Any way to remove Ajit Pai as F.C.C. chairman and ensure &quot;Net Neutrality&quot;? The F.C.C's chairman Ajit Pai has been pushing to repeal "Net Neutrality" rules. "Net Neutrality" is a set of regulations that ensure equal access to the internet. The rules prohibited high-speed internet service providers from blocking or slowing down the delivery of websites, or charging extra fees for the best quality of streaming and other internet services for their subscribers. Are there any legal recourse for citizens of the United States to have chairman Pai removed? How can "Net Neutrality" rules be permanently secured?
The FCC Commissioner is appointed, per 47 USC 154, by POTUS, subject to approval by the US Senate (as a member of the Commission). Thereafter he serves for 5 years. However Article 2 of the Constitution allows removal from office: The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors. But only the House of Representatives can impeach and only the Senate can remove (of the President declines to do so). There is no provision for a citizen to sue to remove a civil officer. It is, of course, legal for citizens and others to lobby politically for whatever action that want Congress to take. "Net Neutrality" rules can be more permanently fixed by act of Congress. By act of Congress, the FCC may be required to, allowed to, or prohibited from setting some set of rules. Such laws are typically broad and leave a lot of discretion to the executive branch. Congress has not passed a law mandating "net neutrality", and as ruled in Comcast v. FCC the FCC lacks "ancillary jurisdiction" over internet services of at least Comcast. There have been previous attempts to legislate "net neutrality", such as the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 which died on the floor of the House, which purported to guarantee "net neutrality" via an extension of antitrust law. However, the only way to make such a provision permanent is to make it be a Constitutional Amendment, since an act of Congress can be repealed or amended in such a way that it effectively doesn't exist.
I'm not aware of any cases on point, but as a rule legal fig-leaves don't play well in court. If the webmaster simply puts up a banner saying that EU residents are not permitted but takes no other action to exclude them, then that is going to be considered irrelevant. The webmaster is still very likely required to comply with the GDPR. On the other hand if the webmaster takes other steps to exclude EU residents, such as using a geolocation service to block connections known to be in the EU, validating email addresses and blocking those from EU domains, and ejecting anyone who mentions that their residence is in the EU, then that is more likely to be seen as a good-faith attempt to avoid being subject to the GDPR. It will also have the practical effect of greatly reducing the number of actual EU residents. All these controls can be evaded, but it would be much harder for any data subjects to claim that they acted in good faith or that the webmaster acted in bad faith. Note that validating an email address or logging an IP is itself processing of personal data, so anyone implementing such a system still can't ignore the GDPR completely, but it would greatly limit the scope and make it easy to delete any such data after a short time. (Note: the term &quot;EU resident&quot; above is an approximation of the territorial scope).
The provisions of the credit card account agreement will be governed by Delaware law, except to the extent to North Carolina public policy overrides it. The provisions of the online services agreement will be governed by New York law, except to the extent to North Carolina public policy overrides it. The electronic communications agreement will be governed by the law of the place with the most significant connection to any disputed issues arising under it. It could also be considered to be an extension of the online services agreement rather than a separate agreement. UDAP is an acronym referring the state deceptive trade practices acts. The unfair act involves non-receipt of paperless billing statements. Even with this level of detail, I don't believe it is possible to know in advance which of the agreements is implicated and which state's laws will be held to apply (or if the differences between the laws of the candidate states is even material on the issue in question). These issues are decided on a case by case basis when there is a mishmash of facts and the outcomes are not terribly predictable. It also isn't obvious that there is a provision covering the conduct in question in any of the three potentially relevant states. The Delaware Deceptive Trade Practices Act doesn't appear to clearly apply to financial services at all. New York's application to financial services is quite narrow and subject to an exception for conduct in conformity with federal law. A failure to provide an invoice, without more, isn't necessarily a deceptive trade practice at all. All in all, there isn't a straightforward or easy answer to this question that can be reached from the information provided.
Counter notices are described in 17 USC 512(g)(3). It starts with the requirement for "A physical or electronic signature of the subscriber" (and a statement under penalty of perjury...). Supposing that you can't get anywhere with finding the contributor even via a subpoena, then you're stopped there: you can't swear on behalf of someone else. Paragraph (f) also says that if a person files a false infringement claim, they become liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner's authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it but it's not immediately obvious that you would suffer damage by taking the material down (not immediately obvious doesn't mean obviously not true). A case could be made, but it's risky. In Online Policy Group v. Diebold, Diebold was hit with substantial damages basically for having made up a theory that certain email discussion was infringing when it was clearly fair use. If a person actually lies about being the copyright owner, that would probably be viewed even more dimly by the courts. Your 4th argument gives you no traction: if an infringer posts infringing material and transfers copyright on the web page, but they don't hold copyright, then that transfer mean nothing. As for the other arguments, your attorney will have to suggest an advisable course of action. S/he might advise that your evidence is so strong that you should just ignore the takedown; or that you should take the content down and then sue for damages; or take the content down and lobby your congressman for a change in the law. [Addendum] I will reiterate my recommendation to get a lawyer. I believe that under the law, the risk to you would be the situation where the person prevails in an infringement suit against you. Outside of the "mere conduit" safe harbor, you have to participate in the notice and takedown scheme in order to "stay safe" (also you have to do so quickly). You have identified a potentially huge flaw in the system. Theoretically, criminal charges of perjury and paragraph (f) damages would be enough to deter ordinary wrong-doers, provided that you can really prove that someone else is the copyright holder. But the cost of litigation is not zero and the chances of winning are not 100%. The law does assume that all parties tell the truth, indeed the law requires a "penalty of perjury" statement. Since counter-notice is also part of the legal dance, I would conclude that you do have to write yourself a counter-notice. Then if there is a suit, you have satisfied the requirements of the law.
Article II of the Constitution does say that "The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors". So it is true that a president or a federal judge could be impeached and removed from office, and it has happened to some extent 19 times – in 8 cases it went all the way to removal (as opposed to acquittal or resignation). However, this would not be a very effective way to avert a "crisis". Any judicial ruling is subject to appeal by a higher court, until you get to the Supreme Court. Moreover, impeaching a lower judge does not erase his or her rulings. So ultimately, a matter will be decided by SCOTUS. In anticipation of such a ruling, Congress might decide to get rid of some Supreme Court justice who they think might stand in the way. That was attempted with Samuel Chase, who was acquitted. Such a decision is not subject to judicial review (Nixon v. United States 506 U.S. 224). However, SCOTUS can also overturn that decision though that would be very unusual. It would also be very unusual for Congress to impeach a Supreme Court justice for having a position that they disagree with. At any rate, there is no such thing as a "deadlock" between branches of government. When the court rules, that is the end of the matter from a legal perspective. It is, in fact, entirely possible that a general will rule that the court or the president (or both) are wrong and will declare what the law now is, but that takes us out of the realm of legal discussions.
You'll note that Maryland governor Larry Hogan was sued and ended up settling over Facebook deleted comments and blocks. And a judge ruled that Trump can't block comments on Twitter. So it seems there's an evolving consensus that politicians can't simply block or delete social media comments for differing viewpoints.
The Constitution only regulates the powers of the government; it doesn't directly say what the people can and can't do. In particular, it doesn't say directly that nobody except Congress can coin money. However, it does give the government the power to make laws, which are binding on the population. So Congress possibly could make a law forbidding cryptocurrencies, or at least regulating them, under the "regulating the value thereof" clause. However, they haven't done so. In the case of the Liberty Dollar, there are some specific laws that apply. They were convicted of violating 18 USC 485, which forbids the making of physical gold or silver coins that resemble US or foreign money, and 18 USC 486, which forbids creating or passing any physical metal coins as money (as well as other conspiracy charges, aiding and abetting, etc). None of these laws apply to cryptocurrency because they are not physical metal coins. Given that Congress has been explicitly given the power to coin and regulate the value of money in the United States, how are cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Basis created, distributed, and redeemed such that they have not been found unconstitutional? The power to regulate includes the power to not regulate. As a slight tangent, what laws allow for the creation and distribution of cryptocurrencies? In a free society, "everything is permitted that is not forbidden". We don't need a law specifically allowing the creation and distribution of cryptocurrencies; it's sufficient that there is no law that forbids it.
The law is really bad at protecting whistleblowers From my understanding of US law, this is not unauthorised access to a computer: the reporter made a legitimate request to a remote computer, that computer provided data,the reporter accessed the supplied data on their own computer. However, pointing out the failures of people in power is fraught even if it is not illegal. It is certainly within the Governor’s power to authorise an investigation of the reporter. On the face of the law, it seems reasonable to suspect that what was done might be a violation so there is nothing legally wrong with initiating an investigation. I suspect that such a broad interpretation of the law would fall foul of the First Amendment which may partly explain why it wasn’t prosecuted: the government doesn’t want to find out. Similarly they can issue press releases, which, due to the First Amendment, don’t have to be true, just not defamatory. Saying it’s a possible violation is true and not defamatory. Saying the reporter was an evil person who is only doing this for political purposes is a statement of opinion and not defamatory. It’s a fact of the world that people with power can use that power in ways that are malicious, unethical, and unfair but not necessarily illegal.