> We need fundamental reform of IP protections for software anyway.
That really is the root issue here. So many problems we're seeing (Pai's clownshow in the FCC, SCOTUS legislating from the bench, federal agencies trampling citizens' rights, etc.) stem from the legislative branch abdicating their authority to third parties -- the librarian of Congress, the FCC, SCOTUS, and even (by legal reference) professional organizations and laws in other countries. It's ridiculous.
A first principle of a democratic government is that citizens can soon fire someone whose legislation and/or executive decision they do not like. We would all have voted Pai out if we could have... but he shouldn't have had the power to do what he did in the first place (remove network neutrality rules). Congress gave him that power - which I would argue was an abdication of authority vested in them.
> Congress gave him that power - which I would argue was an abdication of authority vested in them.
Legislators assigning regulatory power to bureaucratic agencies is one of the cornerstones of modern democracies - it wouldn't work otherwise. Many of our legislators are barely qualified to send their own emails, let alone decide what is a telecom utility or how much ppb in drinking water is safe for a toxic chemical. Assigning that power to regulatory agencies allows experts to decide those issues in a neutral setting.
Pai's FCC aside, that structure prevented significant disruptions in the last four years and our country continues to function despite decades of increased partisanship and deadlock at the highest level.
Agreed that regulatory agencies are indispensable. But their job is to carry out the law, not make the law. Of course, the law has to delegate some decision-making responsibility to them -- the law can't make every decision ahead of time. But (a) the law can codify principles that regulatory agencies must uphold, and (b) lawsuits can be filed when someone disagrees that a principle has been accurately upheld -- the courts can decide.
We as a country ought to be arguing and disagreeing about principles, and the results (decided by legislators who are under the gun of potential non-reelection) ought to be codified as laws. A lack of principle in congress and in law is what really causes this abdication and delegation of authority.
An ideal legal corpus represents (as much as possible) a simply and directly expressed set of principles under which the country operates.
> regulatory agencies allows experts to decide those issues in a neutral setting
It is difficult to talk about "regulations" in the abstract but I would suggest that many regulations aren't about a perfect solution devised by an expert. They are more often about finding a tradeoff, a balance between competing goals. Those sorts of decisions can be informed by "expert" knowledge, but I think it is a mistake to think that domain experts are necessarily best positioned to resolve tradeoffs in public policy.
I'm not arguing against expert knowledge being incorporated into construction of regulations -- just pointing out that expert knowledge may be necessary but not sufficient to finding a workable public policy.
That really is the root issue here. So many problems we're seeing (Pai's clownshow in the FCC, SCOTUS legislating from the bench, federal agencies trampling citizens' rights, etc.) stem from the legislative branch abdicating their authority to third parties -- the librarian of Congress, the FCC, SCOTUS, and even (by legal reference) professional organizations and laws in other countries. It's ridiculous.
A first principle of a democratic government is that citizens can soon fire someone whose legislation and/or executive decision they do not like. We would all have voted Pai out if we could have... but he shouldn't have had the power to do what he did in the first place (remove network neutrality rules). Congress gave him that power - which I would argue was an abdication of authority vested in them.