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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?"
"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
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
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.
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...
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/
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."
Hey, my breast-fed toddler was watching and she not only noticed but pointed and said "daaaa!!!". Why exactly anyone would decide that exposing a mammary gland is half time entertainment, and why anyone would actually care afterwards, is still a mystery to both myself and my daughter.
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.
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.
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.
Do you seriously think this would ever work?
Who knows? Currently the driving forces behind deeming media displays as indecent are powerful government lobbies from conservative right-wingers who believe that the world should be sugar and spice.
Do I want small interest groups deciding for me what is decent for me? Nah. I think that people are quite capable to make those choices for themselves.
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
Good point - but I have to take exception to it, because the implication that the FCC enforces the allocations is false.
My cohort scored some spectrum in the midwest, and set up a wireless ISP in a mid-sized community. All was fine for a couple months... then he started to suffer outages. Quite literally, a ten mile swath would just fall off the planet over here one day, over there the next.
Four days later, some "Tony" shows up and offers to consult, and "fix" the outages. My cohort sent him packing, but the guy walked out the door laughing.
The next day, the outages were back... and the cause was obvious. Cohort finds the center of the outage, and drives there. And lo and behold, there's a van! No driver, but full of equipment, doors locked with the engine running. Cohort writes down the vin and license plate, calls the FCC on the cell phone, and boy... they're rabid about it. Then he told them the name of the consultant, and they instantly shifted to "we'll get back to you."
He called some counterparts in other areas for suggestions. The "consultant" had visited all of them as well, and they all paid him about 60k / yr EACH for his "consulting". Like my cohort, they'd all called the FCC when he'd first showed up, and like with my cohort, the FCC did nothing, because this "consultant" is a cousin of some mob boss in NY.
The outages eventually stopped after about half a year, but the damage was done. The business folded.
So, the FCC has great utility in that they allocate spectrum. OTOH, they are absolutely *useless* because they absolutely refuse to enforce it... and they cannot be held accountable for their lack of dilligence.
Having authority with no accountability = abuse. They need to go.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
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
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
And that'd mean that the RF spectrum would run just about as smoothly as the Internet is runing now...
Well, we take the good with the bad, and from where I sit, the net is getting better/faster/cheaper, at an amazing rate. I'll agree that we need some way to kneecap spammers efficiently, but look at how useless government has been to date on that front.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
For the owner of those frequencies, it's a valuable asset. It'd be like owning property on Wall Street, and opening a peep show theater. I could make a whole lot more money selling the space as executive office space.
You might think so, but porn is very popular. A single strip club on wallstreat would be a cash cow, I'm sure.
But good luck buying one. City governments have a lot of control over what gets built. Just look at the porn shops in times square. They got shut down and replaced with Disney shit by Gulliani.
The FCC is like the city government of the airwaves.
That said, treating the airwaves like property is a bad idea. Why? Because it's a very limited resource. People like clear channel could buy up every radio frequency, and then turn them silent, to save money in a certain market. Or a radio business could fail and keep their frequency for years for the hell of it, or whatever.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I'm all for disbanding the FCC.
Decency regulations are shit.
Don't want them don't need them.
I think it's time we started putting pussy on TV. Lots of it. In fact, we could even have a whole channel devoted to nothing but big fat sloppy wet pussies. Or better yet, ten of them...
Spectrum regulations?
Yes, I don't mind being radiated by both my monitor and my microwave, not to mention a dozen or so other devices that the FCC regulates.
I wonder if it radiation whitens teeth...
C'mon, did you really want to watch TV on your TV anyway? I would personally much rather mod my TV to listen to people's cell phones, which is the first place all that handy new unregulated bandwidth is going to go.
We didn't need AM or FM to be regulated anyway, and I'm sure there are several interesting kinds of broadcasting we can do over FM is the FCC is abolished.
I could record a tape of myself saying "fuck fuck fuck" for about ten minutes, loop, and broadcast to california. Okay, maybe not from my car, but if there's no regulation on the band, what's to stop me from building an antenna on my roof? I'd call it, the fuck channel. One word, all the time!
Getting rid of the FCC would force everyone to buy new technology and get rid of their old shit which only half works anyway! Besides, all that old stuff is missing important DRM technology anyway. It's really in our best interests that we buy the new stuff that's locked down for our own protection.
It will be great!
It would be a boom the economy... in India!
Think of it like all that trickle down economics. It's like a tax break for the super rich, but better!
Just as the tax breaks have arguable benefit for the working American, this idea would have no tangible benefit at all!
Just think of it, we would automatically hand over billions of dollars to giant transnational companies, which will turn around and pay no taxes, ship more jobs over seas, and all that fun stuff.
I hope they abolish the FCC.
And while we're at it, let's abolish the FDA (arsenic anyone?). And any other useless thee letter government agency.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
CB wastes spectrum? It is less than one half of one MHz. If you want to talk about wasted spectrum just by the size than broadcast TV is a waste. 75 channels at 6MHz each is 450MHz slotted for TV, and they are not all in use all around each other so most sit 100% idle. At least CB activity can pop up all over on all channels. The military has a monstrous chunk from about 200-400MHz that is a wasteland for everyone else. Should they have that much? Probably, they do a lot of wild stuff with it. Should I be able to step into their area because I don't seem to be hearing them at the moment? Probably not.
Digital communications does not make things use less bandwidth. The USFS just went narrowband this year on all their radios, but it is still analog voice. They are trying to lead by example. Digital is just a buzzword people use to make it sound like it is important and should get money.
Point to point (microwave style) communications is very easy because it takes low power and directional antennas so the signals don't mix. That is great for linking towers but try to operate a police force or other geographically diverse group with directional antennas. While extremely high-level and high-power repeater stations might not be the best answer, extremely small and lower power doesn't work well either. Spectrum IS scarce because there are only so many frequencies that will work for omni-directional area communications like so many public service and businesses want. Take out the 450MHz from TV and the 200MHz for military [(1000-150)-(450+200)] and you get about 200MHz of usable frequencies left over for everything else that people require in an omni-style broadcast. Cell phones, public service, business, fun, most of it all has to fit in there.
Hopping frequencies is great until one transceiver breaks the rules (either on accident or maliciously) and screws it for everyone else, who have no idea what is going on or who is the cause of it. Right now the breaks in the frequencies force people to stay out of each others areas. Amateurs have a chunk of "land" to screw around with because if they make a dirty-bomb of a transmitter it only screws up other amateurs nearby and not your local fire/medical dispatch centers.
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
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.)
In fact the exact opposite of this is true, all of the ills that you mention are happenning right now under current FCC regulation! In fact current FCC regulation is giving us this horrible consolidation that has six or seven comparies owning all the media. As the famous P. J. O'Rourke quote goes,
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."
Mega companies like Clear Channel own so many stations precisely because they can wine and dine the FCC whereas small companies can't. Cleaning out the commissioners as you suggest is a short-term solution, the real solution is to eliminate the positions of power that are being wined and dined in the first place. Eliminate the FCC and their myriad of regulations and companies like Clear Channel with have to compete in the marketplace with other companies large and small, instead of buying rulings from the FCC.
"To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it." -- Olin Miller
Yeah, add that to Ibsen's suggestion that the majority is always wrong, and things start looking pretty gloomy.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
You said: "They're telling her 'Don't do it on broadcast television.' (Note: It'd be fine on cable tv.)"
Just an honest question here, but why is cable acceptable and broadcast not? I know the obvious answer is that "anyone" can see it on broadcast, but that's not true, at least in the sense that "anyone" could see it as easily if they were flipping through the cable channels as they would through the regular broadcast channels.
It's not like a television broadcast forces the images it caries straight into your brain, you still have to actively purchase a television, actively turn it on and actively turn it to the channel in question.
So why is cable so radically different than broadcast television that you would allow something on one, but not the other?
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
The answer has to do with ownership. The airwaves are a public resource, and as such, may be regulated by the government. Cable networks are not public resources (though one might argue that they should be, much like phone lines) but are owned by the company that operates the network. That means that the government has less recourse to make decisions governing their content because the government generally cannot regulate private resources the same way it does public resources.
At least, that's the way it was explained to me.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
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.
Basicly the only rules you need are those that ensure that a society runs well: e.g - killing is bad - stealing is bad - free speach is good - x isn't allowed because it is dangerous to you or the public
A society that "runs well" requires both more and less than you might expect.
"Killing is bad" isn't required, for instance. Most historical societies had rules about who you could kill, and when, without societal sanctions. But very few took the stance that "killing is bad". I note that a Code Duello existed in many (if not most) societies up to the 19th century. Killing was allowed, and even encouraged, in some specific conditions. The societies didn't especially suffer from this lack of "killing is bad".
Likewise for stealing. Some societies forbid it (USA, as an example), some allow it under certain conditions (England in the 1500's, as regards Spanish property), some encourage it (most Plains Indian cultures respected horse-thieves). Whether the society ran well was irrelevant to its stand on "stealing is bad".
That said, societial rules, in general, reduce to
(1)who you can kill, and when,
(2)who you can screw, and when,
(3)what you can own, and under what circumstances,
(4)what you can say, and to whom,
(5)who you can turn to for redress of grievance in case any of the above are violated by anyone. (some societies require you to turn to the government, at one level or another for redress, some allow you to seek redress personally)
Note that case (3) actually creates the largest part of "law" in almost all societies. The rest of it, no matter the specific implementation, is really quite straightforward.
Note also that a society can "run well" with almost any answer to those five cases, if the people of the society accept the "rules" (~90% acceptance is typical in a stable society).
Issues come up when there are divisions within a society where a very large minority cannot, in good conscience, accept one or more rules. An example - slavery in the nineteenth century USA. ~2/3 of the population did not support it, ~1/3 did. Both sides considered their positions to be a matter of "rights". Result - Lincoln's election, secession, War Between the States (I refuse to call it the Civil War - there was nothing "civil" about it).
Note that up till the nineteenth century, slavery was legal, if not common, in virtually all societies. There were, in almost all societies, minor elements who considered slavery "evil/wrong/sinful" (pick one), but not so many as to force the issue into contention.
Since then, slavery has been illegal in almost all societies. There are minor elements who consider slavery "good" (or at least acceptable), but not enough to force the issue into contention.
And, finally "x isn't allowed because it is dangerous to you or the public" is probably a far broader concept than you thought when you proposed it. It includes such things as smoking (dangerous to the smoker, at least), fast food (dangerous to the fat slob who overindulges, though that is true of any food), lack of exercise (dangerous, I expect, to most of /.). Did you really think that the "basic rules for society" should allow the government to regulate the amount/kind of food/exercise you must get?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
"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 problem is that most companies simply don't care about anything but profit, and that's wrong.
Oh you mean the corporate america is willing to work for less and pay the workers wages, health insurance, retirement, vacation, etc.? Get real. If you believe that, drop your lifestyle that gets you a computer and internet access, hot and cold running water, and get a real job picking lettuce for the good of mankind. The job usualy doesn't pay enough to cover lifestyle things like buying a house, buying a car and insurance, broadband Internet, etc. Not many americans will sign up for jobs without benifits. Corporate america is no different. Make an industry a loser and the talent moves on. When the talant moves on, expect poor or no service and a failure to meet demand. Migrant workers are taking jobs the american workers won't even apply for. Without them, much of the american crop would go un-harvested which would cause a cheaper to harvest crop to be planted next year (corn or hay). Then you would be finding your big mac might start not having lettuce due to the shortage. You are asking the power company to do the same. The result is the same, a shortage of supply. Fuel must be bought. Generation and distribution systems need designed, installed, and operated. You don't find the qualified talant for this in the minimum wage and you don't find the fuel in the next to free prices. Caping the electric prices means that only cheaper fuel is used, cleaner burning high price fuel is not used, and high cost system rudancy and surge capacity is simply not built. Why build a couple extra plants for capacity when 90% of the time they make no money? It's cheaper to shed 10% load during peaks than have 10% of plants idle 90% of the time. Price caps do influence planning.
Contrary to popular conception, most corporations face competition and do not get huge margins.
The problem is that most companies simply don't care about anything but profit, and that's wrong.
The bad news is if they didn't make a profit, they would fail to continue producing. Sorry to break it to you, but that is how a free economy works. Competition is what keeps the prices reasonable. Gasoline is still cheaper than bottled Pepsi.
The truth shall set you free!
"When and how do you think you'll ever get government regulations that aren't captive of the industries they purport to control? As P.J. O'Rourke summed it up, "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are regulators.""
Exactly, that's why govt. regulation should be avoided whenever possible. We also need a flat tax system to prevent people from buying tax breaks from congress. Free market does a good job of regulating itself when not restricted.
Vote for Pedro
Radio however... If the DoD is using 810Ghz, then for all intents and purposes nobody else can use it because to do so creates interference between the two. The Net doesn't need someone to adjudicate between commercial and DoD operations because it does not care by design. Radio needs such adjudication because the laws of physics for us to care.
Problems with such overlaps can already often be seen in Navy towns. Gargage door openers are Class 'B' devices, which means they don't interfere with anyone else, and accept interference by anyone. It also means that they don't have to adhere to FCC standards/guidelines so long as they don't cause and do accept interference. However the Navy has a radar that uses the same band as many garage door openers, (this is quite legal as that band is assigned to radars, and Class 'B' devices are required to accept interference). The end result? When the Navy lights off that radar in port, (which it rarely does), garage doors all over town open or close randomly.
zymano touched on this a bit, but I think it needs to be stressed: In the USA, the airwaves do not belong to the government or the corporations. The airwaves are public property, just like National Parks. The FCC's job is to administer them to serve public interests. While government is not to be totally trusted, as there is such a thing as corruption, they are the best ones to manage public property. If they screw up, US citizens can bring pressure to bear and make them behave nicely. We have no such control over super-corporations and the "market".
Regarding the AC's remark about no equipment without corporations: It is obvious that you are a bit too removed from the era of do-it-yourself electronics. Guglielmo Marconi invented radio in his dad's attic after having failed a university entrance exam. His company, the Nobel prize, and the first transatlantic wireless communication came later.
It's amazing what you can do without a big corporation. Why people have had their very own grocery stores, grown their own food, composed music, invented stuff, etc.: all without a single corporation in sight!
"Ridiculous, you have no claim. I'll sue you for interfering with private enterprise."
Kumoyama, Happy Enterprises, "Mothra vs. Godzilla", 1964
(HE's private enterprise = kidnapping, holding two deities hostage inside their egg, and attempted slave traffic.)