The set of US legislation is not a unified whole, designed (ore even intended) to function as an internally consistent well-integrated machine.
Laws are passed by the ream, and these all provide definitions for the things they're regulating. The whole point of including those definitions is to clearly delineate the boundaries of each bill or regulation. And because they each have their own definition, when taken together you'll always find overlaps that cause strange interactions, or places where there areas between defined domains allow creative loopholes. Thus it's not at all surprising that a pair of regulations, one governing cable TV and one covering data services, have definitions different enough that someone can get stuck on the wrong side of both of them.
It does create a mess, and that's part of what the recent King v Burwell decision was about. The PPACA clearly defined its terms, but in ways the Obama Administration (specifically the IRS) thought didn't make sense, and so they did their own thing. The decision was necessary to resolve the contradiction. This kind of thing will always be the result when legislators or regulators are being driven by political concerns, and especially when their work is rushed and they don't even allow time for experts to read and understand the bills.
Laws are passed by the ream, and these all provide definitions for the things they're regulating. The whole point of including those definitions is to clearly delineate the boundaries of each bill or regulation. And because they each have their own definition, when taken together you'll always find overlaps that cause strange interactions, or places where there areas between defined domains allow creative loopholes. Thus it's not at all surprising that a pair of regulations, one governing cable TV and one covering data services, have definitions different enough that someone can get stuck on the wrong side of both of them.
It does create a mess, and that's part of what the recent King v Burwell decision was about. The PPACA clearly defined its terms, but in ways the Obama Administration (specifically the IRS) thought didn't make sense, and so they did their own thing. The decision was necessary to resolve the contradiction. This kind of thing will always be the result when legislators or regulators are being driven by political concerns, and especially when their work is rushed and they don't even allow time for experts to read and understand the bills.