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.'"

Comments

spectrum

[aftk2]

meaning that one person's use of it will interfere with another person's use of it.

Doesn't this happen, though? People complain a lot about their microwaves and cordless phones screwing up their WIFI, for example. Or am I missing something?

Re:spectrum

[dougmc]

It's not licensed, but it is regulated.

For example, when you use these bits of spectrum, you have serious power limits -- generally less than one watt. Which is probably the only reason they're useful at all, because if it wasn't for this, you'd have people with 1 kW WiFi amplifiers :)

(Note that the ham bands do overlap with the 2.4 gHz region, so by going under the ham rules, a ham operator CAN use a lot more power in that section. But most hams are quite considerate about not interfering with other people, even when they don't legally have to be. For the record, I'm AD5RH, but I've not tried any 2.4 gHz ham stuff. Yet.)

As for the microwave, there's a tiny bit of spectrum allocated for things like this, with few restrictions beyond 1) not emitting so much RF to be dangerous and 2) not emitting RF outside this band beyond a certain small amount. It's meant for `trash' signals, like that emitted by microwave ovens and some medical equipment. In theory, your microwave's signal should stay within the spectrum allocated to it, but the rules do allow it to radiate outside it a little bit, and that's probably what you see. Also, a strong signal (especially on a nearby frequency will `desense' a receiver), reducing it's sensitivity -- you might be seeing that too, even if the microwave is staying perfectly within it's little chunk of bandwidth.

The Orange is Mine

[trifakir]

...no one can own a particular frequency of spectrum in the same way no one can own a particular color of light...

Wrong. At least some big corporations would disagree with this statement. As a matter of fact we (figuratively) pay taxes to educate business people who dispute who actually owns a color...

Re:The Orange is Mine

[Anubis350]

believe it or not, I actually RTFA that you linked to...

the issue under discussion there isnt really can one own a color, the article is misleading in that respect.

the issue in that case is that the company Orange is claiming that "its rival having a similar logo to its own will cause confusion among its customers and damage its business.". This is a very different claim from saying it owns the color orange. The issue that easyMobile and Orange are fighting over is no different from any other case involving simillar names,logos,etc between rival companies.

Neither company is claiming to own orange (the color), they are arguing over whether easyMobile's symbols are close enough to that of Orange's to make it confusing and misleading to the customer. This includes the use of the color orange In this context.

--Aaron

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

[div_2n]

When many radios in close proximity broadcast on the same frequency, the resulting noise interferes with the operation of the radios especially in data and voice applications. All the smarts you put behind a device can't solve that. It is a matter of physics and physics will always get the final say.

Now there does exist quite a bit of licensed spectrum in the lower bands that isn't being used everywhere, but it is in some places. Exactly how to utilize those in some places and not others in an open market is a tough question.

Property

[Jan-Pascal]

This discussion about spectrum as property, and the whole lot about the several kinds of intellectual property, really reminds me of what I just read in Paul Johnson's "History of the American People" about the debate in the early 19th century about "natural property" (shoes, rice, land, houses) vs "artificial property" (money, stock, loans, corporations) and whether the US Constitution should offer the same kind of protection to this "artificial" property as it does for natural property. In hindsight, it is obvious that these should be protected just as physical property, to foster economic activity and capitalism.

As many /. readers, I'm inclined to emphasize the differences between old-style property (to us) and copyright, patents, and trademark just the way many people around 1800 emphasized the differences between natural and artificial property. but it makes me wonder, are we the dinosaurs here, instead of the RIAA, FCC et al. ?

PS - just for the record, I'm not American, I'm Dutch.

Re:Property

[Paul Fernhout]

In hindsight, it is obvious that these [money, stock, loans, corporations] should be protected just as physical property, to foster economic activity and capitalism.

Why is that "obvious"? Capitalism as an ideology has been widely discredited worldwide (although the media doesn't reflect that) through its end results in practice (colonialism and its aftermath, slavery and its aftermath, increasing rich/poor divide, pollution, inappropriate technological solutions, human suffering, mindless work) as opposed to claims in theory, see for example: Millionaire Wannabes. If Capitalism worked, we'd all be using Smalltalk or Lisp (developed thirty years ago) instead of Java and XML.

Money (in terms of Federal Reserve Notes) and loans (in terms of usury with interest and a fractional reserve banking system) are also equally problematical. In fact, the American Revolution was fought mainly over the right for the colonies to print their own paper money (a fact long forgotten or suppressed). See: The World's Alternative Trading Network for some more details. Or google on "Fractional Reserve". Alan Greenspan isn't busy setting interest rates to help everyone out -- he is trying to be an optimum parasite to get the most blood out of everyone he can by balancing drawing blood (interest) against how big the economy is.

Corporations? They are the biggest marauders around in many ways. Why should they have more than human rights in the USA? Effectively their charters are no longer revoked and if they commit a crime they just get fined and maybe some employees (disposable cells, like your skin cells) go to prison, while nothing about the corporation really changes. Why should investors have limited liability? If people support a bad cause, shouldn't they too go to jail? It is happening now with people who supposedly support "terrorism", so why should corporate investors get a free pass when they support pollution, habitat destruction, sweatshop practices, employee boredom, and so on?

In fact, the whole notion of "Work" underlying all that stuff is itself bogus. For alternatives to capitalism, consider: Buddhist Economics or: The End of Work. From that last: "Curiously --- maybe not --- all the old ideologies are conservative because they believe in work. Some of them, like Marxism and most brands of anarchism, believe in work all the more fiercely because they believe in so little else. Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx's wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists--except that I'm not kidding--I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work--and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs--they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They'll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don't care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and

Re:Property

[tylernt]

(Incidentally, that was one of the most interesting posts I've read on Slashdot.)

Part of the problem is that thanks to the Cold War, most Americas think that capitalism is the One True Way... Our Way Or The Highway... We Are Right So Everyone Else Is Wrong. In reality, capitalism is most certainly NOT the most efficient economical model! And, anybody who says so (like I just did) tends to be labeled "unamerican" or "communist". I'm NOT advocating Communism, I think that sucks too. But I think that our current mindset and body of laws are tailored to 'economics of scarcity' and are poorly equipped to deal with economics of abundance, such as software and music that can be copied endlessly without appreciable "real costs". The fact that we are having so many problems with patents, copyrights, the RIAA, MPAA, etc tells me that our current system needs reworking.

Our problem is not necessarily the laws; they are merely a symtom of the disease. The real problem is economics and the centuries of traditions that are now outmoded and obsolete.

any color you like

[Doc Ruby]

Shirky is unusually accurate in this screed about technology undermining the fundamental mission of the FCC: a central registry of spectral band users to prevent interference in radiated signals. The FCC was established to create, sell, and protect "necessary" monopolies on spectral bands handed to favored broadcasting corporations. But Clay's imprecise, as he misses the biggest threat to the spectrum registrar: phased array antenna technology.

Traditional antennae are "1 dimensional" in their tuned band: a signal is either present or not (to a degree, in an amplitude of power) at any given moment. So the world looks either like a wash of, say, "green", or is completely dark - no edges or other features, which appear only in dimensions. A phased array is like a video sensor area- as signals of a tuned color arrive from a single origin in space, at slightly different times to slightly different points in the array, the same color can be sensed as emanating from different "spots". Human eyes use lenses to assign different arrival times/points to different retinal detector cells, while phased array antennae can use use the actual timing differences.

These new arrays allow a single color to be used by different transmitters, separated by the exclusive positions we're familiar withj in our daily lives: each thing is in only one place at a time. So phased array antennae are even more sophisticated than spread spectrum codecs, or the FCC: using the properties of space and light, there's no need to "register" or negotiate colors. Each color can be used by anyone, so long as their position is exclusive of everyone else. As that condition comes free with physical existence, we're freed from the limits of one-dimensional, low-fidelity sensors, and archaic monopoly administrators like the FCC, as well.

Re:FCC ?

[calidoscope]

Oh, and the reason for 2.4 GHz being usable frequency world wide: it happens to be water absorption frequency (which happens to be the technical detail in microwave ovens), hence it being unusable for traditional frequency owners.

BZZZZT!! The water absorption frequency is up around 21 GHz and the liquid absorption line is REALLY broad. I have seen a large industrial "microwave oven" running at 916 MHz - so there is nothing magical about 2.4 GHz.

The reason that 2.4 GHz is widely used is that most countries have agreed on the use for ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical). Other users of the frequency must tolerate interference from these sources, which makes it undesirable for licensed services.

Are regulatory costs really "enormous"?

[PapayaSF]

The regulatory costs of forcing spectrum to emulate property are enormous

I'm not a fan of regulation, and the article makes good points, and it's true that the budget of the FCC is about $280 million/year. However, compared to the total annual income of the radio, television, and other industries that use spectrum, is the FCC's budget really that large a percentage?