Hi Frank,
Cook Report June-August 2004 p138
Property Rights
David Reed: It's sad to me that the entire debate on “spectrum” policy is carried out in terms of imperfect metaphors, crafted to support a particular point of view.
The most technically inaccurate metaphor to me is the metaphor that likens “spectrum” to “land”, with efficient “land use” being the rhetorical step to “property rights”.
That metaphor is so incredibly wrong on a technical basis for many, many well-understood physical reasons - and ultimately leads to the self-fulfilling creation of scarcity of an utterly *imaginary* resource - a modern Phlogiston! - that has no foundation in reality - only in the structural designs of legacy radio systems.
Imagine if we were still trying to fight fire based on the Phlogiston theory? It was actually pretty accurate for many situations to think about Phlogiston, and I have no doubt it could have been patched with “epicycles” to explain many of the counter-experiments (for example, if Phlogiston were assigned a negative weight, Lavoisier’s demo could have been explained). I highly doubt that chemistry would have made much progress, however, in the intervening centuries.
Andrew Lippman – MIT: The best metaphor I have come across is still the open sea. Of course, it suits my attitudes, but it is also instructive. The principle behind regulation of the sea is that everyone who uses it is an equal partner with equal rights. Yet it is a big, open space whose actual use changes considerably over time. It is also subject to many of the vagaries of spectrum and the potential for disruption (piracy, for example.)
The principle is that everyone on it has to be active and obey rules. The primary rule is that we take all necessary measures to avoid a collision.
With respect to radio, perhaps all radios should obey rules and be capable of response. Barges, with no power, are tethered. Radios with no transmitters perhaps ought to be similarly restricted. They are allowed, but they get few rights.
. . .
Harold Feld: This need not be the case. As I have observed before, Sections 324 and 333 should be applicable to unlicensed technologies. These sections prevent use of more than the minimum power necessary to transmit the desired information, and prohibit malicious interference.
I believe they already prohibit devices designed to interfere with other spectrum users, or could be so interpreted by the FCC without doing damage to the current unlicensed scheme in the same way that a grant of exclusivity would.
petere |
