FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument • Hacker News Board

Re: FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

#51

Post by TheCoelacanth » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 4:43 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31

addicted wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that only legal arguments or facts are relevant? So an actual analysis (which would necessarily include predictions that are not certain) of the impact of a decision is irrelevant?

> So an actual analysis (which would necessarily include predictions that are not certain) of the impact of a decision is irrelevant? Political appointees are entirely within their power to ignore such comments.

They are not within their power to ignore any comments. They don't have to agree with any of the comments or reach the same conclusion that any of the comments argues for, but they are required by law to take all comments into consideration.

Re: FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

#52

Post by bo1024 » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 3:26 AM UTC

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #49

bo1024 wrote: post #27

I don't understand. Aren't we commenting about what we (the public) believe should or should not be legal? In other words, isn't it about choosing new laws rather than interpreting legality of existing ones?

Actually, no. Laws are made by the Legislature, so communications directed to your legislators can express a view about laws you feel should be enacted, repealed or modified. The FCC is a regulatory body, with certain authority and areas of concern. The rule making is delegated to the appointed members of the commission. Rules != Laws. If a rule breaks a law, you don’t have to take it to SCOTUS to overturn the rule;…

Thanks, this helps clarify. It doesn't make the FCC comment much less bizarre, since aside from potential for violating an existing law, my comment seems to roughly go through with "rule" substituted in for "law".

Re: FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

#53

Post by upofadown » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 2:25 PM UTC

The article says this:

> … the commission said it didn’t really care about the public’s opinion on net neutrality unless it was phrased in unique legal terms.

So the article title is incorrect. The point is that submissions to regulatory consolations have to be relevant. Repeating the same argument does not make that argument more relevant.