Die, FCC, Die!

Declan McCullagh, author of our sensational June cover story on our "Database Nation," calls for an end to the Federal Communication Commission:

It's time to abolish the Federal Communications Commission.

The reason is simple. The venerable FCC, created in 1934, is no longer necessary.

Its justification for existence was weak 70 years ago, but advances in technology since then have eliminated whatever arguments remained. Central planning didn't work for the Soviet Union, and it's not working for us. The FCC is now an agency that does more harm than good….

Whole thing here.

Comments

[Larry]

Here here. We need to cut down on government, and if we can't do something easy like get rid of a worthless agency, we can't do anything.

[Gary Gunnels]

Good article and I agree with McCullagh.

[Jim Walsh]

Hear, hear...

[gene]

Hee hee:

http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/FCCSong.mp3

[Jon Bristow]

The FCC! The!

[Joe L.]

.

[imperialist FCC]

Just for that, we'll issue some more fines... first we'll fine Howard Stern because he still exists, and then we'll fine everyone who wants to get rid of us!

You can't get rid of us! We're immortal!

[emotional appeal]

But what about rural children who need the FCC to ensure phone service, and later, broadband internet access?! Who will do it if the FCC won't? Think about the rural children who will be left behind!!!

[Larry A]

{an agency that does more harm than good}

Isn't that redundant?

[Warren]

Getting rid of the FCC is a no-brainer, and it ain't never gonna happen

[CTD]

I disagree - bandwidth is a commons. Right now, I have the right to use some of it. But since I don't have millions of dollars, under privatization I'd always have to go through some intermediary to use it. So I would prefer to take my chances with government control, which is at least somewhat responsive to people.

Kneejerk response: "Companies should be _more_ responsive." Answer: Companies are more responsive to _consumers_. But poor folks should also have a say in how this common resource is used. Also, corporations would work actively to give the shaft to lowpower radio, ham geeks, and others who want to play with wireless, making this ultimately an anti-liberty move.

[db]

Just why would "the corporations" give a shit about ham operaters and low power stations? And how would they give them the shaft? I can't see Clear Channel setting up big jamming transmitters in the open spaces of the spectrum (that is, the areas they don't use) just to knock a few indies off the airwaves.

[JDM]

This is all a very nearly dead issue. Soon everything - TV, Radio, phones calls, etc. will simply be broadcast through wireless connections to what the Internet is evolving into. In 20 years, the idea of FM band radio, cable TV, telephone lines, and cell towers will be as quaint as the telegraph is now.

The switch from static systems - voice, TV, data - to non-static systems (where all traffic can be any combination of what we think of now as separate static systems) will entirely subvert anyone's ability to monitor or regulate communications as separate systems the way they do now. As soon as one system is regulated, a new system will evolve. The only answer will be to simplify regulation, for example a flat tax on bandwidth, or impose draconian order form the top down, which is just not going to happen.

[CTD]

I actually can see them doing that, but more plausible is that they buy the spectrum, put musical pap and home shopping channels on it, and prosecute anyone who wants to use it otherwise.

[CTD]

I see you have moved the goalposts - now a common resource is something you "don't have to pay to access", not something which is "potentially available to everyone." Fine. Even given your weaseling, I currently have some say in how spectrum is used, as a voter and/or campaign donor, and I can use some of it as a hobbyist. I fail to see how it's in my interest to give that up for more Clear Channel.

Also, I don't see why you call corporations evil - they're merely amoral and unarrestable.

[James Anderson Merritt]

Congratulations to Declan McCullagh for getting published again, and on such a great subject. This argument needs to be pressed as often as possible, in as many venues as possible. On the other hand, didn't we hash out all of those well-taken points here in Hit & Run just a few months back?

To paraphrase a famous poem about my native state of California:

"What Hit and Run Threads Say Today,
The Rest Will Say Tomorrow."

[Dan]

Companies are more responsive to _consumers_. But poor folks should also have a say in how this common resource is used.

The radio spectrum is not a common resource. A common resource is one which is potentially available to everyone. The radio spectrum is available only to people who can afford a transmitter -- which people too poor to buy anything, by definition, cannot. Why should a person with no way of personally broadcasting or receiving radio transmissions have a say in how the radio spectrum is used?

And people who are poor, but who possess *some* disposable income, can have their needs met by the free market.

Personally, I would prefer a world where two or three unregulated megacorporations handled all broadcasting, to one where N number of corporations and individuals were "free" to broadcast anything that met with government approval. But this is a moot point. In an unregulated market there will still be plenty of room for the little guys. Companies like Clear Channel will try to "crush" them, yes -- but they'll crush them by offering better content that appeals to more people, not by physically forcing them off the air. That's the cost-effective way of doing it, you see.

[Dan]

I see you have moved the goalposts - now a common resource is something you "don't have to pay to access", not something which is "potentially available to everyone."

How is that moving the goalposts? If you have to pay to access it, it's not available to everyone. By definition, anything "potentially available to everyone" must have no access cost.

Even the "trivial" $10 fee needed to broadcast from one side of a house to another is completely beyond the means of a sizable percentage of the human race.

I currently have some say in how spectrum is used, as a voter and/or campaign donor, and I can use some of it as a hobbyist. I fail to see how it's in my interest to give that up for more Clear Channel.

You wouldn't be giving it up, dumbshit.

[CTD]

Kevin - I don't have any problem with loosening up licensing, but even your homesteading scheme is going to require some recordkeeping to know who's on first. If two stations in two bordering states start interfering with each other, it's a federal problem. Enter the federal agency, which doesn't have to actually be called the FCC, but might as well be.

Dan - I say it's a common resource because one can buy an FM transmitter for ten bucks. It's called a Mr. Microphone. Furthermore, an FM receiver can be had for five bucks. Even a smelly hobo can wrangle that kind of money.

[Dan]

Dan - I say it's a common resource because one can buy an FM transmitter for ten bucks. It's called a Mr. Microphone.

You have to pay to access it, ergo it's not a common resource. And enough with the "Mr. Microphone" example, already -- it's got no relevance to the "FCC vs. private sector" debate, since it's equally useless in either scenario. Rest assured that, even if the Supreme Court rules that all of the electromagnetic spectrum belongs to, say, Bill Gates, you'll still be able to use your Mr. Microphone to send subversive broadcasts from your kitchen to your living room. What's important is how we handle radio broadcasts that other people might actually hear.

Anyway, think about what you're saying, here: that we need to have an FCC, with all the abuse of power and regulation that that entails, and all the censorship of speech, so that you can use a low-power transmitter to broadcast over distances you could just as easily shout across. And so that "smelly hobos" can listen to government-sanctioned radio instead of, I guess, evil corporate radio?

Furthermore, an FM receiver can be had for five bucks. Even a smelly hobo can wrangle that kind of money.

And he can use that receiver to listen to what people with transmitters can say. Why on Earth would that give him *any* right to dictate what's said or who gets to say it, or make the radio frequency a "common resource"? I can listen to what *you* say for free. I can look at my neighbor's house for free. I can spend nine bucks and watch a movie in a movie theater. That doesn't make your voice, my neighbor's house, or the movie I watch, common resources.

[Kevin Carson]

CTD,

I don't necessarily have a quarrel your treatment of the broadcast spectrum as a commons, but I'm not sure that should translate into support for the FCC. Any time the federal government claims to be practicing stewardship of "the commons," or promoting any other "progressive" value, you can pretty well figure the reality behind it is corporate hogs at the welfare trough.

The FCC's licensing system, along with the massive price of a license, serves as a market-entry barrier keeping the number of broadcasters artificially low. This is the main function of any licensing system: to enable insiders to make monopoly profits by excluding outsiders.

A better way to do it, I think, would be to pattern a common law of spectrum rights on the old common law of riparian rights: cost-free homesteading of the spectrum, with tort action against interference by those subsequently entering the field. Your right to broadcast is unimpeded, except to the extent you impair the equal right of someone already in business.

Adam Smith wrote two hundred years ago that when the state undertakes to regulate relations between workmen and masters, it has the masters for its counselors. We might expand the principle to say that when the state regulates anything, it has the ostensibly regulated for its counselors.

[CTD]

-Everyone has the _potential_ to get their hands on ten bucks.

-I'm not a billionaire, and I don't sit on the board of a company, so I would be giving it up.

-I'll take your name-calling as a concession. Thanks for playing, Dan!