“The goal is to publish it as soon as possible,” an FCC spokesperson told News today. The spokesperson said he can’t explain any changes performed to the draft order until a concluding version is released.
FCC orders are sometimes published weeks after a vote, although orders are also usually released the corresponding day or within a few days of a ticket vote. The time is used by FCC staff and the chairman’s department to fix any errors or omissions and to reply to concerns raised by administrators. Since net neutrality advocates will file lawsuits in an attempt to overturn the repeal, the final edits could also help Pai’s office make the repeal order further legally defensible.
“It’s certainly feasible that this report will have more significant changes from the reported draft stage than we’ve seen in other Pai orders,” Policy Director Matt Wood of advocacy group Free Press told News. “Free Press and others guided out not just scores of substantive flaws in the committee arguments, but a product of procedural errors and notice fouls that honestly cannot be fixed with a post-vote band-aid. But that produces mean they aren’t busily deciding to apply those band-aids as we speak.”
Wood wrote that it isn’t uncommon for orders to come out a few weeks after votes and that the end-of-year celebrations may have slowed this one fears even more. Still, the deficiency of a final order nearly three weeks later the vote “seems a little further remarkable because Chairman Pai has advanced so far out of his way to praise himself for clearness, speed, and quantity in his orders apparently in the belief that he gets a gold star for delivering as many resolutions as possible, as fast as possible, no concern how bad they are for the public,” Wood said.
Because the final series isn’t available, groups that want to overthrow the repeal can’t file lawsuits against the FCC. This gives net neutrality advocates more time to prepare initial court complaints.
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