House Overturns FCC Media Consolidation Plan 348
son_of_a_general writes "Looks like the House of Representatives just overturned the FCC's media consolidation rules, previously covered on Slashdot here(1), here(2), and here(3). The article over at CNet shows that the House passed a bill that overturned the rules, by a 400 to 21 vote. All is not clear yet, however, as the bill still must pass through Senate and face being signed by a President who has already indicated that he may veto."
Re:Well.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Informative)
"Rejected funding" is really just a code word for using a budget bill to eliminate something mostly unrelated to the allocation of specific amounts of government funds. The effect of this bill is that the FCC cannot spend even one dollar of government money to implement their plan, but rules that are already in place say that things like the FCC's plan cannot be privately funded. Therefore, they have $0 to implement the plan. Thus, the plan is void and will be replaced with whatever plan the funding has been allocated to (in this case, the old FCC rules before the recent change).
It's the same effect as making a gun legal, but outlawing the specific ammo for it. Sure, you can legally own and use the gun, but if they've banned its ammo, then they've effectively banned the gun. If you're hellbent on owning a projectile weapon, then you'll have to buy whichever one you can legally buy ammunition for.
And yes, as I'm sure you're thinking, politicians really DO play some damned stupid games. The mating rituals of various brightly colored birds and amphibians are simple and logical by comparison.
Re:A little bit about the FCC Chairman (Score:5, Informative)
Re:All I can say is this.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All I can say is this.. (Score:3, Informative)
he urged Americans to send him, the other commissioners, and members of Congress their thoughts via post, telephone and email. According to the FCC's Adelstein nearly two million people have done so. And by the FCC's own calculations, over 99.9 percent of these citizens demand that the FCC keep the existing media ownership rules, or tighten them.
It's funny how you claim an independent magazine is a "lunatic fringe news source" because it holds views that you do not. The Nation is a liberal magazine but "by the FCC's own calculations 99.9 percent of these citizens (the two million that contacted the FCC) demand that the FCC keep the existing rules or tighten them.
A good example of why concentration is bad (Score:3, Informative)
This is an article about the US media fawning over private Lynch despite the fact that she was injured by US military incompetence, not Iraqis, that she was captured without a fight, not firing her weapon valiantly to the end, that the US met no resistence in the hospital during her rescue and actually fired on a doctor trying to bring her out and hand her over.
Luckily for the rest of the world the actual facts have not been totally obscured because non-US media outlets have managed to get hold of the story... but the fewer outlets there are, the less would actually be known about this. As it is it sounds like half of America is still swallowing the 'enhanced' story whole... must be the same half that thinks Iraq used chemical weapons in the war and that the September 11 attacks were linked to Iraq.
In fact, when you look at it the media is already basically concentrated by virtue of the fact that it is ideologically concentrated. Once an 'accepted' version of a story is selected by someone, it becomes gospel and is repeated throughout the land.
Re:it doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
A veto override requires passage of the bill a second time by both houses of Congress, each with a 2/3 majority. See Article I, Section 7 of the US Constitution.
Re:The president might veto this? (Score:4, Informative)
Let's say Microsoft, AOL, and Disney want to push digital rights management (DRM) as a political measure -- forcing all computers, old and new, in the United States to be DRM-enabled at the hardware level. So they form a political action committee -- a PAC, say called the MAD DRM PAC.
Now they wanna donate $100,000 to say...Bush. So instead, they each pump ~$33,300 into MAD DRM PAC, and then MAD DRM PAC donates that money (~$100,000) to Bush's campaign. Now that money didn't come from Microsoft, AOL or Disney, it came from MAD DRM PAC.which "decided" to donate that money to Bush.
So Bush wouldn't have to wear the MS logo, the AOL logo or the Disney logo because he didn't receive a DIME from those companies, he recieved all his money from MAD DRM PAC, which is a non-profit organization.
Your understanding of political campaign fundraising issues is somewhat limited. No offense.
Scope of bill (Score:2, Informative)
The Harsh Reality (Score:3, Informative)
This 2002 ruling criticized the FCC for the "arbitrary and capricious" 35% national ownership cap and told the FCC to reconsider it. Though he probably enjoyed doing it, Powell thus had very little choice in the matter of changing the cap, despite what everyone likes to believe. In fact, he has referred to this fact over [fcc.gov] and over [fcc.gov] again.
It may be possible to justify the 35% cap somehow. The judge did not destroy the cap, he basically just vacated it. On the other hand, he did wipe out the cable-broadcast cross-ownership rule completely because he didn't think that it could be justified. The same logic is easily applied to the other major part of the June 2003 rule changes: newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership. There is no point in arguing that point of the rules, as the Judicial Branch would throw it out the window immediately.
So, if you are all looking for someone to verbally crucify, look towards the judicial bench that prompted this rather than the FCC.
Re:A good example of why concentration is bad (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm sick and tired ... (Score:1, Informative)
btw, Who do you think _most_ of these "elitest upperclass business men" are? They are people who created something through innovation and employed less innovative people (what you call slavery) to work for them. You are only a "corpreate slave" because you are incapable of making such an innovation yourself. I'm a "corpreate slave" too, but I don't intend on remaining one. Stop whining about how unfair everything is and better yourself such that you can innovate. It is competitive innovation that drives technology and our economy forward, that drives the creation of open-source software (even if it's free), and it is competitive innovation that will slay M$.
Yes, many of them are morons taking advantage of people who have innovated (read:MBA's), and the practices of the worst offenders are particularly egregious, but to paint all of "corperate america" with this brush is at best ignorant. To compare yourself and any legal worker in America to a slave is shameful. Go read about slavery in a history book, and look at how much our poor people make in comparison to other countries before you make such foolish statements.
This country relies on everyone, from the workers to the people that create their jobs. If you don't like it, think of something better.... I'll even give you a helpful head start: state-dominated marxism isnt it, ask the current rulers of China if you don't believe me.
major clarification (Score:5, Informative)
Much of this is froufrou. While I take some sort of glee in the fact that the *partial* rollback measure was attached as a "rider" to a spending bill - just like how Congress screwed LPFM back in 2000 - similar legislation must still be passed by the Senate, and then survive a conference committee, a veto, AND an override, in order to actually happen.
Symbolically, this is a very good thing (as well as being somewhat historic in a political sense), but in the real world it will likely get axed in the dead of night by the real string-pullers in Congress, and what the FCC did will stay in place.
That is why just ignoring the FCC to begin with makes for more fun. (viva microradio!)
Seriously tho, if you want the scoop on the politics you can get near-daily updates from media reform lobbyists working the Hill [mediareform.net]. I don't know if they keep archives of their reports, but I do remember seeing that more than this rider was in play at one time. One other proposed amendment (sunk before getting to the floor, I believe) would've rolled back most if not all of the FCC's changes, but the one that made the cut was the weakest of the bunch.
Patriot Amendment Included (Score:1, Informative)
On Tuesday, the House by 309-118 included another amendment blocking the government from performing "sneak and peek" searches under the USA Patriot Act. That law, enacted after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, allowed such searches without the property owner's or resident's knowledge with warrants that are delivered afterward.
There is hope yet. Congress is [slashdot.org] waking up [e-thepeople.org].