US regulators grant DMCA exemption legalizing vehicle software tinkering
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
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?
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.