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Should The FCC Be Abolished?
stwrtpj writes "CNET is running an interesting commentary from its chief political correspondent explaining why the FCC should be abolished. When I saw this link from NewsForge, my initial reaction was that he was full of it, but after I RTFA, I have to admit that he makes some interesting points. So how about it? Should the FCC be abolished? Can the market regulate itself yet?"
They should not.
The fcc exists primary to ensure radio waves continue to exist and companies are protected from each other. Without proper regulation, and I highly doubt the industry can do this alone, things like satelite tv would be irredic at best. Things like computer monitors, cordless phones, stereos would not have regulations on the interference they put out and cause lots of havoc.
The fcc does do harm such as making money off selling radio spectrum but it's purpose is well defined and one not easily replaced.
Things like Janet Jackson at the super bowl don't make me feel sorry for the guilty parties at all. National tv with children watching and people feel the need to "push the envenlope."
Problems such as the broadcast flag are more a fault of intense lobbying from the MPAA and very little opposition because people either don't understand or don't care. The fcc cannot be faulted for blunders to fair use.
Further the writer's theory of owning spectrum is even sillier than the current system. As an amateur radio operater some times I'm a primary and other times a secondary user of spectrum. Primary means that I must not be interfered with a nd secondary means I better not interfer. The lack of spectrum would only be in crease if sharing was halted.
:(){
You should have stuck with your initial gut reaction. It was probably right.
Have you Meta Moderated t
Without regulation, there would be no order. The FCC is in place to help corporations deal with issues that they cannot be trusted to deal with on their own, a la wireless spectrums and licensing certain frequencies... This can't possibly be serious. Although, I do believe I violate FCC regulations with having my case not properly secured as I may be interfering with other radio devices, such as the fileserver next to it.
The FCC should be abolished, and their authority should be placed directly into the hands of the Bush White House. That's the ticket.
"A small country devastated by the economy of communist rule is recovering rapidly, and has a smaller government than the US. Therefore we should eliminate the FCC."
What?!
I agree with most of the article, but that's quite the non sequitur.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
yes
The FCC isn't just about regulating commercial telecom. It fulfills many other roles, such as manager of the HF spectrum. It licenses users of said spectrum. How good would it be if the mobile phone companies couldn't agree upon how to allocate frequencies for their cell phones, and ended up trashing each other. Or, commercial interests began trashing the spectrum, to the dismay of the red cross and others who can no longer communicate when a tornado rips up main street. Even if landline telephone companies no longer need regulation, an independent (though even the FCC seems to lack this trait) organization is needed to maintain and police other things, even if they are not regulation.
On Apple Input Peripherals: They're okay, I guess, but I was really hoping for a one-key keyboard and a 109-button mouse
can we get them a bag of weed or something? I accept them as necessary but their whole "no transmitting for you" spiel has got to go.
Are you secure enough in your masculinity to run 'man touch'?
Having worked for a number of radio stations I am well aware of the inherently evil nature of the FCC. If you have to work with them on a regular basis, you cannot help but come to the conclusion that they suck.
However, the chaos that would result from everyone and their mother grabbing whatever bandwidth they felt they needed and filling it up with whatever the hell they felt like putting in it is less palatable still.
Last thing we need is to make it easier for people who can afford bigger equipment to force the little guys out. On top of that, there are actual safety issues involved, with radio telemetry for airplanes and all the emergency bands.
Such a bad idea.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I understand the points in the article about why the FCC should be abolished and I disagree with the FCC's regulations about content on public broadcasting channels and the like, but who will be there to stop me from playing Eminem on the frequency of the local police department that I love so much? Who will people complain to when their eleven o'clock news is intermittently interrupted by images of the Goatse man ready to go, because I'm driving through suburban neighborhoods with a transmitter in my car? And thats without even bringing the market into consideration... I think the FCC has an important role in the stability of our telecommunications that couldn't be taken up by the market itself simply due to the nature of business. Try putting the FCC on some tigher reins first before getting rid of them completely.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
Yeah, kill the FCC. That way I'll be able to snoop in on cell phone calls, broadcast on fire/police/air traffic/air plane/military/government/commercial(e.g. commercial FM and AM stations) frequencies, and setup a general access 50,000 watt AM station so people can hear my blane view of life. Yeah, kill the FCC, good idea!!
Sure, until frequency-hopping radios and TVs are perfected and commonplace, we probably still need someone to decide what transmission frequencies to use for what purposes.
But the FCC is an overgrown bureaucracy that does much, much more than that. Better to ditch the FCC and establish a new, small body to allocate spectrum than to continue to feed this enormous beast that by-and-large does more harm than good.
"To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it." -- Olin Miller
The FCC is a division of the executive branch of the US Government, which means its job is not to make laws, but to enforce and administer laws passed by the legislative branch.
FCC rules come in when the law doesn't make a definitive instruction, but tells the FCC to use its rulemaking process to make the call, and review its own decision periodically.
The FCC only has the powers Congress gives it. If you don't like what they're doing with it, tell Congress to change the law to override their mistake.
Where might I be able to purchase this Goatse transmitter?
The RF spectrum is truly a pie, and the slices are handed out by a central body. Since the spectrum is an interstate resource, it properly falls under federal (and, by treaty extension, international) jurisdiction. Without the FCC, enforcement of spectrum allocations would be left to other bodies that already don't have the resources to understand things like Internet crime.
OTOH, when it comes to things like content regulation...
Change the staion!
I fyou don't like what you hear or see, turn the damn thing off! It's really simple.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
I don't believe the FCC is 'necessary' and "it's purpose is well defined and one not easily replaced [sic]".
Many modern theorists (Lessig, et all) have said that we should either let the market handle spectrum or we 'free' spectrum; you could see it as a liberal vs conservative issue, whatever. *However*, the FCC is following neither plan- it's essentially taking bribes from large corporations of the past to *selectively* assign or sell spectrum.
The FCC is basically a mixed-up, directionless entity, as either of the two best ways of allocating spectrum allow only a very minor regulatory agency compared to the current situation. It'll do whatever it can to keep its power. And that's pretty bad.
RD
When did the FCC go from making sure your transmitter was operating properly to fining people for saying words they find "indecent"? It boggles the mind at how Janet Jackson flashing a nipple on tv gets Howard Stern thrown off the radio.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
No.
The frequencies under 30Mhz can be heard and can interfere beyond country boundaries. These frequencies are coordinated by international treaties. A fine way for the United States (of which I am a citizen) to find yet another way to piss off the rest of the world would be to ignore the enforcement of these treaties by disbanding the FCC.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
The article says:
"Once the standard parcels are defined, they can be sold to the highest bidders," Huber writes. "To keep for how long? Forever. Just like land." If just one UHF (ultrahigh frequency) television station in Los Angeles were permitted to transfer its spectrum to a third cellular provider, Huber estimates, "the overall public gain would be about $1 billion, or so the government itself estimated in 1992." Wireless technologies would be huge winners, if the spectrum were privatized.
I'm not sure how well this would work; we'd need new legislation to make sure one wealthy person wasn't hogging a large slice of the spectrum. And it probably would result in temporary anarchy as different private owners grabbed different sections of the spectrum. I still think it's a bad idea overall; the FCC needs some sort of reforming, but this is not the way to do it.
Since Howard Stern seems to be a popular example of FCC regulation of content, I'll touch on that. While Howard Stern's show is offensive to many and has been so for many years, he has a huge following. He is popular, people tune in to listen. If what he is doing is sufficiently distasteful, ratings will fall and he'll get kicked off the air by the radio stations. This is not an area in which the Government should be dictating what is on the air.
Yes--it's the public's airwaves and all, but hey--the public is listening to it! The public likes it! Not everyone to be sure, but this isn't some guy who broke into a radio station and started shouting obscenities into a microphone. There is substance here, and the Government should not be interfering.
Radio and TV is an area where the free market of ideas should reign. We have V-chips and similar technology to stop your kids from seeing what you don't want them to see. (Without even mentioning that the best. and most appropiate method is to watch TV with them instead of using it as a babysitter).
Again, I can't speak to Declan's main point, as to whether or not the entire FCC should be abolished, but I'd certainly like to see that happen to the division that enforces broadcasting standards...
Get rid of the FCC....?
Welcome our new master... Clearchannel...
It's an intriguing idea, and it would be interesting to see how it might work on a new frequency being opened up for commercial use. Some wild startup might come up with a use far more compelling than any bigger potential competitor. I think it would be an experiment worth running.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Government shouldn't be run by businesses, even though it seems like that's what usually happens...
Goo goo g'joob.
Can I invent a new word?
SpectrumSpam?
RadioSpam?
EMSpam?
Stop the world; I need to get off.
I think the real issue is that the FCC needs be be redefined. I am not going to try to link to the story due to the sight redesign issues, but as was noted on the ScreenSavers goes to DC, the FCC provides a large amount of standards testing. Although the arguement can be made that the areas the FCC has kept out of (2.4 G Wireless spec) are success stories for businesses, I think this commission needs get a new mandate that focuses on Digital Communications. (Using Digital RULES.) I am not saying the solution is to stop opperating Digital Communications with analog rules. The time has come to make the commission protect communications the way the EPA protects the environment.
I believe it was in "Capitalism; the Unknown Ideal".
She even covered the notion of trespass, as it might relate to frequency space, in a similar manner as the CNET article.
The whole notion of the FCC mandating "public decency" was as repugnant to her as to the author of the CNET article.
And, before the inevitable flame war starts in response to mentioning Ayn Rand, let us remember that Alan Greenspan was a devoted follower of Ayn Rand's ideas.
Why not just reduce the FCC to only license the RF spectrum?
This is about as good as the police argument...
You don't like them when they are busting you, pulling you over, or otherwise generally making your life a pain in the ass.
You DO like them when they arrest somebody who is causing you or someone you love, physical harm, or otherwise trying to be a pain in your ass.
Which do you choose? I'd say the FCC needs to enforce some regulations, but seriously, taking somebody off the radio for talking about something risque, is ridiculous. They have gone farther than just making sure companies stay in line, now they want to control everything you see & hear.
I'd say they are just about as good as the RIAA. And we all know exactly how much the RIAA is loved around here.
Mad props to you!
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Half of the material supposedly on hand was missing or mis-shelved. I am led to wonder how the FCC itself conducts research into its own regulations. Honestly, I have seen better libraries in third world dumps than what passes for the FCC's official library in its own headquarters building.
And you wonder how the patent office could be so bad . . .
Screw that, I want to see our braindead U.S. Patent and Trademark Office abolished instead. The FCC at least is doing some constructive work - well, prior to Chairman Powell allowing even greater consolidation of the already dangerously consolidated radio broadcast networks.
So abolish the USPTO and bring back the old FCC. Oh yeah, and while I'm on a roll, I also want ElectraWoman and DynaGirl back on the air! With more spandex, dammit!
Peace
The alternative cited in the article is a market based approach, where people own spectrum, and use common law tresspass to protect their spectrum from interference. However, this has a couple of disadvantages to it
First, because the radio spectrum is used for more than just commercial purposes, a commercial trading system is not really suited. A couple of examples: Law enforcement and public safety communications. Given the tight municipal and state budgets, can we expect localities to be able to afford spectrum when companies such as Verizon and Nextel are bidding BILLIONS of dollars for the spectrum. And what about other users such as amateurs, who don't have a method of corporate ownership.
Secondly, the articles enforcement mechanism is trespass law. But that has its own problems. First, how do we define the spectrum as property. Can I then as a land owner say no radio waves can cross my land without a fee? I thought we resolved this property issue with an aviation case long ago.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Look at the recent history (20 yrs). Any regulated industry that is deregulated turns into a chinese firedrill, or clusterfuck. We can deregulate savings and loans, these guys are conservative bankers they won't do anything stupid. $50 billion later, that mess is almost straightened out. Cable TV, prices are only going up at 10X the rate of inflation. Airlines, talk about failed business models, they can't survive without taxpayer subsidies. The list goes on and on... The cost of deregulating is unbearable because of endless greed and basic stupidity.
Can you imagine the traffic jam in the airwaves without the FCC?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Just in case the server crashes and burns (like they usually do),I have put up a mirror.o m/article/145
The mirror of http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/145 is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_807/www.cdfreaks.c
Note to Mods: When I post mirrors, it's a best guess. I don't know for certain whether or not the site will go down!
Do we really want to see Janet Jacksons breasts every week?
We should also do away with the Police, transporation agency, dept of education, heck lets just get rid of it all and let capitalism sort it all out.
Just let me know before you do this, so I can stock up on guns, ammo, food and gas.
Can the market regulate itself yet?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
*gasp*
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!
*wipes tears from eyes*
Wow, that was priceless!
Yeah, I tend to think the FCC does more harm than good. They've certainly screwed up in their quest to micromanage the airwaves, allowing a handful of conglomerates to control most radio and TV stations while imposing strange and arbitrary censorship rules on broadcasts. A little freedom could be what we need here.
As with any deregulation there are a lot of doomsayers who think the death of the FCC would be dangerous for emergency services. But this is a crutch argument, obviously we can protect emergency services and essential frequencies while opening the rest up for use by anyone. No, the doomsayers are mostly hams and big-radio statists, grasping at any argument that could save their obscene swaths of spectrum. Ham operators have huge bands all to themselves, for what amounts to a glorified boys' clubhouse. Open it up. Let us in.
One fear is that some predatory monopolist, a Microsoft of the airwaves, would end up owning all of the spectrum. That won't happen. First, the market value of the spectrum would approach $1 trillion, out of the reach of any individual corporation. Second, antitrust laws would remain on the books. The Department of Justice could wield the Sherman Antitrust Act to challenge unlawful conduct and block mergers.
First, a decade or two ago we thought that a company approaching a few billion was out of the reach of an individual corporation. Companies will only get bigger.
Second, antitrust laws are not currently effective. Using MS as an example in the same paragraph where you claim that antitrust laws work is rather painful.
There are other problems with the article.
However, it is time for a good review of the FCC's mandate. Remember, they have a mandate and they are following it to the best of their abilities. If you want them to change, call your congresscritter.
I can understand the argument that spectrum should be handled like land (purchased and owned) but since radio spectrum is inherently public it cannot simply be run under land management laws. There would be no ability for small consumers to buy spectrum, and without efficient management you may end up with a few big chunks, and then millions of tiny inefficent chunks - consider hard disk fragmenting.
It's an unworkable idea, but it is thought provoking, and I'm certian that was his real intent.
-Adam
Things like Janet Jackson at the super bowl don't make me feel sorry for the guilty parties at all. National tv with children watching and people feel the need to "push the envenlope."
If you don't like it, don't watch it. You don't have to put a gun to anybody's head over a matter of taste.
Problems such as the broadcast flag are more a fault of intense lobbying from the MPAA and very little opposition because people either don't understand or don't care.
Why is it that you good little apparatchiks never recognize that the major factor in this kind of abuse of power is the existence of the power in the first place? If you allow government to acquire power over communications, who do you THINK is going to wield that power? It's not going to be those of us who want to preserve our fair use rights, because we can't afford million-dollar bribes to politicians.
Liberty requires no justification. It's the advocates of force like yourself who have the burden of proof.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You should RTFA. You would no more be able to "grab whatever bandwidth" you felt you needed than you are able to build your garage on your neighbor's lot or dump trash on the local supermarket parking lot.
Do you seriously think this would ever work?
but who will be there to stop me from playing Eminem on the frequency of the local police department that I love so much?
Probably the same thing that stops you from holding your son's birthday party in the lobby of the local police department.
The market can regulate itself all right. While we're at it let's dismantle the Federal Trade Commission because we all know the market can regulate itself with respect to monopolies as well.
That was sarcasm, in case you didn't notice "you insensitive clod!"
If there was no FCC licenses, then RF bandwidth would purely be on a first-come, first-serve basis under the common laws system that the courts were ironing out.
The problem is, in order for a court to shut down an offending station, that offending station would already have to be on the air and causing the pre-existing station a problem such that the pre-existing station deems it worth going to court, and the problem would continue until the case is heard.
The FCC system requires that those who want to broadcast have to ask for permission before starting. Anybody caught broadcasting a strong signal who didn't ask permission first is presumed to be a troublemaker instantly, and therefore is worthy of being shut down before we figure out what exactly you're bothering.
Any consumer electronics that uses RF signals has the potential to be mis-manufactured to the point that it becomes a strong unintentional radio station. Part of the FCC's responsiblity is to get such things off the market immediately so that the more important users of the RF space don't get bothered by those things going into mass production... imagine the mess we'd have if D-Link put out a WiFi router that bled signal so badly it put noise on the Air Traffic Control channels. Those things might be everywhere before people realize what's going on if the FCC wasn't keeping an eye on those things.
There's only so much spectrum. If possible, maybe more of the government-exclusive bands should be freed up for both licensed and unlicensed use.
Boob-gate from the Superbowl and the aftermath is a perfect example of why government should not be in charge of "decency." Eliminate this function. It's a waste of taxpayer money.
Has any self-regulating market ever worked to the benefit of the public? I've yet to see or hear of one.
ClearChannel owns them all except for one classic rock station, one top 40, and the usual no name PBS/hippie stations. I can't stand anything public radio plays.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Leaving corporations etc to do what they like has been prooven time and time again to be a stupid idea, but over controlling them is also a bad idea. The FCC just needs to concentrate on stopping vital frequencies being messed with, and stopping gready pigs owning too much of the spectrum, they shouldnt get involved with janet jacksons nipples (mmmmm janet jacksons nipples) or saying shit on tv, how many other countries are this fucked up?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The FCC does more than just assign spectrum. It also runs enforcement and regulation for our radio frequencies and guards against things such as harmful interference, stepping in with action when needed. Which other governmental organization would keep the technical know-how in house that allows them to track down harmful interference based on field reports?
Furthermore, the FCC guards our markets and prevents monopolies from snatching up too much of a particular spectrum, service, or market. The author seems to think that market dynamics would themselves guard against monopolies with high pricing of spectrum and our current monopoly-prevention laws, but I disagree with this. I don't think the spectrum will be priced out of reach of many corporations. There was recently a desire on the part of various corporations to consolidate the FM broadcast spectrum, and I remember this being heavily debated in various publications. Also, the FCC does already regulates our spectrum based upon our monopoly laws. Which other government agency would handle this for us?
"F*K the FCC!!! F*K the FCC!!! F*K em'!"
Funny you should mention that - Eric Idle and the rest of us seem to feel the same about the FCC as of late.
Hum it all together now!
I was about to post my gut reaction to this posting right off, but I RTFA, and my gut reaction turned out to be well founded. The article begins with an overused logically broken analogy to the USSR. Classic right wing FUD. Then arguing to let the courts decide disputes over the spectrum? Sure the FCC is a slow and backwards bureaucratic nightmare, but the legal system is just as bad. And the idea of selling pieces of the spectrum outright is absurd. One can no more 'own' part of the spectrum than they can own the right to speak at a certain intonation, and regardless, future advances in technology will render current methods for breaking up the spectrum arcane and useless. Finally, we cannot allow such reckless deregulation; allowing industry to police itself is like the fox guarding the henhouse. I agree that the FCC is a wreck, but killing it is not the answer.
-
...during a Howard Stern rally in 1987:
.
F*K the FCC!!! F*K the FCC!!! F*K em'!
Finally, I see a Howard Stern reference. I personally try to listen to Howard Stern on a regular basis and find him quite amusing. Before you find me offtopic, I bring up a radio personality for a reason. The FCC has overstepped it's bounds more than any American should tolerate. The United States constitution states every American should have free speech. Howard Stern is not being allowed that right.
That is bullshit
He is an entertainer. If you don't want to listen, feel free to turn the radio dail to some re-packaged pop music by Ms. Tits-Too-Big. Or even turn it off. Ever thought of that, Michael Powell? No. You're too busy squashing a God- and Goverment-given right to say whatever the fuck I want. So you'll take a man off the air, along with many others, because he's "indecent," even though you have no clear description of indecency.
Bottom line: Fuck the FCC.
What if I decide I don't like the Christen music channel in my state, and buy a 200w transmitter, and purposely walk on thier signal?
It wont block out the whole state, but no one in a couple miles around me is going to get the station.
Businesses would start doing the same to each other to prevent thier competitors from getting market share.
I don't like government interference in my life, but the airwave do need a regulating and enforcement body.
What a surprise, a C|net article declaring something is dead/dying/should die. I could write an article citing only facts that support my case to make my point. The FCC is necessary, the airwaves would go nucking futs without any regulation or order. They could police themselves, but why would they, and how could they enforce their policies? If the FCC could get their stuff together regarding Clear Channel and Viacom owning every f'ing media outlet, protecting the telco monopolies by trying to regulate VOIP out of existence, and chastising Howard Stern and CBS while leaving Oprah alone when the Oprah segment has to be the most graphic description of sexual acts during daytime ever, I would be happy. (Because if there is one thing I do not want to hear about at 4 in the afternoon it is rimjobs and "rainbow parties".)
I hate sigs.
We would never have The FCC Song (monty python)
The electromagnetic spectrum is densely utilized, but FCC also instills regulations on the emitted power.
If there was no regulation of transmit power, then all three little piggies would be fucked, because a brick house would not protect them from having their brains fried or dying of cancer or leukemia when the big bad wolfs around the house decide to play "who has a stronger transmitter" across the neighborhood...
we'd need new legislation to make sure one wealthy person wasn't hogging a large slice of the spectrum.
Already specifically covered in the article.
How many millions of women expose themselves to infants so they can breast feed! This is intolerable! I implore the FCC to require blindfolds for babies.
P.S. I am not a kook.
Problems such as the broadcast flag are more a fault of intense lobbying from the MPAA and very little opposition because people either don't understand or don't care. The fcc cannot be faulted for blunders to fair use.
I'm usually the first to say, "Never assume malice for what can reasonably be attributed to ignorance", but when billions of dollars are being thrown around, it has to look pretty fucking obvious it's the former.
I do agree that privatizing the radio spectrum will promote an even worse situation where only the highest bidder will be able to transmit. That $1 trillion market will only take effect after ClearChannel, Infinity, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc, take control of what they want.
It should do nothing but see that licensed radios do not interfere with other licensed radios. Period.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Does the FCC need to be redefined? Sure it does. Is it too intrusive? Sure it is, but we do need some competent agency to manage the limited resource known as our electromagnetic spectrum.
Do you want the CB operator down the street to have a 5 KW transmitter and operate on whatever frequency he wants? I very seriously doubt it. There's enough of that sort of thing going on now with the FCC in place. It was a problem back in the first two decades of the Twentieth Century let alone what would happen if there was no regulation now.
IMO most of the governmental agencies need a house cleaning, a return to their original limited purpose, but it has to be done in a logical fashion or you end up with a much worse mess than you had.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Spectrum is precisely an area where libertarian fantasies (as implied in the subject of the post) about business self-regulation run aground. Spectrum is, in some sense, a common good, and it needs a more neutral overseer than business necessarily provides.
In the article, the proposal resolves the 'common good' problem by defining property rights in the spectrum by frequency and domain. Once clear property title and rights are established, the free market can operate as well as it does in other areas property. The government can still retain ownership of some frequencies and domains for things like emergency use, just like it does now with land.
The FCC is a necessary agency, although they do seem a bit rash about Broadband over power lines, and other such issues facing amateur radio operators.
open4free ©
The article states that FCC doesn't work. . . but doesn't acknowledge that innappropriate market influence is the CAUSE of its problems. Knowing that, why not fix it instead of aboloshing it?
Just because it is currently run by crooks doesn't mean that we don't need this regulatory body to watch over our shared communication resources. . . actually it means that market forces have actually CORRUPTED a regulatory body that was meant to defend the people's trust. . . and we should insulate it further from the markets.
It's obvious. . . as far as media regulation goes, Michael Powell is the most popular girl in school. . . and its not because he's pretty.
It would only be a matter of time after the FCC was eliminated that the media would consolidate itself into one giant monopoly that pushes their agenda as fact with no other places to view the other side of the story.
The only difference is the person in charge won't hold an obvious title such as "minister of propaganda".
Abolish the FCC? I don't think so. If deregulation has taught us anything is that company's are incapable of regulating themselves. When the airwaves were in use before the FCC it was a war zone. Commercial, government and amateur radio operators were constantly fighting over RF turf. The FCC is there to regulate the spectrum so that everyone can have their chunk. The broadcast industry, government, amateur radio and unlicensed users can all have their pieces of RF spectrum and not interfere with each other. If the FCC were abolished, the RF spectrum would sound just like the CB band when the skip is in. The FCC needs to be given the funds to enforce the current rules, not to be abolished.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Regulation from the bottom up? Oh, he must mean like what we have with the current software situation, re: Microsoft.
Oh yah baby, that has worked out _so_ very good.
These free market dirtbags are the most dishonest crowd of clowns since the originators of belief based religions. The most important thing the free market clowns _always_ forget to mention is that the "free market" is an abstraction and is not ever present in the real world of humans and politics.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
This is the second time in as many weeks that "timothy" has posted "news" advocating the abolishment of the FCC. Maybe it's just the newb in me, but it seems kinda ridiculous that this is even a topic (especially considering the one-sideness of the editorial). Does slashdot normally have political pundit links? Let's have some balance on the issues timothy raises at least. :/
Cartoon Guide to Federal Spectrum Policy
What gives you (or anyone else) the right to decide what is or isn't on television? The only people deciding should be the creators and distributors. If you don't like what you see, change the channel or, god forbid, turn it off. People don't need to be protected from content. People need the ability to choose what content they view. Censorship takes away my ability to choose.
The FCC isn't just a big censorship machine, it has good points too. That whole Howard Stern thing is ridiculous, and it would be hilarious if Oprah got fined, but don't overreact and decide to get rid of it just for that reason.
I agree overall, however it's worth noting.
"One fear is that some predatory monopolist, a Microsoft of the airwaves, would end up owning all of the spectrum. That won't happen. First, the market value of the spectrum would approach $1 trillion, out of the reach of any individual corporation. Second, antitrust laws would remain on the books. The Department of Justice could wield the Sherman Antitrust Act to challenge unlawful conduct and block mergers."
Right, because we know how well the Sherman Antitrust Act worked for reigning in Microsoft.
You're complaining about the wrong guy. The FCC commissioner who is pushing this "indecency" thing is Michael Copps. Copps is the former chief of staff to South Carolina's Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings.
Women are equal too, you know.
This would be sweet. Finally I could carry around a mobile jammer so some dickhead in the theatre doesn't interrupt the movie.
McCullagh's position on CNET is wrongheaded, and highly anticompetitive. His article actually cites Huber's book, which proposed converting existing radio station licenses into property, so that the licensee of an FM radio station instead ends up with chattel ownership of 200 kHz, to do what they want with it. It's a wingnut's fantasy, a huge transfer of public wealth (the radio spectrum) to private interests (licensees), with the current need to serve the "public interest" replaced by a total obeisance to shareholders' interests, in the name of doctrinaire laissez-faire capitalism. The current licensing system is obsolete, and the FCC's anti-indecensy crusade is nutty, but "property rights" just transfer the problem to courts that lack the FCC's technical staff expertise (some of which does still exist).
But it's the telecom area that really needs attention. Yes, the Powell FCC is profoundly broken. It regulates by indirection, picking winners and losers privately and coming up with indirect ways to favor them. Its main beneficiaries are the lawyers who try to pick up after them. So one might think that the FCC's charter is broken, but that's not it at all. It's simply the leadership and the politics behind it; this FCC, much worse than its predecessor, is clearly led by a celebrity princeling who just doesn't get it. A change in leadership is necessary, not abolition.
The reason is simply that the telecommunications industry is highly concentrated. The Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers have monopoly power. In the European Union, IIRC, a company with a 25% market share is suspected of having monopoly power, and scrutinized for abuses thereof. The USA is very, very loose on antitrust regulation, and the ILEC monopolies were granted legally, so the antitrust laws only (per the Supreme Court's recent Trinko decision) apply to attempts to extend the monopolies into new areas. Demonopolization is entirely the province of the Telecom Act, not antitrust. And the Telecom Act puts the FCC in the lead. Without regulation, a monopoly will simply squash competitors. This is particularly true in telecom for two reasons. One is the "natural monopoly". This refers to the case where a given industry has large economies of scale and a dominant provider. The unit cost of the dominant provider is thus lower than that of a new competitor, so the economics of competition are dismal.
The other reason is the network effect: A network's value rises with the number of users that it reaches. Federal regulations, enforced by the FCC, require *interconnection* between networks. A CLEC with ten customers can interconnect as a peer with the incumbent. The incumbent, of course, has no interest in allowing this. The incumbent, absent regulation, would shut off interconnection to its competitors in a heartbeat. This wouldn't occur if the incumbent's market share were small, but it's necessary to force interconnection *until* the monopoly is broken, and the ex-monopoly has a pecuniary interest in retaining interconnection.
The Internet has no dominant player, so everyone willingly interconnects. Worldcom wasn't allowed to buy Sprint, largely for that reason. In an FCC-less fully-deregulated world, Verizon and SBC would not be so kind. They might deign to permit competitors to purchase access to their networks, as premium-priced customers rather than peers, if they thought it was profitable enough. That's hardly a way to get competition though.
Remember, the only reason the public Internet exists is because the FCC, over the *strenuous* objections of the Bell System, overrode restrictions on "sharing" of leased lines. Before that, non-common-carrier networks (like the Internet) could not be run between customers. Leased lines, necessary for high-speed data, were limited to intra-company use. And the FCC, over the *strenuous* objections of ILECs nationwide, overrode restrictions on "foreign attachments", devices like modems, answering machines, telephone sets, and PBXs. Before 1
DISCLAIMER : I am a Libertarian and this MAY be a rant.
I believe that the government should not have control over the media. Period.
The airwaves wouldn't fall into disarray if it ceased to be, too many companies have too big a stake in media to allow it to fail. No, Chicken Little, if Nanny Government leaves, the sky will NOT begin falling.
The Government has no right to tell me what I can and cannot view. The Government has no duty to protect children from an exposed breast during the superbowl. The parents of a child old enough to watch and understand the game of (American) football, certianly should have explained at least that much of the facts of life to said child, or they are not very good at parenting.
<jedi> There is something funny here. You laugh. </jedi>
Now I can rig a transmitter to detect commercials on my local radio stations, and override them with a blank signal. Everyone will love me!
It's tragic. Laugh.
Really!
--- Ban humanity.
We want less government intervention and more control by businesses. ok. If we look at history (a little further back than the birth of the FCC) we will see the birth of Sherman Antitrust Act, which was passed because businesses controlled the economy and government too much.
We assume that the companies (big and small) have the end-user's interests forefront in their minds. I feel that they only desire to make the greatest profit possible, and that the antitrust laws could become useless if the corporations control the government (they were once usless, along with the interstate commerce act of 1887 which had no power unless there was someone to enforce it).
As much as I value free speech, I can't think that the hands of corporations are any cleaner than the hands of the FCC.
I'm wondering what you're referring to in regards to CMU... While he appears to be in Clearchannel's pocket with regards to the FCC, all the articles I can find from CMU show McCullah as being AGAINST CMU's newsgroup censorship.
This signature does not exist. It has never existed. It is all a figment of your imagination.
Sadly in the America of 2004, it does. A lot of Americans seem to have a completely skewed view of what the word really means. It's no longer about being able to say what you want or think what you want, it's about being able to buy what you want when you want it.
We are all taught about Washington chopping down cherry trees, but precious little about Patrick Henry.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I was with you until I got to this little gem.
National tv with children watching and people feel the need to "push the envenlope."
It was a breast for God's sake! In case you didn't know, children are supposed to suckle. That means put a nipple into their mouths and suck on it. Children are supposed to see breasts. It wasn't the end of the world.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I agree with Eric Idle's assessment of the FCC (warning: explicit lyrics)
Quoted:
>Even ardent supporters of the FCC should admit >that there's less justification for its existence >after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which >removed some barriers to competition. Local phone >customers don't need to worry about the Bells' >monopolistic practices, because they effectively >aren't monopolies anymore. Cable customers don't >need to worry much about monopolistic practices >because of satellite TV. Eventually, fiber >connections will transport every kind of data.
BULLSHIT. The local incumbent monoply telcos are still in full force, bending and breaking the competition rules at every turn. They are even trying to repeal key provisions of the 96 Telco act.
And satellite service is still not quite a suitable alternative to cable. For one you've generally got to lock into a year long (or more) contract, for another they wont bill you, you have to give them a way to suck money from you at their will (Credit Card or Direct account debit only), for another, the high speed Internet service is overpriced and underpowered.
The incumbent telcos still need MUCH more leverage placed against them to ever get meaningful competition for basic wireline phone service (as well as broadband over copper), and the cable companies should be forced to allow competition, and actively compete with each other. Yes, there are multiple cable companies, but they dont compete against either other, as each one has an almost complete lock on its respective territory, it is unheard of to have a choice between providers except in a few highly dense population centers. Telco competition is *slightly* better, but again, only in the areas of more dense population, and even then the incumbent pulls every direty trick it can get away with to undermine the newcomers.
National tv with children watching and people feel the need to "push the envenlope."
;-/
And? Do you think someone would try to "push the envelope" that hard if there were an (practically empty and available) channel 0.1 GHz away (easily accessible from your receiving equipment) which would be *dedicated* to showing J.J.s titties?
Seriously, when you put any kind of regulation of *technology* (that being clay tablets, print press, photography, airwaves or our good new I'net) for the explicit purpose of regulating *morality*, you are on a very slippery slope, and the slide down is not too satisfying.
As of abolishing of the FCC, I guess Ayn Rand wrote about the same idea, like what?, 40 years ago... I am surprized that none of the libertarian folks out here have jumped on the bandwagon so far.
Paul B.
Speaking of "children" and "breasts" --- Wow! what a horrible thought!!! Of course those big mounds of flesh were created *solely* for the purposes of showing them in naughty videos, really!
Since they couldn't even decide on a single DVD format, you have to wonder what they're good for besides limiting the radio frequencies we can use.
Now correct me if I'm wrong but News.Com is part of the Fox network isn't it? And Fox is owned, well controlled at least, by Rupert Murdoch and his progeny.
Murdoch was known in Australia to be ruthless if you didn't toe the company line.
To me this is manipulation of public opinion by another corporate soveriegn territory. It may get through but I think it's a bad idea. But I'm against such moves by GE, Sony, M$, Siemens, SAP, HP, IBM, add favourite monolithic giant here.
"There is magic in the web." - Othello Act 3 Scene 4.
Yes. The FCC, like most quasi-legislative administrative agencies (e.g. SEC, EPA) has outlived its usefulness. It now serves mostly the interests of the big media/telecom conglomerates it is supposed to regulate, and often acts to soften the impact of Congressional legislation directed against particular abuses. The favoring of commercial interest over public safety in assigning new radio frequencies is only the most outrageous example that comes to mind (the FCC's failure to provide enough radio frequencies for public safety was cited by NYC officials as a major cause of fire and police communications problems on 9/11). The Treasury Department can handle the licensing and enforcement functions performed by the FCC, developing this as a source of revenue -- while giving preference to public entities when scarce resources are being divided. Congress should take responsibility for lawmaking in these areas, instead of delegating legislative authority to an agency of unelected bureaucrats.
1. 2-way radio Licensing
2. my DSL connection.
Any person can walk into the local Walmart Super store or the local five and dime and purchase a pair of "5-mile, 22 channel (8 GMRS, 14 FRS) 2-way radios" and a pack of batteries for about $30 US, walk out to the parking lot and start using them - all at risk of fines, and possible federal prison time because you have to be 18 and obtain an FCC license for the GMRS bands. From fcc.gov "The General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) is a land-mobile radio service available for short-distance two-way communications to facilitate the activities of an adult individual and his or her immediate family members, including a spouse, children, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, and in-laws (47 CFR 95.179). Normally, as a GMRS system licensee, you and your family members would communicate among yourselves over the general area of your residence or during recreational group outings, such as camping or hiking."
Here's the list of prohibited uses of the GMRS band: (For your reference, a station is defined as any unit, stationary or mobile, capable of broadcasting on the GMRS frequencies.)
(a) A station operator must not communicate:
(1) Messages for hire, whether the remuneration received is direct
or indirect;
(2) Messages in connection with any activity which is against
Federal, State, or local law;
(3) False or deceptive messages;
(4) Coded messages or messages with hidden meanings (``10 codes''
are permissible);
(5) Intentional interference;
(6) Music, whistling, sound effects or material to amuse or
entertain;
(7) Obscene, profane or indecent words, language or meaning;
(8) Advertisements or offers for the sale of goods or services;
(9) Advertisements for a political candidate or political campaign
(messages about the campaign business may be communicated);
(10) International distress signals, such as the word ``Mayday''
(except when on a ship, aircraft or other vehicle in immediate danger to
ask for help);
(11) Programs (live or delayed) intended for radio or television
station broadcast;
(12) Messages which are both conveyed by a wireline control link and
transmitted by a GMRS station;
(13) Messages (except emergency messages) to any station in the
Amateur Radio Service, to any unauthorized station, or to any foreign
station;
(14) Continuous or uninterrupted transmissions, except for
communications involving the immediate safety of life or property;
(15) Messages for public address systems.
(b) A station operator in a GMRS system licensed to a telephone
answering service must not transmit any communications to customers of
the telephone answering service.
I guess "Jimmy's a big fat doodie-head violates #3 and who's advertsing jobs on their walkie-talkie anyway?
Lastly, my DSL connection. My local telco is Verizon and the CO is just under a mile from here. Verizon won't offer DSL in our area - I have to get it through a local ISP. The ISP charges me $35 per month for access; Verizon pops $37.50 + $5.70 tax on my monthly phone bill for "Advanced Data Services Charges" for a grand total of $78.20 per month to get 768/128 ADSL. Whether I get it from Verizon or a third-party, I'm paying Verizon's monthly fee. There is no other broadband choice around here and Verizon must know it. I called them one day to ask why I can't purchase the DSL from them or why they won't offer it in this area, the response was "Our circuits are all full so we can't offer it in your area." I'm pretty sure that fits Webster's definition of extortion.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
You're new here aren't you?
"Powell cannot be blamed for the consolidation of radio broadcasters. He didn't set that into motion... in fact, you can't even blame the Bush administration."
Wow, is this a troll or do you really believe that? If the latter, where were you last summer?
"In the months leading up to the vote, the FCC received hundreds of thousands of postcards and e-mails, urging it to not relax the rules. ... Over the summer, Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress moved against the new rules, defying a promised veto from the White House."
Bipartisan defiance in BOTH houses of Congress? Hundreds of thousands of comments from the public? Yeah, Chairman Powell is direcly to blame. Period. He really screwed the pooch on that one. Problem is, we were all the pooch.
"One fear is that some predatory monopolist, a Microsoft of the airwaves, would end up owning all of the spectrum. That won't happen. First, the market value of the spectrum would approach $1 trillion, out of the reach of any individual corporation. Second, antitrust laws would remain on the books. The Department of Justice could wield the Sherman Antitrust Act to challenge unlawful conduct and block mergers."
YES WE ALL KNOW HOW EFFECTIVE ANTITRUST LAWS AND THE DOJ ARE AT KEEPING CORPORATIONS FROM GETTING TOO BIG AND POWERFUL. FUCKING MORON.
Things like Janet Jackson at the super bowl don't make me feel sorry for the guilty parties at all. National tv with children watching and people feel the need to "push the envenlope."
I am wondering -- is there any evidence anywhere indicating that the sight of a female breast at any age is in the remotest sense damaging to the psyche?
I am litterally floored by the reaction to this over the past several months. As a US born citizen, I know this country is f*d up beyond all belief when it comes to sexuality, but I really thought we might have let this slide after a few weeks of outrage. I am truly astounded that this event is still brought up as ammunition for anything.
Even the most prudish, uptight, puritanical among you: can you honestly claim that there are people who are going to live a worse life for this? That someone was hurt in a tangible way? Can you explain this to me in terms that a terrible hethen like myself might understand?
If not, then please live and let live for God's sake.
Cheers.
Should the Supreme Court and Congress be abolished?
It's just as likely...
- Hard Harry, Pump Up The Volume (the movie)
Actually it was "Happy Harry Hard-on." For the moderator that moderated it down--the quote is from a movie about a guy running a pirate radio station and the FCC tracking him down.
I fail to see how what happened is a case of free-speech. Asking for decency during one particular type of broadcast is not the same as supressing free speech or censorship.
;-)
/, I am reading...
The classic example of possible cause for supressing free speech is "shouting 'Fire!' in the full theater", which puts others in the situation of some "clear and eminent danger". PLEASE tell me what clear danger comes out of the broadcasting of the aforementioned boob of Ms. Jackson?
If you can not, a bonus question for you: How "one particular type of broadcast" is different from *THAT* other one?
Paul B.
P.S. I can understand (thgough not necessarily agree with the existance) of a Gov't body impartially providing the applicants licenses on a 'first come, first served" basis, but the amount of the discussion of J.J.'s tit in this context makes me wonder if it is the
This country has a legitimate interest in owning and regulating radio frequency spectrum. Privatizing it and selling it off to the highest bidders would be like selling our national parks to private industry. Consider this: frequency is but one way to carve up this limited resource. And such partitioning is based on analog electronic thinking, using passive filter methods dating back to the 20's. The dawn of digital radio techniques, including spread spectrum, CDMA, and ultrawideband, makes manifest how old-fashioned an idea frequency allocation is. If we carved up and sold off spectrum based on frequency allocations, we'd be denying access to these new technologies forever.
You know, self-regulation sure worked great for the California electrical system. Why not try it for the airwaves next?
... having my mod points but rather decided to participate in the discussion...
A *big guy* with a *big antenna* is not too much different from equally *big* guy with almost as big a truck plowing over your land, but that issue was somehow settled in, oh, so pre-last-century...
Paul B.
Maybe I didn't entirely understand the article, but I work for a county ambulance service. We couldn't afford to spend tons of money to purchase the four or five radio frequencies we currently use.
The local fire departments are all volunteer. The one in my town has a yearly budget of just over $15,000. They couldn't afford to bid against companies like AT&T for a slice of radio spectrum...
There's no place like
Why not publically elect the directors of the FCC? Public elections to these kinds of offices seem to work out fairly well in municipal governments and in parlimentary democracies.
.. to get this reaction from /.?
Or from the democats, for that matter?...
Paul B.
Although the argument that "the FCC is necessary to stop devices from interfering with each other" sounds convincing at first - I'm not so sure it's true.
Right now, we have to put up with a number of compromises that came about precisely BECAUSE the FCC controls the alloted spectrum, and multiple technologies and devices had to share the same little slice of it. (EG. Bluetooth and wi-fi both use the same part of the spectrum, so they have to be designed so they keep stepping out of each other's way when both are enabled simultaneously on a computer. This just serves to make them both slower than they'd otherwise be, and causes occasional conflicts/problems.)
Furthermore, it's going to be in the best interest of a manufacturer to make sure a given device works without lots of interference and unreliability. If I build computer monitors, for example, I'm not going to want them leaking out so much interference that people's cellphones don't work when they're sitting in front of their machines. Pretty soon, word would get out about my poor quality monitors and people would quit buying them! I think the FCC's present "mandates" on interference could be reduced to a set of govt. provided guidelines that designers would be strongly encouraged to adhere to, for best results.
I *really* think the FCC oversteps its usefulness when it comes to censorship of public broadcasts. Quite frankly, I think all of this should be strictly between the producers, the broadcasters, and the listening/viewing public. Don't like the offensive content on your local radio station? Write them and tell them so! Don't go running to the govt./FCC and begging them to strong-arm the broadcaster with a fine. That's a pretty socialist way to deal with one's issues, IMHO.
Also posted the politically charged Bruce Sterling On Lovelock's Pro-Nuclear Stance, linking a Sci-Fi writer's rant blog to prove that "all anti-nuclear people are stupid ranters." That one actually worked too, everyone talked about how Sterling was a reactionary crazy, and therefore the other stupid argument (the one Sterling was ranting about) was more accepted by people--at least it seemed that way to me.
s/radio/media/g
The right to liberty is one of the things generally held to be self evident. In fact, I believe words to that affect played a major part in the creation of a certain large semi-rectangular nation that we all know and love/hate.
I'm sorry, but I have HDTV and that was no "accident". I don't mind nudity myself, but what makes you think ABC was not trying to push the edges and got caught? If you watched the whle thing you'll note that particular moment fit right in with the rest of the already very explicit material.
I don't know about you but I don't own many clothes where pieces covering my nipple just come off "by accident" and I don't often wear pasties while sauntering around in normal clothes. All of these elements paint a pretty damning picture, thus the severe punishment.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... such as a station's transmission power and modulation limits. This is needed for international cooperation/coordination of frequency bands.
Having it regulate content and insuring "wholesome standards" of broadcast content should be beyond its scope. If we (the USA) are to be anal retentive enough to regulate content, this should be done by a separate agency, perhaps the [cringe] "Communicastions Security Agency" (analogous to the Transportation Security Agency)... perhaps it's better not to regulate content at all, and let each listener/viewer decide appropriateness.
"Viewer discretion is ALWAYS advised."
Tag lost or not installed.
https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/cf/eas/reports/ TestFirmSearch.cfm
click on "start search"
You will see 600+ reasons why you can get rid of the FCC.
Please allow Ice Station Zebra to check out a copy of the dictionary so that he may learn how to spell the word 'libertarians'.
Basically, the market can decide if Playboy Radio on XM is something they want to support or not... but nobody is forced to listen to that, you can't even accidently tune it on an XM device unless you're paying a monthly fee and then an extra monthly fee for that one channel.
What if someone (out of the kindness of their hearts!) would decide to give away XM radio receivers to anyone asking? No, I do not mean anyone associated with the apparently indecent ones on this mentioned radio program, just _someone_? Will your argument still hold? Can you still give your old 386 to a kid knowing that it can be used for indecent purposes?
And, after all, where is the boundary between "public" and "private" in something neither of us can hold in our hands or show to others and say "this is mine!"?
Paul B.
The Civil Aeronautics Board was abolished. Look what the resultant deregulation did to the airlines. How many have gone bankrupt since 1980? And of course, we're all seeing what wonderful customer service and convenient schedules and routes the deregulated airlines are providing.
We tried trusting the DMA to meet with the Internet community to define what spam is, and work with said community to promote anti-spam legislation with real teeth in it (unlike the YOU-CAN-SPAM act). The DMA paid lip service to the concerns expressed at the meeting, and then later betrayed everyone except their own members and interests by endorsing spam as "commercial free speech."
They continued on to promote the idea that the industry could regulate itself. Look where E-mail is today with the DMA's much-hyped idea of "self-regulation" of E-mail "marketing."
Even the Amateur Radio Service, supposedly self-regulating, is having its share of problems.
Do we really, REALLY want to trust the broadcasters and mass media to regulate themselves?
I don't think so. The biggest problem with the FCC right now is that its chief commissioner, Michael Powell, is a Bush crony who has no more of a grip on common sense and technical realities than the Shrub himself. Get rid of Powell, and replace the commissioners that are part of his little circle, and I would wager that things would start improving practically overnight.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Airline fares, for example, were set by the government, instead of market prices.
Now the government just subsidizes them through infrastructure, tax breaks, and direct bailouts without requiring much in return. The airlines still try to make as much money as possible but not by being the most efficient necessarily but by exploiting the weaknesses of the new system. The best examples are points, and the incomprehensible seat pricing system designed to take advantage of the indirectly subsidized business travel.
Yes it may be easier to make money in this mis-regulated environment but is the public better served? Have safety, convenience, service improved for the average traveller who can't write off business class?
No, it is not a free market - more of a free lunch (or at least a tax-deductable one...)
Deregulation gave us the horrible consolidation that has six or seven companies owning all media.
Since when was that "deregulation"? That's like saying the electrical rate crisis in California was caused by "deregulation", when it was actually caused by changes to regulations that resulted in mandating a trap for the distribution utility and the consumers.
The FCC still controls the licenses - and effectively bans the entry of new broadcasters. You can't buy a license for any price, though there are plenty of slots available and (the last time I checked) broadcasting has THE highest return-on-investment of ANY industry.
Complicated problems result from applying complicated solutions to simple problems. This is nowhere more visible than in government.
When you have a complicated web of regulations, removing one of them while leaving the rest in place can be like removing one brick from a tottering building. The result can be FAR worse than either what preceeded it OR the complete removal of the building. But the real problem was nevertheless the result of the regulations / tottering building, not the lack of still more patches.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So who will regulate the non-commercial (amateur radio, Part 15 devices such as 802.11, medical comm equipment, public safety like police and fire/rescue, space communications, radio astronomy, etc.) parts of the spectrum? Who will be in charge of ensuring that some freeloader on 21cm doesn't ruin a once-in-millenia chance to capture a particular radioastronomical event?
Radio is NOT LIKE LAND. What you use here can leak right over somewhere else you might not even imagine possible. CB radios are local communications only--maybe ten miles. Ever heard of "skip"? HUNDREDS of miles, sporadic, transient, and a product of the atmospheric and solar radiation conditions.
Unlike almost all other public commons, the EM spectrum actually needs top-down policing. I'm not saying the FCC is doing everything right--but discarding it outright is not the solution.
Jim kc0lpv
I'm sorry. The parent actually has a good logical point.
Rare to see on here.
But its censoring powers should certainly be taken away. Here we have a body of unelected officials telling the American people what they can and can't see/hear over public airwaves that their tax money supports. Run those asshole censors out on a rail, I say. This whole Janet Jackson breast clusterfuck has shown that these people are Draconian Puritans who make a living off of being fucking uptight prudes. They need to get real jobs.
Sometimes censorship is called for, but the Moral Police have abused it to further their own right-wing Christian agenda. I'm fucking sick of it.
--Mammary glands cause underwear tents.
-Not Janet Jackson's.
You aree gay.
Sure, the paparazzi shots from a few weeks ago gave us a better look at them and they're rather sad looking but they are still boobs.
By our very nature, males are attracted to all boobs. Sure there are exceptions like granny's but a breast is a breast, if you see one and youre not getting wood; you are gay.
Just leave you wife, whip out the quiche, put on will and grace and buy your Ellen tickets, you ARE a friend of Dorothy.
THe sooner you realize this, the happier you will be fantasizing about Taco's taco.
zack
this is sort of a grey area, first its not really pirating if everyone has the right to view it. also if pirating of tv signals is that large of a problem, then it has to be obvious that people dont want to be told what to watch (or watch dumbass Enzyte commercials), they want to choose what they're going to watch (ie. on demand). I collect TV shows on my computer so i can fast forward/rewind/replay, watch an entire season from start to finish, not have to wait till next week to see the next episode. and not have to sit through Enzyte commercials (as mentioned before). also do you really lose or gain any money if someone watches a show from a tv or via the internet, either way i ignore advertisements, which is where the tv goons make their money. finally the price of a season of a tv show on DVD is nuts, something like $100+, i certainly wouldnt pay that (when its free on the internet), especially for the crap thats on tv these days. so if any MPAA/RIAA/TV lobbyists are out there, you guys are shooting yourself in the foot by trying to control every aspect of what people do with the media they buy/view/etc, and also you idiots are fighting a downhill battle.
The author insists that monopolies would be impossible with a privatized radio spectrum, and that the total value of the radio spectrum would be $1T. The cost of ANY market has never prevented a monopoly in that market. And in the case of radio services, which are most certainly market-based, it would take one large company in a matropolitan area only a few billion dollars to snatch up all local spectrum (or to forcibly buy out smaller companies who refuse to give up their slices), and have a genuine monopoly in that market.
Additionally, the author suggests that with privatized radio spectrum, a TV operator could sell his 6MHz of TV spectrum to another radio operator for an arbitrary price. The problem with this is that consumer radio equipment would then be made available to transmit in this part of the radio spectrum, which is not necessarily allocated for this new service in other parts of the country. You end up with:
1) consumers causing interference with other services when they take their equipment to other areas,
2) more incompatibilities between equipment used in different parts of the country, unless the makers of the equipment redesign their products to work in other (read: all) parts of the available radio spectrum, which in turn WILL drive up prices of the equipment, and
3) more proprietary and unpublished specifications for radio/television services. The current FCC enforces certain rules to make sure that radio channels are used within their bandwidth, modulation, geographical, and power limits. When private companies buy spectrum and all rights to determine HOW to use it, they can easily force consumers and partners to purchase equipment that will only work with their protocols and frequencies. Imagine if HyperBigMegaCorp bought all of the television spectrum in a growing metropolitan area, and started selling televisions that only work in their area, and sublicensed their frequencies to television stations that transmitted with their own transmission protocols. Anyone who moves in or out of that metro area would be forced to buy new equipment, and potentially pay license fees to use the services in their market which might be completely free in any other area.
There are so many good things that the FCC has done for radio services in the united states, that have saved US consumers hassle and money, that the few bad things (mistakes and otherwise) they've come up with can be forgiven. I'm much happier with standardized, published policies on radio spectrum which is enforced nationally, rather than a completely fragmented radio spectrum which is micromanaged by corporations only interested in money and market share.
No. At least not like that.
WTF. Seriously. Selling carrier frequencies like land? That only works in theory.
First of all, in radio communications, there's a thing called propogation. Suppose I own 144.000MHz, what happens to me if I "bleed" over into 144.100? Who will tell me to stay in my band? For how far of a distance do I own this 144.000MHz? What's to stop me from bumping up my power from a few watts to 5kW and blasting out my corner of the state?
Who will police amateur radio? Give/Restrict access? Or will the airwaves become like CB became, full of know-nothings that just bought the right equipment? Will companies just have to keep stepping up their power to drown out RFI?
Obviously this man has done very little with radio, and is just the policical columnist for CNet.
I applaud the idea to question the current structure of hte FCC, but bad way to go about trying to fix it.
(...and, yes, I am. My callsign is N5DUX.)
The US is required to enforce the treaties. It would be virtually impossible to rely on international courts to silence a treaty violating transmitter in the US without the help of the government. The courts/judiciary are not well equiped or willing to handle it
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
And many "unregulated" bodies.
The IEEE is another such orginization, as is ANSI.
Most organizations will form some "non-profit" orginization in which they will be members, simply due to the need for standardization.
In some instances where heavy competition exists, de-regulation works, it takes time, but it works.
let's remove ALL the bricks. The entire system is more broken than not. For every intelligent decent thing they do, they do a dozen unintelligent obviously scam ridden corrupt things. That's a terrible "ROI".
Then I could build that massive jamming antenna I've always wanted so that I can play jokes on my neighborhood, briefly knocking out tv reception whenever, say, the neighbor's dog barks. And after a couple dozen times they'll all blame the dog. That'll teach that dog to chase my cats.
Before the flames start... here's why...
Due to dodgy clone hardware companies refusing to put their name on various products, I've used the FCC-ID to locate the manufacturer of a few pieces of hardware, in an effort to get it to work.
As far as regulating comms goes, i couldn't give a hoot for the FCC, but as far as tracking manufacturers down, its been quite useful for me in the past.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The entire Bush administration should be abolished and then the people of the Earth should declare worldwide peace and conquer all with love. You and I both know that we deserve a better world then the one which we live in. Make it today, not tomorrow.
"National tv with children watching and people feel the need to "push the envenlope." "
This doesn't even make any sense.
First of all, how could you possibly blame this on the media/CBS/TV Stations, Second of all, the FCC didn't do anything to stop it, so what good did they do?
What can you do? Punish Janet Jackson? For what? Is she responsible for your children? If the FCC is responsible for content. They don't regulate Janet's artistic expression, the networks only had their camera broadcasting "facts", so again I ask, what can the FCC do about this?
No, its time for the FCC to go.
They're trying to:
1) Determine what words can be used by who when they broadcast
2) Make sure the MPAA feels safe broadcasting
3) Is doing their best to make sure clear channel gets as much of the artificial monopoly known as "AM and FM" as possible.
Its time for the FCC to go. They don't do anything but serve rich powerful interest these days. They certainly are doing their best to hold back technology to favor incumbants, they're way too interested in trying to regulate free speech.
Its time for the FCC to go.
The original purpose of the FCC was to do one thing and one thing only - make sure that people weren't allowed to 'war' over the broadcast spectrum by trying to get in the way of each other's signals. That was their only purpose. The demarking of the radio dial into discrete 'channels' was for this purpose only. The necessity of needing to register to be allowed to use a channel was for this purpose only. It was purely to make sure that if big bully company X wants to compete on the airwaves with little company Y, it cannot use the technique of drowning out company Y's signal. It has to compete on content instead. This is where the original ban on a company owning more than a few channels in an area came from - Since there are a limited number of them, one could use the tactic of buying them all up to prevent a competitor from being able to register them. This is also where the original requirement on broadcasting your callsign every so often came from. If you want to buy the licensing to use a limited resource, you have to prove you are actually making use of it and not just buying it for the sake of keeping it out of someone else's hands. So they made the requirement that you must broadcast at least your callsign if nothing else, a certain number of times a day, in order to keep using that channel and keep your license valid. (This is why radio stations are constantly butting in to tell you what station you're listening to, by the way.)
If *that* was all the FCC did, then they wouldn't be a problem. They'd be no more dictatorial than your local county registrar that you have to post your title deed to as proof you own a piece of land in the event of a dispute.
What made the FCC bad is when they used their licensing power to start dictating other things about a broadcast. Instead of just regulating the demarkation of the radio spectrum so that people don't step all over each other's signals, they started withholding licenses purely for content reasons, and that's what needs to be repealed.
Take away the regulation by content, but keep the regulation that separates RF frequencies from each other.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
" Asking for decency during one particular type of broadcast is not the same as supressing free speech or censorship."
What *is* decency anyway? Who gets to decide?
What you're saying is:
"Well of course its limiting free speech, but somebody's got to do it or else we'll have naked boobies at halftime during the superbowl"
To which I reply, "so what!".
It isn't the government's job to make sure you feel comfortable watching the superbowl. That will be decided by the NFL. The Superbowl isn't a public event. Its a private event and you either watch it or you don't.
Lets look at facts: Janet won't bare her breasts at the superbowl anymore. Nor will anyone for the foreseeable future.
Do you know why? It has nothing to do with the government or FCC. It has to do with people complaining to the NFL that they didn't like it. The NFL took the action to protect their revenue.
I fail to see how the FCC is or should be part of this process.
Should the FCC fine Janet Jackson? Why? Are they in charge of public morals? Does broadcasting something give such awesome power that all other rights are trumped by the need to regulate this speech?
I think you're a typical person who think the government should be responsible for your comfort level. To which I can only say "grow up".
Besides, if babies suck on boobies, why will it harm them to look at somebody else's boobies?
Think through stuff. Half the population has boobies. The entire world has seen them. And yet the world still gets by.
In any case, good luck finding an unused spot on the FM band. Oh, and you have to prove to the FCC that your school's station won't interfere with any existing stations within a frequency range from 0.6MHz above to 0.6MHz below your operating frequency. Is your school's station broadcasting material that doesn't cast a flattering light on the government? Be ready for the letter from the FCC notifying you that your state's Department of Highway Safety is taking your frequency over, so you can't broadcast anymore - and since you're no longer licensed, you must dispose of your broadcasting equipment within 90 days or be fined for possessing unlicensed broadcasting equipment. By the way, nobody will buy the stuff that you paid big bucks for because they can't get licensed for it either.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. See the FCC's page on LPFM for what the FCC themselves say about LPFM.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Who are these dummies that write these columns? By his own argument anyone with out big bucks would be excluded from the market for frequency. The FCC was put into place to dole out freqs and if they just stuck to that everything would be fine. Unfortunately there are those in positions of power that which to make it a moral issue they have to regulate that also. If it were all privatized companies will try and fill it with advertising just as they do now. Now that is what I call a public good;(
" It really is hard to call it censorship when we all know what is under her clothes."
Assuming you aren't joking, I think you're pretty f'ed up in the head. Who even thinks of stuff like this.
Do you actually look at girls and say to yourself "I know what is underneath her clothes". Its disturbing that you even think that way. Spooky.
"By our very nature, males are attracted to all boobs."
No. We're attracted to attractive boobs.
Saggy middle-aged boobs? I guess you think national geographic is "the shit" when they show saggy native boobs.
Let me be frank with you. The average mail thought Janet Jackson's boob was as erotic as, er, watching paint dry. It was *boring* and non-erotic. It was pathetic that she felt the need to show us how run down that body of her has gotten. She used to be hot 20 years ago. Now its repulsive.
If you don't believe me or start seeing things like casting decisions where heroes look like me and villains look like you -- just remove your tin-foil hats, stop looking for black helicopters and go get counseling with my brother-in-law who charges a mere $150/hour -- once a week for the rest of your life. (If you're an underemployed bitter American boomer programmer he'll provide you with a sliding scale if you'll wash his dirty underwear.)
Thank you.
And remember -- you can believe me because I'm always right and I never lie.
Seastead this.
...the patent office.
No, we can't do without the FCC quite yet. But they're doing a lot more than they really should be.
They need to be reduced to telling us we can't bring cell phones on airplanes and can't transmit on s3kr1t FBI tactical frequencies. Aside from that, hey. Screw 'em.
Let's get rid of the FAA while we're at it. I'm sure the airlines will "self regulate" and Do The Right Thing (tm).
"if the public's sensibilities are being offended -- the FCC isn't doing its job as the custodian of a shared public resource. "
You can say the public airwaves were used to offend some people, but I can say just as easily point out the superbowl is a private affair. It is owned and controlled by the NFL.
Did you know that the morning after the superbowl, the NFL had already distanced itself from the "event", and had taken steps to make sure the public wasn't offended by the broadcast.
Do you know why?
Because the NFL exists to make money, and if Janet's booby is causing the NFL to lose money, or potentially lose money, then the NFL could and *did* take steps to make sure it didn't happen again.
So next year, there won't be nude boobies. NOT because of the FCC, but because of the NFL.
Did the FCC play a role? No. Were they needed? No.
My quarrel is not with Janet Jackson; My quarrel is with people like you who claim a right to be not offended. You are offended, so you want the government to do something.
I don't see that right *anyware* in the constituion. But I do see a basic constituional right that says I can say what I like. And people like you simply think "free speech" goes too far and so must be regulated.
You're the problem. The FCC is a reflection of people like you who claim a right to be not offended.
"Do you actually look at girls and say to yourself "I know what is underneath her clothes". Its disturbing that you even think that way. Spooky."
Are you telling me you don't know what a naked woman looks like? Heh.
"Derp de derp."
Sure allowing the current radio, TV, and cellular companies buy up spectrum may be ok if the only users of it were for-profit companies. What about hamm radio, wi-fi, and the various other consumer wireless gadgets? The law abolishing the FCC would have to set those aside like the national parks. There would still have to be some agency to help police that otherwise, there would be people deciding to abusing it.
But face it reality. Congress has had opportunities to disband agencies that were obsolete decades ago, but haven't. Why would they do that to an agency that many perceive as necessary to keep some sort of order in the airwaves? The FCC will die when SS causes the rest of the govt to crater, not any sooner.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
"ut what makes you think ABC was not trying to push the edges and got caught?"
Because CBS broadcast the event.
" thus the severe punishment"
Which punishment was that? There was no punishment.
Do you realize how wrong you are? You don't have any of the basic facts correct.
Besides, you're missing the point that the FCC shouldn't be in the business of worrying about nipples and pasties. But you seem very comfortable with them in that role. I'd say you're kinda screwed up in the head.
You're one of those people they call retards, aren't you?
No one watches them; all the native Latin speakers died out long ago, (and the Pope doesn't count, he just mumbles...) so we're screwed.
The FCC, like the Environmental Protection Agency, are ostensibly designed for the benefit of the citizens. This, obviously, has not been the case. Both of these agencies have been used to further very distinct agendas- from excising passages on global warming from its year end reports to giving Rupert Murdorch Carte Blanche while attacking XM Radio and Howard Stern... Would that the FCC actually regulated the market. That could prove useful. What it's doing now, however, is tilting scales with gold. Get rid of it.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
Why are we so worked up over something every woman has and just about every child has seen and god forbid, even sucked on, since day one?
Get over your issues.
Big changes are bad. Regardless of if we have a central system like the FCC, or a wild west every transmitter for yourself system. A sudden switch to the opposite extreme is not a good idea.
Identify the problems and take care of them. The FCC was created for a certain purpose and has incrementally evolved over the years into what it is now. The people in charge have made some bad decisions.
Still there is a lot of good. It's very important to be able to set aside spectrum for certain uses. We can't have every machine trying to interfere with every other one. Then the expensive/powerful machines just shut out the others. TV's and telephones - the two things the FCC has ruled over for so long work great. I don't need to go out and get my TV or phone upgraded every 2 years.
Well put. May I also point out that radio astronomy would be destroyed overnight without regulation. Radio Astronomy needs a tiny bit of the radio spectrum, but now that it's getting crowded, all the communications people look at the little empty hole in the spectrum and say "oh we want that."
To which the answer is "no, you can't have it. ANY of it. If any of you use it, you destroy radio astronomy."
For full disclosure, I'm a libertarian writing a series of articles on how badly the FCC has fucked up over the years. I'm not finished yet, but I'm planning on getting IBOC wrapped up sometime this week. It's very nice to see that slashdotters are getting into this, maybe I'll send the article to one of the editors.
Let me first say that Dean is a very smart guy, and for somebody that apparently doesn't know about the guts of the FCC he is definetely pointing in the right direction. Though I wouldn't say the FCC should be completely abolished (the FCC is, after all, more like hundreds of regulatory systems rolled into one entity than a single one doing a couple things). The FCC does do -some- good things, and the idea of policing the radio spectrum isn't neccessarily a bad one, but the FCC is a terrible bungler of policy and the no-compromise command-and-control system is a horrible one at best. Low power radio licenses that would have otherwise been available are denied, not because there isn't space, but simply because the FCC doesn't want to lose their control over the bands, coupled with lobbyists pushing rat bills through congress telling the FCC what to do. They recently adopted a digital radio system (IBOC) that in hybrid mode increases per-station bandwidth by up to 50% thus increasing interference and reducing range, while at the same time signifigantly reducing quality on the only band where audio could actually be improved, the AM broadcast band (and possibly even reducing the quality of the FM one). As for moral regulation, the organization is a total joke and a gross slap in the face of the concept that government shouldn't regulate speech and content.
Not to mention that some services are not susceptible to these regulations, thus giving cable and satellite an upper hand over broadcast. Telecom regulation is perhaps the biggest joke of all, and will be obsoleted by voice over IP systems anyways, which are again not susceptible to these regulations and thus have an upper hand and prosper quickly due to the fact that they are a technological improvement and the FCC isn't there to grind progress to a halt. I remember reading an article a while ago regarding phone numbers that can change with service, where the author said that greedy companies would keep it from working. I got a good laugh out of this, considering that Hong Kong allowed for the same thing years ago and it's worked stellarly for them (I then had somebody suggest that Hong Kong commerce wasn't heavily regulated because their companies are "less evil" than US ones, which was equally hilarious). Another great thing about the telecom industry is that it has become another way for stupid politicians to tax you: Last time I checked, my phone bill had a $5-$10 tax on it. Enough with broadband tax, let's get rid of the phone tax too!
Why does the FCC act like this? Firstly, because it is run by morons. Its commissioners are rejects of higher positions in Washington politics, dominated by businessmen and lawyers rather than technocrats and engineers. It's not their fault, in my opinion, they do the best they can, but you need to thoroughly understand your trade before you attempt to regulate it. Also, with things like IBOC, you are absolutely correct about lobbyist powers being the primary influence: IBOC increases interference big time, -WAY- more than Low Power FM would have caused, so why isn't the NAB raising a stink about it? Simple: Because most of these big radio monopolies have investments in Ibiquity, the company that made IBOC and holds its patents and licensing. When Americans are forced to throw away hundreds of millions of perfectly good radios, it's these companies that are going to get the royalties.
Here's my libertarian catch-all: the FCC is too big, stupid, and corrupt to handle most of its regulation properly, and there's a lot of things it shouldn't be regulating at all. One thing's for sure, the FCC is overreaching at best, and society as a whole would benefit if a very large amount of the FCC was broken apart.
Let's not abolish the FCC - let's just place George Carlin in charge of it.
there is an online petetion at www.stopfcc.com they need one million signatures and they allready have 200,000 the word just needs to be spread.
Why should the Government sell, when it can rent? Auction off spectrum rights by the year. Now that would bring in some real money. Every year, a bidding war for TV stations.
In the 70s, we had one muthafuckin' huge regulator: the IBA (Independent Broadcasting Authority). Rather than accepting complaints about a programme after the broadcast, the IBA pre-vetted its programmes. All was good, and the IBA regulated commercial TV (in the UK, ITV and Channel 4-NOT the BBC), commercial radio (again, not the BBC) and radio waves. This system worked well, and under it, everything worked brilliantly-some truly excellent programming was made under the IBA by ITV and the array of independent contractors that made up Channel 4's output. This went on until the early 90s when...
Thames TV showed a programme heavily critical of the Thatcher government called Death on the Rock, which referred to the army shooting two IRA men-Thatcher petitioned the IBA to not let Thames broadcast it, but they still did so in the interests of free speech. Thatcher was not best pleased, and in 1991 she kicked the living shit out of the IBA and aplit it up into several shitty little mini-regulators, like the ITC (Independent Television Commission), Radio Authority. These did not pre vet programmes, and instead accepted complaints after the event, after the damage was done, so to speak. This, coupled with Thatcher's deregulation, led to ITV becoming a veritable piece of shit. Think NBC is bad? Come over and watch ITV. It SUCKS PENIS. You need regulation and to go with it a good regulator, else things degenerate. All that the FCC needs is its rules updated and a good kick up the ass. They need to pre-vet programmes, but not to the AmeriPuritan standards-how about OUR standards? Standards which fucking WORK? Tell the jackasses who scream "ITS FOR TEH CHLDIFREN!!!!1" to fuck off and die, and not to get so cranky or pissed off when their kid sees a tit, and feel better when their kid sees blood, gore and aching death in The Passion Of Christ. Dammit, call for change!
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
We could call it a feasability study.
Need Mercedes parts ?
This blinding faith in the free market is so obnoxious. Deregulation shall save us! Set the corporations decide! The free market is all knowing!
This eagerness to loosen all reins on corporations is just plain fucking stupid. I'll gladly take a bureaucratic institution over a mindless, souless corporation any day of the week. The FCC has to listen to and abide by the philosophical concerns of Presidents, Legislators, the Courts, and the People. By contrast, all corporations have to listen to is the sound of the cash register. As long as they hear it, they could give a flying fuck about what the rest of society thinks.
This is a no brainer. Just look at what happnened with the deregulation of the electric grid. Do we really want to do the same thing wiht telecommunication so AT&T can become the next Enron?
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
HDTV
Without the FCC, it is likely there would be 20 different standards for HDTV, instead of the currently favored 4 standards, depending on your local broadcast support:
SDTV at 720x480i
SDTV at 720x480p
HDTV at 1280x720p
HDTV at 1920x1088i
Would you have preferred a different format for each TV station? That is what you would have without the FCC to try to cull it some.
Even with the FCC leading them, the media industries still have managed to split the usable HDTV band between these 4 formats for most US terrestrial DVB, making it difficult (read: expensive) for the consumer, as usual.
People need to wise up and write Congress.
Let your feelings be known one way or another.
If you appreciate free television, your only hope is with the FCC simply because corporations care more about revenue than charity.
Look at cable television. You pay money, yet you still get commercials. Seems lopsided to me.
Is the picture any better? Well, I have seen Warner Digital Cable and I can tell you that it sucks. DirecTV sucks even worse.
On Warner Digital Cable, all of the non-HDTV stuff looks like crap on HDTV. Looks worse than a composite feed.
Bad encoders give laser speckle effect or in DirecTV case, they drop out the darker colors making things look really blotchy. (macroblocks)
Sure the 6 Warner HDTV channels look good, but I'm not paying 40 dollars for 6 channels, 4 of which I can get with a regular antenna.
Without the FCC, all of these broadcasters would be free to charge users for normal public service like news and weather.
You would have no free PBS nor free ABC nor free CBS over-the-air. NBC doesn't exist anymore, so it doesn't matter what they broadcast.
I suspect a model without FCC intervention would be a media control grabbing model that would allow them to encrypt broadcast FM radio and DTV so you could only tune-in with authorized players, with the data paths sealed in epoxy.
Do you really want DNA enabled headphones and HDTV just to watch 90 year old David Lee Roth trying to sing Running With The Devil?
Remember: through-out the 1980's the CrO2 tapes were 6 bux for 2x60min, not because the tapes were any more costly to make, but simply because they reproduced the sound better. Metal tapes suffered the same artificial price barrier, YEARS after they qualified for mass production status.
Here's the funny thing.
MP3 quality is less than the FM radio they were so concerned about having copied with CrO2 tapes.
So it is the exact opposite of the war that was fought in the 1980's against CrO2 and later metal tapes. This war is not about preventing low-grade copies of FM broadcasts on metal tapes, oh no.
Nor is it about preventing low-grade MP3's from spreading on the internet. Any media person knows there is no such thing as bad publicity.
It's solely about charging you no matter what, how, or when you want to listen to anything.
They want to charge you more for less quality, and then charge you even more when you ask for something that doesn't sound like it was done on Edison's wax cylinder phonograph.
One could argue they just want to charge you more because they are bloodsucking leeches and pariahs on society, but that's more an opinion, I think.
Media guilds, wow, is the Inquisition next?
Are we so stupid that we will fall back into the Dark Ages of Knowledge, when all is controlled by a family, tribe or passel of pinstripe suits?
These are the questions that are worth asking.
The founders didn't implement the idea of public domain during a fit of whimsy. It was carefully and methodically thought out, primarily to correct the ills of the guilds the founders had seen first-hand, with their own eyes, and to not repeat these same acts of oppression in our new country.
Let us not forget this in our haste to embrace the digital revolution.
He did not mention the work of Lessig and others on using the spectrum as a commons and how that may be done with no real interference or problems and why that is better. A useful URL leading to some links is at http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/spectrum/
The FCC has a hand in far too many things that could be done as well or better (to the extent they need doing) by the private sector and the courts. In particular neither the FCC or any other part of government has and right to determine what is "decent" a la a simple breast being viewed. Only in America (and other backwards fundie dominated countries) could such a furor arise over so little.
I think the important thing is to prevent the FCC from applying its traditional regulations to the Internet. The Internet is the future of communications, both wired and wireless. The great thing about Internet is it integrates all physical means of communication. Once you put something in IP, there's no telling what physical medium it will travel over... copper, coaxial, fiber or wireless.
What can you do on traditional airwaves that you cannot conceivably do over IP? Talk on the phone? Watch TV? Broadcast live events? Listen to the radio? If you look at the current IP solutions to these options, the only limitation today is bandwidth, IP allocation (IPv4) and accessibility (price/location). These problems can be resolved if we focus on them instead of trying to keep traditional communication pipes alive.
This is not to say that there will not be traditional niche uses of analog airwaves, such as emergency police, fire and military as well as civilian emergency channels like HAM radio. The law can protect these channels, and the FCC can continue to help the electronic components industry to ensure the devices do what they were created to do without interfering. But regulate airwaves the way it does today?
The only issues we have today are not enough bandwidth and low or free Internet accessible to everyone everywhere in the US. These are the problems we should be solving; while also preventing unnecessary regulation of the Internet.
Cable companies already have digital TV. They are doing this to preempt the inevitable. Video and audio will be available by, for and from the masses soon, including large companies, small organizations and individuals, as soon as bandwidth enables it. You'll soon be able to use the Internet to watch THOUSANDS of TV stations from anywhere in the world with the bandwidth to broadcast, just as you were able to use it to listen to THOUSANDS of radio stations, although I'm not sure how much of an impact recent regulations on web broadcasting has had to-date.
The regulations on Internet radio favoring large traditional media companies over free home-based broadcasting stations are a perfect example of how regulations of the Internet are our only concern today. To learn about this problem, google for "save Internet radio". You'll discover a lot of concern over the issues by a lot of.
Build a bigger pipe (Internet II?). Prevent unnecessary expansion of regulation on the Internet. Ensure that everyone can access it anywhere, including rural residents.
If you do this, what will you lack on the Internet that traditional analog airwave-broadcasting spectrum can offer? Imagine any use today, and imagine how IP can enable it.
Look at CBs, for instance. With IPv6, even CBs can have their own IP addresses, and use any frequency that allows them to connect to the Internet. You can create "virtual" ranges to simulate physical proximity, while also permitting the CBs to talk to anyone on the world at any time using VoIP or whatever.
The FCC's lack of relevance isn't because of where they are today. It's because of where tomorrow's Internet will take us. Traditional spectrum is becoming digital quickly, and traditional communication mediums are converging as they become nodes on the Internet. The physical spectrum the device uses only becomes relevant to connect them to the Internet. It will have very little to do with the actual communication (voice, web, video) that then commences.
Open Standards Portal
If any agency deserves to go the way of the Dodo, it's the US patent office, not the FCC.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
repeat
If market_is_mess then
begin
writeln('Market needs regulation');
Create_Institution
end;
if assigned(institution) and (institution=bureacratic) then
begin
Writeln('Cry wolf over institution, say market can regulate itself');
Writeln(stderr,'Communism failed');
Kill_institution;
end;
until hell=frozen;
And this would be different from our current system HOW?
Seriously, though, the FCC caused the problem of cellphones "that only work half the time or in certain parts of the country". Deliberately, by design. Irrational fear of monopoly led to auctions in which only local providers could bid for only a couple of slots per region. It took a huge effort for providers to stitch together enough coverage to sell the coast-to-coast plans people wanted, starting from the mess the FCC created with the initial cellphone auctions.
Bad coverage and poor reception is something a freer market would be good at fixing. The FCC is sand in the gears: the way it makes it difficult for people to consolidate frequencies, exchange lower-valued uses for higher ones and offer new services outweighs any reasonable estimate of the good they might do.
I play Nerd-Folk!
And the patent office, too.
The FCC should be abolished and its Commisioners executed starting with Colin Powell Jr.
This
DOn't be so stupid.
I look at girls and say to myself: "I wish I could see what is underneath her clothes and then run my hands and tongue all over it "
No but, yeah but, no but...
you had me at #!
No it can't. Why because there are to many jerks out there who believe if it is legal to do then it is right thing to do (like the guy next door who plays his music loudly at 2:00 am while what he is doing is legal, the right thing to do for most cases is to turn down the music so the rest of the community can sleep). Even with these laws in place they will see how far they will bend until it breaks (like going 75 mph in a 65 mph zone, while most cops wont pull you over if your driving 75 and almost none of the will pull you over at 70, but at 80 and faster there is a good chance if they see you they will pull you over).
Now I am not the one who believes that the government should keep making more laws, because laws are very static and don't allow much wiggle room to do the right thing while not following the law (Say talking on you cell phone while driving in NY, when someone in you car is in a medical emergency and you are currently on a highway without any stopping zones). But unfortunately people cannot regulate themselves and abuse their rights thus causing laws that limits their rights.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The FCC does much more than relegulate who buys and controls the frequency spectrum that the public sees, both comercial and public use (Amature Radio, remote control cars, etc). It also deals a lot with RF safety, boundaries, military and civilian spectrum boundaries, actually defining on maps where the towers are and how much power they output. Who else is going to say my remote control for my TV shoulded interfer with my next door neighbors mobile phone? Who is forcing the phone companies to let me keep my phone number when I change carriers on my mobile? The industry certainly doesn't want us to. Granted I'm biased by my father working there, but he was one of those engineers that does much of the research on RF safety harzards and geospatial mappings that everybody seams to like. I for one like that fact that there are fences are the microwave dishes so I don't litterally cook.
Yes, the FCC should get out of the censorship business, the sponsors do a much better job at it as another commentor stated. Besides, 1st amendment ring a bell. The FCC should stick what it was intented to do: make sure everybody plays nicely together. With an industry with this many big money players, there is a need for some one to play mother to a bunch of greedy little children who don't know yet how much they really affect everyone else.
-tom c.
1: NO industry can "regulate itself." Look at Enron. Look at the whole energy industry! Allowing ANY industry to regulate itself really means "Allowing a free-for-all."
2: The FCC as it currently stands, is ineffective at anything more than handing out spectrum to the highest bidder, eliminating competition, causing the news to be more and more biased, and getting America all in an uproar over Janet Jackson's boob. However, when stations in general don't serve the public interest, nothing is done.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
If the FCC goes away, I just think about the signal jammer I will have. I will no longer have to listen to anyone else's radio anywhere I go.
Get a free ipod.
http://www.spectrumpolicy.org
But this sugestions shows that he does not understand how the technology has changed and why this approach to the radio spectrum no longer makes sense.
Nobody should own any frequency band, instead a standard should be defined for transmitting devices to share a wide band of frequencies (that's how wi-fi works in relatively narrow band).
Think of the radio spectrum like one big Ethernet, where if all device follow correct procedures, everyone can share the spectrum and no on has to own it.
Google Software Radio and UWB.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Abolish the FCC and it is the industry, not the market, that would regulate itself, meaning, they'd do anything they wanted to do. We'd very likely see an ever-increasing aggregation of production and distribution in a very few, very large corporations. The Clear Channel phenomenon would spread until most profitable TV and radio stations, as well as local newspapers, were owned and programmed by a very few media giants. Content would deteriorate to the lowest common denominator. The remaining, unprofitable stations and newspapers would struggle to stay afloat while facing constantly decreasing revenue.
Eventually, the pendulum would swing back, and the public's dissatisfaction with the industry's behavior would propel the creation of FCC v.2.0.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Take away a man's right to say Fuck, and you've taken away his right to say Fuck the government.
I think Lenny Bruce said that.
wbs.
Huh?
Tailpipe.
Done.
Read, L
In Janet Jackson's case, you can run YOUR tongue all over it... I'll go find someone less repulsive.
I'm still trying to think of even one industry that is capable of regulating itself without becoming another airline industry............Nope still haven't thought of one.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
The only sources quoted in this article was from the Manhattan Institute, which is a conservative think tank; the only politician interviewed was a Republican. These aren't non-partisan voices, these are extremely partisan voices, voices of people who are trying to dismantle our government.
Deregulation has been a long string of disasters -the saving and loan disaster, Enron happened in part because the company fought off government regulation of Energy Futures. The Airline Industry was healtier under regulations than it is deregulated. The consolidation of media in this country has happened not because of regulations but because conservatives have consistently gutted the anti-trust statutes.
FCC = more government bloat = more tax payer dollars
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
The FCC is needed to ensure that the public airwaves are used fairly. They've done a pretty poor job of it lately but that doesn't negate their need. The airwaves are a limited resource so some regulation is necessary or the big guys will squash the little guys.
A reformed FCC should do 3 things:I'll say it again, yes.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Ah yes, a bare breast is damaging to young minds. Please. Not all of us are as repressed as you seem to be. You know, I hear you can watch lions doing the nasty on the Discovery Channel!
While i hate governmental intervention more then the average guy, powerful corporations are worse.
Companies have noone to answer to except the mighty dollar. ( in an unregulated scenario ).
At least with government you can ( in theory ) vote them out if they screw up.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
FCC Song
I've had a lot of contact with the folks at the FCC back in the late 90's. One gentlemen from the FCC explained why they were commissioned in the first place. Before the air waves were regulated, anyone could set up a radio station or the like. There was so much interference that important communications such as wireless telegraph were unreliable. The president at that time (Roosevelt?) thus commissioned the FCC to keep things sane.
It would be nuts to deregulate the airwaves! Could you imagine folks setting up some crazy 1kw transmitter on the 2.4GHz frequency? Very bad.
"Since then, those formerly communist nations have privatized resources formerly owned by their governments, with remarkable results. Estonia is Europe's new economic wonder: revenue from state-owned property is a smaller percentage of the economy than it is in the United States, and its economy is growing more than twice as fast as ours."
The results weren't remarkable so much as they were predictable. As the federal government in the United States continues to grow, the economy of the United States will continue to shrink. Businesses will continue to move overseas until the US has an economy the size of North Korea.
The FCC is a symptom, not a problem. The problem is figuring out how to construct a government to ensure liberty for the people rather than fueling big government and big business. The FCC is but one branch of a centralized (so-called "federal") government that continues to usurp power contrary to the Tenth Amendment.
Google for "David Reed Open Spectrum" for introduction or check the papers at Reed's site for details of some protocols.
I'm sure New York public service would disagree with you. Hundreds of hams congregated on the New York city area to provide professional communications while nothing else was available. Just because a ham has a ticket doesn't make him professional, but many of us train with local, state, and federal disaster agencies. Many hams with are able to provide power long term or indefinitely when there is no other available source.
You're right, trained professionals can do anything we can with our equipment, but, without hams, who is going to pay for the training? How are you going to amass a group as large and trained as the pool of emergency-ready amateur radio operators?
BPL will not just destroy amateur spectrum, it will destroy most all HF spectrum, from on top of the AM radio bands to 80mhz. Emergency communicators, hams or not, will not be able to get through it, either.
On Apple Input Peripherals: They're okay, I guess, but I was really hoping for a one-key keyboard and a 109-button mouse
Yeah, and how long do you expect that to take oh wise political correspondent?
Judges are busy enough dealing with ACTUAL property disputes. If the average time to hear a case in California is 6 years, how likely is it that the courts can effectively police the airwaves?
The next paragraph is even more laughable:
One fear is that some predatory monopolist, a Microsoft of the airwaves, would end up owning all of the spectrum. That won't happen. First, the market value of the spectrum would approach $1 trillion, out of the reach of any individual corporation. Second, antitrust laws would remain on the books. The Department of Justice could wield the Sherman Antitrust Act to challenge unlawful conduct and block mergers.
Uhm, if Justice wasn't willing to continue the fight against the actual Microsoft, what makes the author think it will fight against a "Microsoft of the airwaves"?
Yes, the FCC sucks. If it were up to me, I would take away its power to regulate "decency" and make it strictly a policeman of spectrum rights. But of course, the decency regulation is what validates its existence for average Americans who are afraid of Howard Stern and Janet Jackson's right breast.
So, unlike the author, I know that I won't get exactly what I want, and pigs won't fly.
I agree. I'm in the RF industry, and I can tell you from first hand experience that, while the FCC has many negative attributes, it carries some crucial resposibilities. The FCC governs the wireless spectrum; everything from defining bands for various devices, to ensuring the safety of the public. Look at Nigeria. As far as I have been informed, there is either no governmental regulation on RF, or the public doesn't pay any heed, (neither would surprise me, as the country rates in the top 5 as most corrupted countries). In Nigeria, the broadband spectrums, (2.4, 5.8GHz) are so unorganized that they are building long distance, high power links right on top of each other. Instead of working with an agency like the FCC to coordinate different company interests, they simply turn up the volume. Almost every piece of wireless broadband equipment has an amplifier on it, even those reaching only a few hundred yards, to say nothing of the ones going 10-20 miles. :) but on the other hand, when someone acts up, and puts up a pirate radio station, or causes interference into a legitimate channel, the FCC is generally there to bite them in the butt.
The FCC not only organizes this effort, but also enforces it. Sure, we frown on them for coming down like a ton of bricks on Janet's boob, (who wouldn't - frown I mean.
I agree that the FCC is slowing our technological progress down, but they also provide crucial services. I suppose my suggestion might be to melt them down and start over, creating, (immediately) an organization who can administer the airwaves, (and phone lines, etc.) and then figure out what else NEEDS to be included, without giving them free reign over all things communication related.
Raging in an online forum won't do anything for the world around you. To see change, you must take action.
I just checked my copy of the constitution, and as I suspected, I found no authority for the federal government to regulate electromagnetic radiation transmissions. I'll re-read it again though, just to make sure I didn't miss anything.
I did read something about "Congress shall make no law...", don't know what that's about. Has anyone told them that part?
There are several things about this story that bother me. I do believe the FCC provides useful and very important services. I also agree with this story that the FCC has become something it should never have been, the censor of "all that's right"[tm] and a tyrant dictator of the airwaves.
What's good:- Regulates frequencies to be used by various entities.
- Sets standards on EM radiation
What's currently bad:Personally, I think the broadcast spectrum should be leased, with companies that have leased having the right to release a frequency band at a maximum increase per year, 5 years, whatever (something for Congress to decide). This leasing should occur through the FCC (one of its only functions, or even sole function, in the "new order")
The FTC should be the watchdog for monopolistic practices on the airwaves. They should already be all over ClearChannel, as they own far too much in certain market areas. Of course, the FCC "monopoly" definition is reaching more than 80% (it's some x%) of the nation's population, not holding all the stations in a single locale. Which is more monopolistic, and more readily accomplished? Monopolies are not necessarily nationwide, if I own all the gas stations in Chicago, I am a monopoly, regardless of whether you can drive 50+ miles to get gas elsewhere.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
60 Hz or 50 Hz?.
30 frames-per-second or 25 frames-per-second?.
I agree that it should be abolished... The government has no place "regulating" anything we do. The government does not know what we want/need, we know what we want or need. Privatizing the industry would allow us to get what we want, when we want it, and how we want it.
(sorry if this doesn't make much sense as far as grammar, im sick and ive taken some dayquil. not good for thinking : )
-Red
I'm surprised no one has mentioned GNU Radio or the open spectrum concept in general.
There's no reason for the FCC to continue to exist, but this guy's idea of the alternative is just a little off.
"What if disputes over spectrum arose? The answer is simple. Whoever owned the rights to that slice of virtual real estate would locate the illicit broadcaster, march into the local courthouse and get a restraining order to pull the plug on the transmitter. Trespass is hardly a new idea, and courts are well-equipped to deal with it."
In general, I agree that the FCC does too much and is far too swayed by politics., especially in the picking of technology. HDTV and BPL are both losers, for the way that the FCC is trying to force them where they don't serve the interests of the public.
However, there are a number of radio services that are not 'owned' by anyone, like the amateur spectrum, who need to have the power of business limited. Believe me, the spectrum would vanish overnight if left to the free for all of deregulation. Government oversight, in the public interest is always better than the current scheme of government picking winners and losers so that the commissioners have nice places to land in private industry when they leave.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
The FCC needs a major overhaul, in terms of methods and purpose (at least as practiced.) But his solution fails to live up to the standards of property on which it depends.
The airwaves are legally the property of the public, and the FCC is essentially a hired landlord. They have no more right to sell off bands of spectrum than the park service has to parcel out bits of yellowstone.
The "solution" where those who wanted to broadcast would pay rent to a massive corporation would not resolve the big problems we already have: The drive to consolidate continues, the drive to censor anything that damages the advertisors / owners economic interests remains, and there is still a lot more money to be collected by limiting access to a powerful few rather than opening the spectrum for general use.
It would be far better for the FCC to act as a standards-approving body in an open spectrum environment. Limit their authority to approving and enforcing popularly supported methods of sharing spectrum, and providing forums for through which local communities can enforce local decency requirements on local broadcasts. I'm leaving the details to others, no self-respecting slashdotter should be asking what open spectrum is or whether it really works.
Times have changed and the FCC has become an archaic institution with enourmous redundancy and a huge overhead. Now it is about time to abolish it and pave the way for a new era free of old and irrational regulations and suitable for a modern, free, and market-driven environment.
Ask the 19th century. Or Gordon Gekko. Or Kenneth Lay.
In the US, the airwaves are legally public property. The FCC licenses bits of the spectrum in broadcast range defined areas for private and public use. This (theoreticallly) makes sure that no nasty people can spam the airwaves with, as an example: ultrawideband noise, and thus render RF communications useless. If you RTFA, the only recourse in a privatized spectrum without the FCC is to sue for trespass. Can you afford to sue the 800 lb. gorilla "stepping on" your spectrum?
The problems Declan McCullagh says the FCC leaves behind are not solved by abolishing the FCC. Ask HAMs if the FCC actually does anything right. Do we want to lose that with no promise of anything to gain? Solving the issues DM raises will require government intervention on the same scale (if not larger) than the current FCC.
The problem with the FCC is they have over-licensed a few corporate entities with too much of the spectrum. Clear Channel, for example... The US Military has switched to digital communications that share small portions of the sweetest RF bands, and the rest of it should be reclaimed for civil use. The FCC should be constrained by a constitutional ruling or specific legislation/amendment prohibiting them from rulemaking on the signal content. That would solve the "7 words" George Carlin whines about.
When you're done with that, then ask "is there anything left of the FCC worth keeping around?" DM's "I don't like this, therefore abolish it" is not clear thinking.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
But where is frequency space? Can anyone actually BE in it? What can you put there? How can you claim to be able to defend it if anyone, at any time, can disrupt what you do there simply by being there too, via interference?
Frequency space, although a very well-defined idea, is not a realm that anyone can inhabit or possess. It's inherently different from land and, I believe, cannot be owned.
Time Warner bought up all the independent cable providers and created their monopoly. That is not the definition of self regulation.
The FCC acted under the influence of corporate media interests back then; I have little doubt that the move to abolish the FCC is another conspiracy of the same.
A major media giant now owns the broadband cable into your home. If you're not satisfied with the service, you don't have any alternatives - Time Warner owns them all, you're stuck with them.
Replace "broadband cable" with "radio bands" and "wireless communications" and ask yourself if you really want those resources in the hands of a sole media conglomerate. If you thought popular radio was bad today, then it'll get much worse when the "self regulating" wireless industry moves to barricade the independent radio stations out of existence.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
I just RTFA, and I am starting to wonder now if Howard Stern WTFA. (The "W" stands for "wrote." I will let you guess what the "F" stands for.)
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
While I think the FCC needs an overhaul almost as much as the IRS, I do still think the FCC has a purpose.
... it's unregulated and it is quite useful, but it is also a total noisy mess.
Given how much hell I have keeping my 802.11b ISP connection stable enough to use on a weekly basis, I can't imagine what the wireless life would be like if no one was regulating the basic service channels. Yes, I know 2.4GHz is -unregulated- but that is the point
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
The Government should create information "road" just like they created the internet. And not sell of the public spectrum to rich people. We need a bigger broader 'internet' including the 'all' the wireless airwaves and new tech like the aricle in Discovery about directial handheld wireless phone/pda's.
Allowing corporations or special interest to control our speech and our airwaves is very wrong.
We all live with local laws dealing with the audio and visual spectrums every day. You can't just set up a loudspeaker on your roof and piss off your neighbors.
Why is radio so much more difficult to deal with?
-Z
Frankly I can tell you that this is the most stupid idea I ever heard for the last time. Anyone who thinks that dissolving such organisations like the FCC will make the world better is either a complete outsider or is completely nuts. And I can tell you this because I am working at something very similar to FCC. No matter the differences from country to country, I know that we both meet similar situations at our work. Let me present you some:
Frequency fistfights - this is not only a case of walkie-talkies and radios. It is a case of mobile phone corporations degradating its neighbors while playing tricks with base stations. Sometimes it reaches a serious fight where two or even three corporations create a complete blackout over a whole city.
Internet wars - Your traceroute shows a "Yves Rocher" path to reach your neighbor next block? The Berlin-Paris-New York routes are the result of eternal fights that go much further away from a simple economical reason. It is enough for two CEO's to hate each other for you to see peering not being made for years.
The super-pooper routers/switches/etc. - You buy something with hope that will make what is shown on the box. However it works badly or does not work at all. It occurs that developers messed protocols or just a byte in the middle. In a supervised market this looks much as an occasional nuisance. However any deregulation will bring the market to its knees and end in a mess of "made in USA - roughly near Ho-Chi-Min city". Example: In the highly deregulated market that Russia had in the 90's, after USSR's fall, this was the Hell in Flames.
Black Holes popping over the net - You come to a provider and find that he even does not know half of the network. The founders have gone long ago and the current admin is a fast promoted technical support guy with minimal knowledge of reality. Something goes wrong and we find tens of thousands of users hanged in a black hole as no one knows configs, projects, designs, schemes or even the names of the network systems...
That's the reason for such things as FCC should exist. By itself, the "Ephir" will turn into something worser than Dark Ages. However I do agree that most FCC's of this world are badly adapted to the realities of modern life. I would even say that they are horribly adapted to it. Besides they are overweighted by mega-corporations, high politics, corruption and cellulose bureaucracy. Besides many inside FCC's are not so "overlord" as they may seem to an complete outsider. They are people, sometimes that still live in the 70-80's of their youth. So their knowledge has serious gaps for our days. And this creates all the problems for which the FCC's are known. But if we dismiss them, there will be no self-regulation. There will be Megasofts and Meghards trying to eat every cent in our pocket.
Frankly the reasonable solution is always in the middle... Reform the FCC. Right now, that is what is happening here. Not as one would like, but still it is better than nothing.
The two main problems with the FCC are that it is slowed by bureaucratic excess and corrupted by the deep pockets of the large media companies. The recent morality push is more a personality/ego issue with the current director and a reflection on the priorities of the Bush administration.
Ideally, the solution to the current mess would be a thorough overhaul of the FCC and reallocation of its priorities and powers. There needs to remain some authority to require manufacturers to keep their devices to within the proper bandwidth but regulation over pricing and access to bandwidth should be conrolled more closely by congress. However slight, I believe there is still more accountability in this approach. There hopefully would also be more opportunity for non-business interests such as amateur radio to get a fair deal. Groups such as the IEEE and the various CE consortiums should also wield more influence, especially in the are of new and developing technologies. A little governmental heft could even help in keeping standards as standards and not targets.
Finally, content should be taken out of the FCC's purview altogether. No broadcast flags, v-chips, indecency fines, etc. Media companies don't need governmental assistance (and taxpayer funds) to add more layers of content protection. They have had a succesful history of dealing with the CE industry and getting their way. There also seem to be plenty of people able to support a marketplace for v-chips, self-censoring DVD players and the like. Focus only on the technical side of communications and you can chuck out a lot of time and energy wasted on preventing what information is actually communicated.
Is there a chance of this happening? Not in the near future but one can hope.
Since then, those formerly communist nations have privatized resources formerly owned by their governments, with remarkable results. Estonia is Europe's new economic wonder: revenue from state-owned property is a smaller percentage of the economy than it is in the United States, and its economy is growing more than twice as fast as ours.
... as in, a balance). Of course the Estonian economy is growing faster than the economy of the US. It's starting from ZERO! If the economy of Estonia were growing at the same rate as the US economy, they would be bad times indeed over there. Especially considering the fact that the US is currently fighting out of an economic recession. (Which, if you can imagine, is not good for the "economic growth" statistic.)
If I wanted to destroy my credibility, I would conclude my article with this paragraph. Apparently, that's exactly what he wanted to do... The US economy is the strongest in the world; its percentage of revenue from state-owned property has something to do with that (you need some
Basically, all of his points seemed dubious, but ending with this one shows that he deserves little to no credibility, and we should all expect, nay, hope, that the FCC will stick around to protect us from the large corporations for some time to come.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Politicians dictate policy and enforce it with guns.
Businesses develop policy and sustain it with dollars.
Sometimes politicians covet businesses, sometimes businesses covet politicians. Regardless, this pairing is a powerful force that upsets the balances of our democracy.
Destroy these alliances by taking the guns out of the hands of politicians.
The USA started with a few basic ideas: prosecute criminals (where crime equals victim and malicious intent), keep people to their word if they swear to (enforce contracts), promote standards (money, units of measure), protect people from religion, people protect their communities and enforce their laws.
Today it resembles a much different beast. One that imprisons people who have harmed no one, one that codifies religious dogma as law, one where armed men roam communities looking for "criminals", where our soldiers invade countries that have never harmed us, and one where businesses are more valuable constituents than civilians.
Lets abolish the FCC. Afterwards, we can hit the FDA, FTC, DOJ, DOD, DHS, and so on.
If the FCC continues down its current path of being an obvious puppet and abusivly slapping American citizens in the face about it, essentilly saying, "oh yeah, stupid FOX News/NASCAR/Cops fans, what you going to do about it", then I would say, yes, shut it down & let us deal with these issues another way. I do not know how the FCC came to be, but I am certain there was a perfectly legitimate reason & way it did, but it is so hard to see how damn near any of this agencies & others similar to it are doing any good. I'd say their new motto is "do no further harm". And, that is damning. If they were capable of actually doing good, I'd fall off my chair. Man has an unlimited capacity for greed, fear, corruption, and if you are one of the ones most likely tempted, then head to Washington. Scum.
Great idea. We'll get rid of the FCC by selling spectrum to the highest bidder. That means we will either have to pay a whole bunch more taxes so public safety providers can use radios or they will just have to do without.
Imagine calling 911 for a traffic accident. The dispatcher will just phone the ambulance, fire department and law enforcement. Once those people are in the field....I guess they'll just yell if they need help.
And amateur radio? To hell with that. If you have some idea for something new in communications you had better just have a big bank account to buy spectrum or forget it. Yeah, that'll promote the state of the art.
Suppose you did scrape together enough money to buy a frequency to use. I come along and camp on the same channel. Oh yeah, you might take me to court. Ooooohhhh, I'm scared....not. After spending all that money to bid for spectrum you might not have enough to wage a legal fight. I'll play that game.
Yeah, let's get rid of the FCC. It'll be like the wild, wild west. Sounds like fun.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
I've seen economists claim that the game "Capitalism" is a good economy simulator. The game simulates a capitalist economy. As a business owner, you can control every thing from the collection of raw resources, manufacturing of goods, and distribution of those goods through a retail store. You compete with other business owners. You advertise your products to raise the worth of your product. You can own TV, Radio, and Newspapers.
The game is based on the principal that a products demand is a comibination of it's quality, cost, and marketing. By marketing, you can take a cheap product like soap and have people pay $20 for a piece of soap you payed $1 to produce. These seems unrealistic until you realize this is exactly how Bath and Body Works makes money. Or take a nickel pop and selling it for 75 cents. Coca-Cola.
This is fun for a while. But then you raise enough money to buy a newspaper. You can use the newspaper to get advertising at costs. This is cool. But then, you buy the radio and the tv station too. Now, you raise the rates to the maximum. All of a sudden, you have the power to buy media at wholesale (even if your soap company pays the maximum price for the advertisement, the money still goes into your pocket for a net 0 loss). But your competitors, if they choose to advertise, will have to pay exhorbant prices. The net result is your competitors either have to drastically increase their prices or try to win the market on low-quality cheap products.
This game is an econmic simulator, and although not reality, is a good representation of what is the best strategy in a real capitalistic environment. Monopoly of the media equals a monopoly on everything. Therefore, it is paramount for capitalism that the media remain diversified. It's the FCC's job to provide this diversification.
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
"One fear is that some predatory monopolist, a Microsoft of the airwaves, would end up owning all of the spectrum. That won't happen. First, the market value of the spectrum would approach $1 trillion, out of the reach of any individual corporation. Second, antitrust laws would remain on the books. The Department of Justice could wield the Sherman Antitrust Act to challenge unlawful conduct and block mergers."
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
for the right to intrude on MY airspace, my body, etc, with their "property" (some RF band) under such a scheme because I would not tolerate private individuals owning a public property. Thus, if such a violation were allowed then I would have to retaliate in courts by demanding that the owner refrain of a frequency band
"property" from intruding on my real property (my land, my home, my body).
Thus, you think you "own" the 2.4Ghz range? Keep your frequency broadcasts off me and my real property. Just as no one owns a stream or river (the river traverses many private holdings and public land), no one can own the air that blows over my property, the rain that falls on my property, nor the RF that rains down on me no matter where I go.
This is private property worship to the exclusion of all else taken way too far into the extreme. I'd never accept that anyone outright OWNS an RF frequency, nor a particular visable light frequency, nor IR frequency, etc.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Just because the FCC is doing its job poorly does not mean the job shouldn't be done.
I've seen similar trollish opinion pieces before. In Mr. McCullagh's piece he makes arguments based upon "what would have beens" and blames bad policies on the FCC though they were clearly instructed by Congress how to act.
As far as broadcasting is concerned, we need standards so that others can manufacture radios. One of the big problems with the Software Defined Radio designs is that the more bands you try to cover, the harder it is to keep the sensitivity and dynamic range performance (never mind the price) reasonable. We need some organization to take care of allocating and standardizing band usage so that we can expect a certain performance from our radios. We also need to protect communications for things such as air traffic control, marine distress frequencies, police, fire, and other such emergency activities. There is also a need to reserve bands for radio astronomy.
The idea that we can simply let the market run things is utterly unworkable. Who do you call if and when interference happens? At what point is it simply inadvertent radiation and at what point is it truly interference?
Most courts of law are ill equipped to handle the
technical details of describing interference intensity and it's effect on signal to noise ratios, coverage areas, and so forth. That's why the FCC regulates things.
On another note: The FCC didn't write the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1996. Congress did. Likewise, the FCC looked to Congress for clarification of how far the jurisdiction of the federally backed Bell System should extend.
Mr. McCullagh has it wrong. Though there are plenty of things they do poorly, the problem isn't so much with the FCC. The problem is Congress. And because he didn't take the time to look up the facts, Mr. McCullagh's trollish opinion piece does nothing to illuminate the situation.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
A standard road is necessary. We need to remove the corporate influence on 'our' airwaves. A perfect system is to use all the frequencies in a manner like WiFi. Take all special interest out of it. The Cnet article is 'terrible' in that you don't want to let robber baron corporations take over our airwaves and our freedom of speech. That's right freedom of speech should now be equated to our airwaves. Our airwaves should be much like the internet.
Your thoughts ?
Radio listeners would not lose out on radio. There would always be something on the dial - namely whatever signal was the strongest.
Eat at Joe's.
No, the article doesnt suggest a free for all in airwaves. It states that we dont need the FCC becouse we have other legal institutions to deal with the competing bandwidth issue. For example is someone is broadccasting on you frequency- even if they are Disney- file a lawsuit. Or file a criminal complaint for tresspass! The article does leave open the possibility that there will be a remanant of the FCC whose job will be just determining the availability of different portions of the radio spectrum and arranging the auction thereof..
Selling chunks of spectrum as limited resources to the highest bidder is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while. This would make an even more hostile environment to software & cognitive radios. Frequency bands are _not_ a limited resource. Just stop using dumb radios!
"Can industry regulate itself?"
Enron, S&L (late 80s), Halliburton, the AMA, the insurance industry....
Show me *anywhere* that "self-regulation" works. Those regulations were set up, not because legislators sat around thinking of things to do, but because of public outcries over egregious abuses.
Go start your own unregulated country. My parents and grandparents fought and voted to control business.
On the other hand, certain regulations of the FCC ought to be written as *law*, not rules that they can change. Number one, of course, would be to bring Equal Time back, with a vengence, including on cable.
mark "Faux News: fair and balanced, as
determined by Tom DeLay...."
I spent all day reading this discussion, one of the few things that I wonder is why many of techie wifi people on here don't think about getting an Amateur Radio License
Having an Amateur (Ham) License not only allows you to try some of these wifi experiments using real powere--more than a watt, but it also grounds you with some understanding of RF propagation, RF theory and some understanding of rules and regulations in regards to wireless communications.
Try going to a local ham club meeting. Talk to some of the people there and you'll find a wealth of information. They aren't all old guys talking to people on morse code. There are some pretty cutting-edge things going on in the ham bands and you may find experiences there help you out in other places.
An Amateur Radio License also tells others you know what you're talking about. It is a very technical hobby and compliments computers and the internet quite well.
The FCC does more than hand out frequencies like a domain name registrar hands out web addresses. They do actually enforce the rules and regulations and type-approve equipment. Getting rid of the FCC is foolish without an in-depth plan of how you plan to accomplish many of the tasks they do. Sure the FCC has it's problems, but I'll tell you, from what I have read today; I have a better appreciation for the FCC after reading some of the stupid ideas some people on here have had to replace it.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
However does that mean the FCC should be abolished? No, of course not. Cause in sane and better times, the FCC surely will propose acts which are in support of the U.S. citizin instead of just supporting big media money.
Robert
No...now the US Patent Office that's a different story :-)
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The FCC is not perfect. But what it did first in breaking up local vs. long distance, then in separating basic from value-added services, effectively turned the US into an Internet incubator. This regulatory feat has not been duplicated in many places, and in fact Internet is stymied -- or else radically different -- in those places. In the absence of REAL competition or regulatory fiat, telcos like to charge monopoly prices, defined as "100% of what you might possibly make by using my infrastructure, less small fraction." McCullagh says, "nevermind, fiber will carry everything soon anyway"...whose fiber?? Does he think that individual homes and enterprises all all have multiple fiber entrance facilities? Any network operators on Slashdot like to colo their network gear in sites with a single provider? Why not??? Who thinks that coax and and WiFi are going to compete on an equal footing with fiber? If the 10th Circuit has its way and the RBOCs are permitted to return to their old ways next week, the fallacy of this argument will become abundantly clear soon enough....too bad for those of us who will have to find out (again) the hard way...
We've seen what deregulation did to commercial radio. Now magnify that by several fold and you'll see what would happen were we simply to auction spectrum to the highest bidders.
I was just thinking about this earlier tonight.
And was wondering in fact how it could be done.
FCC should be deepsixed... forever. All major networks as well. TV, RADIO, etc. Should be for communication between people, not for selling people to advertisers.
You're not the audience, you're the market the network is selling to their advertisers.
As far as the more technical side of the FCC is concerned I'm sure something could be worked out quite easily.
Ugh, this is such a great topic but alas I am recovering from flu and have an awful headache.
I think asking "Should the FCC be abolished?" is a bit silly. There are too many functions of the FCC to abolish it. What needs to be done is that the FCC needs to change how it is run. Right now there is no fair appeals process. When the FCC makes a decision or fines a person, corporation or group that it is. If the corporation tries to appeal that process the FCC then denies licenses to them or gives them hassles. This is a known problem, thus most Corporations choose to just suck it up and take the ruling. This is totally unacceptable. The FCC should be run more like a court system. They shouldn't be able to have ultimate control. I can't say I know everything that is right or wrong about the current system but I can say when I heard this is how the system works I felt it didn't seem right. The government has too much control here. They shouldn't have this much control over our media. While I don't love Howard Stern, I will stand up for his right to say the things he says on the radio. It's been there for years and years, it's not changed. Freedom of speech should not be tampered with by the US Goverment. The FCC should not be able to shut this down. Censorship is dangerous and the FCC is leading the war on our free speech.
You are all children, you cannot decide for yourselves. An adult must make the decisions for you.