
US regulators grant DMCA exemption legalizing vehicle software tinkering - Deinos
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/us-regulators-grant-dmca-exemption-legalizing-vehicle-software-tinkering/
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gortok
One of the issues that are continually brought up by 'regulation' is that
there are hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations in the Federal
Register that are not enacted by Congress, but enacted by the agency that does
the regulation. Congress usually says, "And Agency such and such will be
responsible for crafting regulations surrounding this power we just gave them"
and then we're at the mercy of unelected bureaucrats.

This is done for a few reasons:

1\. If Congress had to actually pass laws that would include an
implementation, they'd have to pass a lot less laws and they'd be politically
responsible for stupid regulations. Right now, Republicans can rail against
regulation and still enable it, all at the same time!

2\. At some point, all bureaucracies become enamored with sustaining the
bureaucracy. There is a lot of political pressure involved in letting
unelected bureaucrats make law.

So while the change in this regulation may be a net win for us; it can be
changed back at any time, as long as they warn the public and give us a chance
to 'comment' on it.

The deeper question is why we're letting unelected bureaucrats make law in the
first place?

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showerst
Regulations are often extremely complex and cover deep technical minutia.

There are 535 congresspeople. Counting staffers and organizations like CRS and
you're looking at single-digit thousands of people to form the whole body of
expertise around US lawmaking. They can reasonably be expected to pass general
laws, but they have neither the staff nor expertise to work out the NOTAM that
gives the exact 3D coordinates of every no-fly zone in the country, the ppm
and molecular makeup of contaminants allowed in factory water runoff, the
labeling rules for prescription painkillers, and a million other details that
are needed to effectively manage 320MM people.

If you shifted the burden for getting those details right from agencies to
congress, you'd just have to have a vastly larger congressional apparatus, and
then you'd be decoupling rule making from enforcement (which isn't always a
terrible idea, but would be incredibly difficult to change now.)

There's plenty of disagreement to be had over what should and shouldn't be
regulated, but a system where the regulations are made by experts, who are
responsible for enforcing those rules, and not totally subject to the
political will of current congress isn't a bad idea.

