Comcast has accused the Federal Communications Commission of violating the law with its new proposal for helping consumers avoid renting set-top boxes.

The FCC ditched its original plan for boosting competition in the set-top box industry in order to adopt one supported by Comcast and other cable companies. The commission’s original plan would have forced cable companies to provide video and programming information to makers of third-party hardware or applications, letting the third parties create their own software and user interfaces through which cable customers could watch the channels they subscribe to.

Cable companies pitched an alternative plan in which TV providers would build their own applications for third-party devices, and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler yesterday took the cable companies up on their offer. But the cable companies are still mad because the FCC made a few changes to the cable industry proposal instead of accepting it as is.

“The Chairman’s new proposal... violates the Communications Act and exceeds the FCC’s authority,” Comcast claimed in a statement provided to Multichannel News and other outlets.

We contacted Comcast this morning to ask which part of the Communications Act is being violated and how, but we haven’t heard back yet. The company’s official statement provides only hints, saying the FCC's plan includes “problems with privacy, copyright protection, content security, and innovation” and that “heavy-handed government technology mandates have a long history of failure.”

Comcast’s statement said further that Wheeler’s plan “would stop the apps revolution dead in its tracks by imposing an overly complicated government licensing regime and heavy-handed regulation in a fast-moving technological space.”

We also asked Comcast how a requirement to build apps “would stop the apps revolution dead in its tracks."

UPDATE: Comcast responded to Ars and pointed to a recent filing by industry members. The filing says the FCC proposal "essentially imposes a royalty-free compulsory copyright license on [pay-TV operators] and programmers, which would... be well beyond the Commission’s authority to adopt." Nothing in the relevant section of the Communications Act (Section 629) "empowers the Commission to hand over to a third party [pay-TV companies'] rights to the proprietary technologies and service that make up their apps," the filing said.

"Expect even more detailed analysis with the multiple legal issues the new proposal raises to be filed in the coming days," Comcast told Ars. "Not knowing what standards or licensing is going to be for months and maybe years is going to stifle innovation."

The FCC proposal includes a system for licensing cable company apps to device makers. It would require the industry to develop a standard license so that device makers won’t have to comply with different terms imposed by each pay-TV operator. Though the licensing group would consist of pay-TV operators and programmers, the FCC said it would review the group’s work “to ensure that nothing in the standard license will harm the marketplace for competitive devices.”

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the industry’s main lobby group, said yesterday that “the work of this licensing body would be subject to intrusive FCC oversight, creating a bureaucratic morass and improperly involving the FCC in private licensing arrangements in a way that will slow the deployment of video apps, ignore copyright protections and infringe on consumer privacy. This proposal would far exceed the Commission’s legal authority and improperly insert the government into private contract negotiations between pay TV distributors, content creators and device manufacturers.”

FCC officials argue that their plan will not disrupt any existing contracts between programmers and pay-TV providers, and it will keep channel lineups, advertising, and other agreed-upon terms intact within the apps. Because the FCC accepted the industry’s apps-based approach, pay-TV operators will maintain full control over the delivery of content to consumers, FCC officials said.

While the standard license will govern the relationship between pay-TV providers and device manufacturers, “programmers will have a seat at the table to ensure that content remains protected,” the FCC said. Device makers will not be part of the group that creates the standard license.

An FCC vote is scheduled for September 29. If no major changes are made, the industry seems likely to sue the FCC to stop the plan from taking effect.