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Shirky on Spectrum Ownership
scubacuda writes "When engineering assumptions change, shouldn't the laws that govern technology reflect those changing assumptions? Perhaps Clay Shirky puts it best: 'Things like shoes, cars, and houses are all property. Property is excludable -- it is easy to prevent others from using it -- and rival -- meaning that one person's use of it will interfere with another person's use of it. Spectrum has neither characteristic. Spectrum is purely descriptive -- a frequency is just a particular number of waves a second -- so no one can own a particular frequency of spectrum in the same way no one can own a particular color of light. Instead, when an organization 'owns' spectrum, what they really have is a contract guaranteeing Federal prosecution if someone else broadcasts on their frequency in their area. The regulatory costs of forcing spectrum to emulate property are enormous, but worthwhile so long as it leads to better use of spectrum than other methods can. That used to be true. No longer.'"
when the awful green the better choice...
Spectrum is treated as property and defended by law for the same reason your house is, without that law a much larger person/gov't/company would take over your home or squat on your frequency. Without local cooperation such as the FCC, cell phone companies would try to use the same frequency or jam the other guys, public bands for FRS radios would be occupied by other traffic. Local organizations, ie, FCC allow for global cooperation. Have you ever tried to use an FRS radio in Africa where spectrum rights are often undefended? Sometimes the radios work without interference, sometimes not.
That's the reason for regulation of the radio spectrum. (Score:5 insightful)
A critical point that Shirky and countless others fail's to graps is that the reasons unlicensed spectrum works are:
1) The frequency band in use does not support long distance propagation (i.e. ionspheric reflection) - hence interference is a local problem.
2) The FCC and equivalent regulatory bodies limit the transmit power (and often effective radiated power).
There is a simple method for minimizing interference - use directional antennas with the narrowest possible beamwidth (some of this can be done electronically) for both transmit and receive - and lowest power needed for communication. Unfortunately, most wi-fi users use omnidirectional antennas.
I've also had w-a-y too much experience with interference with poorly designed consumer electronics and similar problems to think that the FCC and related organizations are obsolete. Sure, the state of the art equipment is less susceptible than previous generations of equipment, but I strongly doubt that the typical consumer will anything close to state of the art. To prove my point on the latter - look at all of the problems on the internet due to viruses, worms and the ilk that propagate through Winoze boxes...
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Property is excludable -- it is easy to prevent others from using it -- and rival -- meaning that one person's use of it will interfere with another person's use of it. Spectrum has neither characteristic.
I'm a big fan of Clay, but what precisely was he smokign when he wrote this? Spectrum is both excludable and rival. Exclusion, as applied to spectrum, can be equivocated with "jamming." Rival is known simply as "interference."
Perhaps his argument is that over range both characteristics (excludability and rivalry) of spectrum diminish, unlike with physical property. But spectrum is absolutely property, by both definitions.
Should spectrum be free? Don't know. Don't care. But let's not jumpstart the debate by twisting core characteristics of property.
I posted this in the last spectrum topic, but it's perhaps even more applicable to this discussion.
- Neil Wehneman
*****
Lawrence Lessig spends a not insignificant amount of time on the concept of spectrum in 2001's The Future of Ideas.
Quoting him from page 233 (emphasis in original)...
"Here again, an idea about property is doing all the work - but this time the idea is at its most attenuated. We don't yet have a full property regime for allocating and controlling spectrum. Yet we are still being driven to embrace this single view. We are racing to deny the opportunity for balance, pushed (as we always are) by those who have the least to gain from a world of balance. The possibility of a commons at the physical layer is ignored; even the chance to experiment with the commons is denied. Instead, policy makers on the Right and the Left race to embrace a system of perfect control.
So strong is this idea of property, so unbalanced is our understanding of its tradition, that we embrace it fully, without limitation, even when it doesn't yet exist, and even when the asset being assigned a property right is not - like the wires of AT&T's cable or the creative genius behind Disney's Mickey Mouse - something anyone has created. We are racing to assign property rights in the air, because we can't imagine that balance could do better."
Buy it new, buy it used, or get it from the library. But if you have interest in spectrum you should definitely read this book.
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
PS- Stop trying to think for yourself.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Amen. When will liberals stop trying to put regulations on everything. After all, we need our liberty. If I want to have my factory outputting mercury into a river upstream of a city, why should there be environment regulations to stop me? I think I'll pay my works 0.05/hour and never install safety systems. I just need to stop those regulations from the Department of Labor.
I agree on property rights too. What is it with all these parks? Why can't I just bring in my dump trucks and big up coal and shoot spotted owls? What do you mean the government or some individual OWNS it. I should have the liberty to use that property as I see fit.
After all, people's lives, freedoms, and families are much safe under communist systems that capitalist systems. We have history as our example. Freedom of speech is much better protected in North Korea and the USSR than in the UK and the USA. Surely there are fewer political prisoners in China than France and Germany.
But, then again, maybe I don't understand...
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
When getting into philosophical discussions on spectrum economics, some people like to point at 2.4ghz as evidence that the FCC should step off and let anarchy rule.
However keep in mind that just because 2.4ghz is unlicensed, it is not unrestricted. If I went on the balcony of my downtown condo and put a 500dBm wifi AP with a 10dbi omni antenna, it would wreak havoc (and get me in trouble with the fcc).
For another example, imagine unlicensed wireless internet over AM radio spectrum. Yeah you could surf the web from 10 miles away from your house, but your signal would be destroyed from interference from everybody else's.
Now, I'm all for opening up as much spectrum as makes sense provided that the wavelenth is short enough to not blow through buildings etc, and provided the FCC restricts transmission strengths enough to not create anarchy.