Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons^™

Pacifica Reconsidered: Implications For The Current Controversy Over Broadcast Indecency, Angela J. Campbell

Federal Communications Law Journal

In 2009, the Supreme Court upheld the FCC's finding in Fox TV Stations v. Federal Communications Commission that the broadcast of "fleeting expletives" violated a federal law prohibiting the broadcast of indecency, but remanded the case for consideration of the broadcast networks' claims that the FCC action violated the First Amendment. On remand, the Second Circuit found that the FCC's prohibition against "fleeting expletives" was unconstitutionally vague. It is widely expected that the Supreme Court will review this decision and that the networks will ask the Court to reconsider its 1978 decision in Pacifica Foundation v. Federal Communications Commission. This …

Creating Effective Broadband Network Regulation, Daniel L. Brenner

Federal Communications Law Journal

The Internet is central to the business and pastimes of Americans. Calls for increased regulation are ongoing, inevitable, and often justified. But calls for "network neutrality" or "nondiscrimination" assume with little hesitation federal agency competence to give predictable and accurate meaning to these terms and create regulations to implement them. This Article's chief contribution to Internet policy debate is to focus attention on the likelihood of successful FCC Internet regulation-a key assumption of some advocates.

The Article analyzes three characteristics that hobble the FCC, which is the likeliest federal agency to provide prescriptive rules. First, the record for the agency …