Based on your icon, you are the same commentor as the original comment being replied to. You claimed a dislike of regulation, and now employ a strong set of regulations to answer the question of how to protect consumers without regulation? OR are you the commentor who keeps claiming that all he wants is sensible regulation but rejects light touch regulations in favor of heavy handed attempts to force a competitive market? Techdirt has not just called for ‘regulation’, but rather often discusses in similar low level fashion as yourself outlines of desires. Techdirt just tends to support more nuanced, lighter tough regulations than yourself, which is odd, given your calls for only using ‘necessary’ regulation. In fact, you sound a lot like my girlfriend. As an autistic, she often fails to internalize the nuance expressed by others, seeking simple broad understanding instead. I ask that you work hard here to overcome your disability however, so you can understand how nuanced approaches might be better than cudgels.

#1) So those have already been established, they just lack use because politicians currently have issues with using massive hammers to smash the market. Granted Commissioner Pai has been working to abolish the more nuanced approches, for instance removing limits on local station ownership designed as an anti-trust measure. But the rule making and enforcement powers are present. Restrictions on being both a content producer and distributor seem far more heavy handed than requirements that your distribution arm not treat its own content differently than any other content. Why are you going for the cudgel? CBS produces its own content, and distributes via OTA broadcast, is that included in your suggestion? Would they have to offer their show at first run to any network to avoid your rules? I just see a lot more questions than solutions, and what solutions are provided are heavy handed, and distort the market just as much as the issues you are trying to solve.

As for exclusive content distribution deals – are you arguing that smaller content creators are not allowed to make their own financial choices? How about book publishing or music distribution? Are we saying artists are no longer provided a distribution right via copyright? Are we saying that we should eliminate any idea of a competitive market for creative works? It really sounds like you are working to eliminate competition just as much as the current system. If I have to sell to every joe schmo, there is no ability to leverage the competition. Competition effectively goes out the window. If distributors know you have to sell to them or face regulatory investigation, the competing distributors could collude to keep pricing low, and then make a verbal agreement that one or two alone would choose to distribute. In this scenario you haven’t bolstered competition, and you have reduced value to content creators. I just don’t see your suggestions actually achieving the goal of anti monopoly or anti trust.

#2) I don’t believe the issue is ownership of the infrastructure. Its management and monopoly of the infrastructure. I would say a lighter touch solution is local loop unbundling combined with requirements for maintenance schedules and properly measured deployments. This is, again, a lighter touch approach. It solves issues related to high investment cost and long development times with introducing competitors in the market without the need for government. (its why we used to have multiple land-line phone carriers and multiple DSL options in well developed areas). It separates the infrastructure from the Service layer. This has been highly effective in Europe for lowering broadband pricing. And by establishing flexible but mandatory maintenance requirements you can mitigate the kinds of infrastructure loss that appear common with privately held infrastructure, without large government power grabs. Properly written (IE not by the ISP) deployment requirements and allowances for municipal broadband (with similar local loop unbundling requirements) would solve the rest of the issues with private broadband infrastructure.

#3) “Proactive”. To proactively enforce something, you have to act before clear evidence of wrongdoing. TO be proactive, by definition you have to do more than respond after the fact. I dont see how getting money to investigate wrongdoing after you have identified wrongdoing has already happened is proactive. It appears by definition to be reactive. Outside of your showing of wrongdoing requirement, this is how the government is funded, effectively. HAving taken government accounting I can tell you it already uses your ass backwards approach. Your expenses are budgeted for the month/quarter/year, they record your expenses at the start of the period, and then you write down your expenses over the period. Its why they talk about using their whole budget. Its hard to explain the difference, but in normal accounting, you budget to forcast expenses, but only record the expense when you make it. Its a technical point, but it seems, as an accountant, the only way to understand your suggetsion. Between the differences in our understanding of the word “Proactive”, and you not understanding governemnt accounting, I don’t think we can currently debate this point.

#4) Not sure what you are trying to express here. Require all regulatory rule making to be voted on by the public in a big, expensive special elections process? Multiple times per year? A plain yes or no vote without the ability to provide productive, nuanced commentary? That is a very heavy handed way to approach the idea of restricting regulations. Without the commentary input we now use, politicians will be able to read whatever they want into a no or yes vote. As Techdirt and various political commentators have pointed out many times, Politicians love to use the yes/no votes in congress as ways to attack their opponents, by stripping any nuance of their opponents opposition to some bill, and claiming a moral high ground. You appear to be doing this as well in your assertions about Techdirt and regulation. The commentary process, properly used, allows a regulator to hear concerns about anti-consumer and anti-citizen issues, and redraft the rules with those comments in mind. Your solution here does the opposite. It creates a bubble where the regulator only hears Yea or Nay without hearing why. While it might help to prevent regulations from going into place, it fails to improve the quality of regulations, which in turn means you will see more anti-consumer and anti-citizen regulations.

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Your suggestions go way past ‘neccisary’. They blow past it with more gusto then a rabbit in spring. A big issue with regulations is how burdensome they are. The law requires that regulations be tailored to achieve their goal in the least burdensome manner. Your rules ignore that idea completely, instead believing that simple = good. IN doing so you fail to consider long term consequences of such a rule. Your rules about the interactions of TV and Broadband start to significantly impact copyright law, and could potentially negatively affect consumers and content creators in such a way as to completely undermine the constitutional purpose of copyright (to encourage the creation of culture).

Why are your heavy handed regulations any better than lighter touch approaches I suggest? You try to beat the market into submission. My suggestions try to reorient the market and allow the market to correct itself. Why are your suggestions better?