FCC Chair Genachowski Resigns; What Effect on Net Regulation? 42
New submitter RougeFemme writes with news of Friday's announcement that FCC chairman Julius Genachowski will step down in the next several weeks (also at Politico), and asks "Obama promised us the continuation of a free, open Internet. Will the resignation of the FCC chairman have any affect on that 'net neutrality'?"
Never forget (Score:5, Informative)
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/f-c-c-commissioner-to-join-comcast/ [nytimes.com]
Four months after the Federal Communications Commission approved a hotly contested merger of Comcast and NBC Universal,
one of the commissioners who voted for the deal said on Wednesday that she would soon join Comcast's Washington lobbying office.
Re:unlimited power leads to unlimited corruption? (Score:4, Informative)
Does the FCC chairman actually have much power?
As far as I can tell:
1. They can't make any significant decisions themselves. All actual power in the FCC is held by the 5-member FCC board, which is required to have at least 2 members from each of the major parties.
2. Most of the ridiculous things about telecom law are passed by Congress, not decided by the FCC itself (and certainly not individually by the FCC chairman). And if Congress wanted to fix any of them, they could pass better laws: even for the things the FCC does have the authority to make decisions on, it's precisely because Congress punted on making a decision, and delegated the authority.