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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?"
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.
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 . . .
I wonder just how many people will react to a government body failing to do it's most important mission(as a principle, and not necessarily in the letter of the law) as a reason to abolish said government body. I wonder if we'd do the same thing with other fields. Insufficiently-tested medicine is still making it to the market and harming Americans, let's abolish the doctor's association.
Replacing the FCC with a body whose task is to monitor the Media and other for from undue politicial influence(yes that means both the parties AND the lobbies like the RIAA) might do a lot more good. Although, in this case, protecting said body from those influences would be the first hurdle. Maybe if the American people could do something without the Parties and the Lobbies actually having a say beforehand would be useful at that(the public doesn't have a tool that's untainted by the political movement at present, with which to act in its own unpartisan interest, while both parties are very partisan, but aren't exactly opposed, leaving a lot of people under-represented.
That the fact that the FCC is tasked with regulating communications, which communications ARE vital to both national-security interests, financial market regulatory compliance, integrity of the electory process and even the judicial system highlights just how important that this group be watched. The problem is, that right now, noone is watching the guardians... The political representation of the FCC should be just as important as the House of Representatives itself, as the power of communications, expressed through among other things, the Media, can have more far-reaching consequences than some laws... That noone is watching the FCC when it plays with that "field" is a sign that some interests are more represented than others.
That the FCC is trying to police content, and not even notice the effects of Media Consolidation should worry us a lot more than it does.
Perhaps the USA doesn't need an FCC, because its budget would be better applied at actually having anti-cartel laws that have teeth, and catch more than the occasional careless perpetrator, that I can believe. But not because the market can police itself, right now, it's more like because the police that's supposed to be watching the market is too busy watching nipples.
Satellites put out rather small amounts of output power compared to terrestial transmitters; and the inverse square law means the strength of the signal from, say, a DirecTV transponder is greatly diminished. The fact that satellite operators are guaranteed spectrum that will be clear from interference is one of the many necessary economic conditions to make communications satellite launches profitable/worthwhile.
In addition, the FCC helped fuel DBS satellite TV adoption by pre-empting local laws, and codes, covenants, and restrictions (all those long restrictions on land's use generally put in place by the original developer) from prohibiting satellite dishes/antennas smaller than 1m. Prior to that, most developments and tract houses (and some entire cities) were banning their use. This is another thing that the FCC did that helped make DBS worthwhile.
It doesn't take much output power to mess other things up.. A few hundred milliwatts is enough to interfere with GPS with everyone you have line of sight to (including airplanes). Regulation preventing everyone from stomping on everyone else is good.
This doesn't mean I agree with everything the FCC does; policy on the ISM band is lackluster, and the FCC leans way too hard to protect existing licensees in AM, FM, and TV broadcast applications at the expense of new services and local operators.
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.
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.
Howard Stern was only thrown off the air in a small number of cities to begin with. Clear Channel took him off of every station that they own... but the station that produces his show and a majority of the stations that air it are owned by Viacom. Not one Viacom station has touched the show at all.
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.
Ham operators have huge bands all to themselves, for what amounts to a glorified boys' clubhouse.
You, sir, are both incorrect and offensive.
First off, many of the frequencies that ham radio operators have access to are shared. Also, for the radio spectrum below 1.3GHz, ham radio operators have access to less than 130MHz of spectrum. That's less than 10 percent. I think "huge" is an overstatement.
Second, ham radio is much more than "a glorified boys' clubhouse." That you should suggest such a thing is an insult to all of the ham volunteers who have assisted in natural disasters (hurricanes, floods, fires) unnatural disasters (terrorist attacks), and public events (parades, etc.). Ham volunteers play a vital role in large-scale emergency situations, and organizations of ham operators exist for this explicit purpose. Public service is, in fact, one of the most (if not single most) critical tenets of ham radio.
Furthermore, some the core ideals and culture of ham radio are experimentation and exploration, to push the limits and find new ways of doing things. Ideals that are very similar, I think, to the hacker (in the original sense) culture.
So, before you make such statements, check your facts and and consider what you would lose if you had your way.
~~LightForce, KC8EPG
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...
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.
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.
"Just an honest question here, but why is cable acceptable and broadcast not?"
I think the basic difference is that you have to pay to have cable installed. If the content is objectionable, you can stop paying and halt the service. You can't hault broadcast TV.
Hope that helps.
"Derp de derp."
Come ON you have to be kidding.
You ignored the whole damn point.
The link budget on DBS is fucking tiny. 1-2 db less and BAM, no more signal. That means 1 loser, on his modded radio, anywhere within a few miles, and every dbs user in that range has no more tv. This is illegal thanks to the FCC
Ham radio people have certain bands and they help with emergencies all the time. But what? no FCC to protect the bandwidth space? no more ham radio, lives lost.
All those kids with their nice rc cars..no more fcc, no more RC cars because no one will protect that bandwidth.
Your kids missing in the forest?..luckily they have a FRS radio! oh wait..the fcc was protecting that bandwidth..now all you hear is some guy broadcasting his favorite mp3s. Too bad about your kids tho, at least you have some music. (more likely just static)
Someone to regulate bandwidth is 100% NECCESARY.
Some of the other stuff can be taken out of the hands of the FCC maybe, but not this.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
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 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.