On Wednesday 09 February 2005 17:14, Brad Templeton wrote: > On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 01:20:28PM -0500, Joseph A. Caputo wrote: > > On Tuesday 08 February 2005 20:37, Ian Forde wrote: > > > On Tue, 2005-02-08 at 19:40 -0500, wheaty wrote: > > > > I think I read somewhere that the firewire port can be disabled via > > > > software by the cable company? > > > > > > Yes, but that would be *ILLEGAL*. ;) > > > > No, it wouldn't be illegal. The firewire requirement isn't a law, it's > > an FCC regulation. The FCC doesn't make laws; Congress does. Failure > > to comply with FCC regulations is subject to fines or other punitive > > action by the FCC, but is not a crime. > > Illegal means against the law. It does not just mean a violation of > the criminal code.
Yes; poor choice of words on my part -- obviously, law is more than just the criminal code. > There are all kinds of laws -- the most commonly being > criminal, civil and regulatory and tort. I can sort of buy saying > that torts are not illegal, but cable companies violating FCC regs is > illegal, or if you prefer, unlawful. > Only Congress can make laws. The only laws here are the Telecommunications Acts of 1934 & 1996, which among other things give the FCC the authority to regulate the industry and to impose fines/corrective actions. The determination of a violation is made by the FCC, not by a court. Telecommunications law says nothing that would even remotely apply to Firewire ports on cable boxes. Anything not specifically covered by the Telecom Act is delegated to the authority of the FCC. Technically speaking, the *specific* act of a cable company disabling a Firewire port is not illegal, but the *general* act of violating an FCC regulation IS illegal. So I guess we're both right, in a sense ;-) The main point is it's up to the FCC to enforce their own regulations. The most a federal court could do would be to fine the cable company up to $500/day for each instance of violation; the FCC could impose much harsher penalties such as revoking licenses and such. -JAC _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
