will go to jail. Gawd, I'm really starting to panic now. We can certainly voice our opposition, but the FCC will just ignore us. They have all the power.

There's one sure way around this crap, it's defined at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence.

[mike_c]

5. clarification for those who've forgotten....

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

[tridim]

6. Actually this part..

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

[ThoughtCriminal]

7. FCC regulates anything that has RF output

Not sure if this is what the blog is actually refering to:

Part 15 of the FCC rules. Nothing new. Look in the manual for just about any elctronic appliance and you'll see an FCC Statement. The device is not allowed to create harmful interference. So, if your computer is messing up your neighbor's TV or radio reception, you have to take corrective action.