What the FCC can learn from the Volkswagen scandal

[Commentary] First things first: Volkswagen did something bad. They did something really bad. They lied to consumers. But it’s in this standardization that we find the problem. Like most government agencies, the EPA simply assumed that people would comply with its rules and standards by virtue of it – the agency – deeming it so. The reason the EPA didn’t discover this fraud on its own wasn’t lack of resources. It was lack of imagination: it couldn’t imagine that a company would break the rules, and it couldn’t imagine the obvious ways in which a company that did want to break the rules could go about doing so. VW’s fraud was made possible by the EPA interfering with the market.

Let’s end by noting the common theme between this, communications policy, and the use of technology in education. In each of these contexts, the fundamental problem is one of regulatory humility, not regulatory intent. In each case, the regulators proceed based on assumptions and their view of how the world should work. Hopefully we in the communications and technology sectors can learn from the mistakes of our peers in the environment sector.

[Gus Hurwitz is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law]