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

No More ugly colors

[ASayre8]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/14/203723 7

Same story, better colors.

Ownership of Light

[FFFish]

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

You can "own" colors, no problem.

See this short article explaining how the courts have favoured/denied color trademarking.

I believe Coke owns their colour of red, IBM blue, KPN (Dutch Telco) green, etc.

As long as the color is not indicative of "function" (ie. isn't associated with a particular "message", ie. blue is cold, red is hot, green is environmental, etc), you have a shot at getting it trademarked.

When trademarked, competitors in your marketspace/mindshare can't use that same colour.

Which means you effectively "own" the wavelength of light that is that colour!

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