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Does OSS Make The FCC Irrelevant?

Posted by Zonk on from the not-irrelevant-if-uncle-sam-doesn't-want-it-to-be dept.

JordanL writes "Daniel Fisher over at Forbes.com wonders whether or not OSS makes the FCC irrelevant. From the article: 'The agency might have made sense in the 1920s, Moglen says, when it was formed to assign specific frequencies to broadcasters so they wouldnt try to drown each other out by cranking up the transmitter power. But a new generation of intelligent radios, combined with equally clever computer networks, is making it possible for anybody to use the airwaves without interfering with anybody else.'"

4 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Idiot. by toleraen · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's all I could think of when readingTFA. He managed to cover one of the 6 bureaus that make up what the FCC does. Granted they do some stupid crap with all the censorship, but they do kinda help make sure telecommunications work around here.

  2. Grain of salt recommended by jomegat · · Score: 4, Informative
    For nearly a decade, Moglen has been the chief legal officer at the Free Software Foundation, in charge of defending the General Public License, a subversive bit of lawyering that turns property law on its head by prohibiting the users of open-source software from charging money for it.

    The GPL does not prohibit the sale of OSS - it prohibits hiding the source code from whomever the binaries are distributed to.

    Looks like someone forgot to check at least one fact...

    --

    In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're not.

  3. Re:Argh! by jrockway · · Score: 4, Informative

    And look at how they were sued and lost in Bernstein v. US.

    --
    My other car is first.
  4. FCC action ageinst interference sources helps by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative
    The FCC Part 15 regulations made widespread use of home electronics possible. Back in the late 1970s, it was observed that a Radio Shack TRS-80 and a Milton Bradley Big Trak would, if operated in the same room, crash each other. And many computers wiped out broadcast TV reception. That's been fixed, by requiring type approval for everything that emits RF. If it weren't for the regulations on incidental emissions, rooms full of computers just wouldn't work.

    The FCC isn't that active in cracking down on annoying emitters, but they do try. This went out on August 24th:

    "The Federal Communications Commission has been made aware that an electronic transformer manufactured by W.A.C. Lighting Company, model number EN-12PX-AR, located in a lighting circuit at your residence, is causing harmful radio interference to the AM Radio Broadcast Band as well as to a licensee in the Amateur Radio Service."

    People tend to forget that a switching power supply is a high-powered RF generator. If it weren't for strict emissions regulations and type approval, the frequencies below a few megahertz would be full of power supply hash and not much else.