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United States Government Politics Technology

Does OSS Make The FCC Irrelevant? 256

Posted by Zonk 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.'"
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Does OSS Make The FCC Irrelevant? More

Does OSS Make The FCC Irrelevant?

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  • Argh! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rovingeyes ( 575063 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:20PM (#13819099)
    From TFA - "You cannot regulate code without going through the First Amendment-type balancing tests we have for any other type of speech," says Cindy Cohn, a lawyer at the Electronic Freedom Foundation in San Francisco. "Code is speech."

    Yeah right. If I go by your same logic and just for the sake of argument let us also assume that Napster was Open Source. Do you really think RIAA still wouldn't have crushed it? First Amendment my ass. Our "friendly" (and genius) lawmakers will find a loophole or make a law that First Amendment will violate. Yup the greenback has a voice, and it is fuckin' loud!

  • The FCC will never be irrelevant... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...as long as they can make tons of money divvying up the frequency spectrum. For example, they're drooling over the eventual switch from analog to digital TV. The amount of cash they'll make off the range of analog TV frequencies will be huge.
    • ...as long as they can make tons of money divvying up the frequency spectrum. For example, they're drooling over the eventual switch from analog to digital TV. The amount of cash they'll make off the range of analog TV frequencies will be huge.

      This is not insightful, even though it includes the magic slashdot keywords "they" and "make money."

      They FCC doesn't make money. They're a regulatory agency. They license the use of a finite natural resource, and enforce regs to make sure that someone feeling pa

  • Until I get the Spark Gap Generator turned on. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:24PM (#13819141)
    The above comment shows an unfortunate lack of understanding if what the FCC does, and bandwidth allocation is only a small part of it. What would you do when someone builds a computer controlled spark gap (substitute in approbiate technological device), and proceeds to jam every frequency they can. Without enforcement, how is anyone going to be able to exchange meaninful content?

  • Another "Forbes" story? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Chmarr ( 18662 )
    Perhaps we should just boycott Forbes until they get rid of Dan Lyons. Obviously, Forbes can't tell the difference between real journalism, and some sort of PR hack.

  • Exactly where did Moglen say this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:24PM (#13819146) Homepage
    Do we have a cite for this? It sounds bogus. Moglen is smarter than that.
  • I agree with the article somewhat- OSS and software-tuneable packet-based radios will eventually push wireless bandwidth to unimagineably high levels. It will also make the FCC obsolete because the software will essentially be doing the same job as the FCC- negotiating for free open bandwidth.

    But we ain't there yet- and given my history with used radios and TVs, and the current hassle over HDTV broadcast, I'd say we're at least 40, perhaps 50 years away from this becoming nationwide reality; and at least

    • Re:Not quite there yet (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) <zachary.pruckowski@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:39PM (#13819290)
      But we ain't there yet- and given my history with used radios and TVs, and the current hassle over HDTV broadcast, I'd say we're at least 40, perhaps 50 years away from this becoming nationwide reality; and at least 100 years before it becomes worldwide reality.

      Do you really think so? I mean, when I bought my first computer 10 years ago, 56k was blazing fast. And wireless was unheard of (at least beyond 5 foot, PDA to PDA transmissions). Now Wireless is much more commonplace, and the bandwidth is rising rapidly. I doubt it'll take 50 years. Given the rate at which technology now moves, we could see enough bandwidth wirelessly all over major markets (read: big cities) within 15 years, and maybe 25 for it to go everywhere. Since the amount of bandwidth you need is roughly proportional to population, it's easier to cover rural areas adequately. With radio, signal strength needs to be based on terrain, since an area needs a certain amount of signal regardless of whether it is populated or not.
      • Do you really think so? I mean, when I bought my first computer 10 years ago, 56k was blazing fast. And wireless was unheard of (at least beyond 5 foot, PDA to PDA transmissions). Now Wireless is much more commonplace, and the bandwidth is rising rapidly. I doubt it'll take 50 years. Given the rate at which technology now moves, we could see enough bandwidth wirelessly all over major markets (read: big cities) within 15 years, and maybe 25 for it to go everywhere. Since the amount of bandwidth you need is r
        • You don't have to pick on Hams to make your point.

          Most Public Safety systems are still analog trunking or single-channel repeaters in everything but large cities, digital is just barely deployed and seriously working in large population areas.

          And even then, none of todays highest-end digital radio systems have ANY capability to be as frequency agile as the idiot at Forbes recommends.

          Hell, if he'd ever seen the amount of work that goes into tuning filters and techniques to keep Intermodulation interference (
    • Unimaginably high bandwidth? Really?

      Take an example out of this thread: 500k population, all snarfing voip and on-demand A/V for several hours per day... 500K times 100KBps, let's say.

      Does anyone know Shannon-Hartley [wikipedia.org] well enough to see how large populations and high bandwidth numbers like these work out? If literally hundreds of thousands of devices are all running at a few gigahertz, even with promises of directional/positional streams via software defined radios, it seems the 'noise' they've generated r

  • No. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:25PM (#13819154)
    What do you think all your internet connections are running on? Wireless radio spectrums and cable lines.

    • What do you think all your internet connections are running on? Wireless radio spectrums and cable lines.
      I don't quite follow you. Do you mean to say we need the FCC to regulate the use of the wireless spectrum, to ensure that equipment that can play fair really does play fair? Or do you mean we need the FCC to regulate the cable TV, telephone, electric utility companies, etc., that run cables to your home/business? Or both?
      • Both. Even though there are many logical connections and voip going on over the internet in a virtual world manner, it still all communicates in physical reality. Either through cable companies, phone companies, local wireless routers (on their way to the cable and phone companies) or through some wireless service (like a cable company/phone company) and all of that has to be moderated (heh) to make sure that equipment AND companies play fair.

        The better question to ask is whether or not the FCC needs to b

  • No (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:26PM (#13819158)
    Because if people can do whatever they want, some will be assholes. It is much easier to get high bandwidth long range transmission by using a lot of power and a wide frequency band than it is to do it with low power and creative encoding, so people will do just that. We need regulation to ensure that everyone plays nice. Perhaps not how it is now, but an unregulated spectrum wouldn't work out well and, as always, it'd be the little guy getting the biggest shaft.
    • Yeah, can you imagine what spammers would do if they wouldn't have to contend with the FCC?

    • Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RexRhino ( 769423 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:39PM (#13819294)
      You need the FCC to assign certain bandwidths to certain types and standards of communication, but you no longer need the FCC to assign a specific bandwidth to a specific station, thereby limiting stations.

      It would be totally possible to have some sort of digital packet broadcast system where stations need a specific frequency band, that would allow tens of thousands of radio stations in an area instead of 5 or 10. The primary purpose of the FCC regulation of radio nowadays is to maintain a limited amount of radio stations, thereby sustaining the profit model of radio. (After all, price is set by supply and demand. If you increase the supply of radio broadcasts, but the demand for radio broadcasts stays the same, the cost of advertising on radio will go down!)
      • The primary purpose of the FCC regulation of commercial broadcast radio bands nowadays is to maintain a limited amount of radio stations

        fixed

        remember, there's a lot more spectrum the FCC regulates than just that.
        • I agree... it was an error of ommission on my part.

          The point is, the FCC regulating the bandwidth so it is free for everyone to use is one thing, the FCC giving people a legal monopoly on bandwidth is another thing.

          No one cares that the FCC says "this is the citizens band", or "this band is for cell phones". But the regulation of the FM and AM bands how they do now is simply corporate welfare.

      • Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)

        by kesuki ( 321456 )
        the problem with this idea, is that it 'solves' the 'bandwith' issue by simply using lower power, shorter range broadcasts, and having more and more transmitters, but there is a fundamental problem with that model, the nearby 'nodes' will create interfearance zones full of ghosts and shadow transmissions and the furthter you are from a geographic center of a broadcast node the worse your service would be. i mean yeah in theory by having the transmission range reduces you exponentially increase the amount o

    • Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)

      by interiot ( 50685 )
      Because if people can do whatever they want, some will be assholes.

      The FCC can perform the anti-asshole role without being nearly so overbearing.

      Cops patrol the streets and make sure nobody is beating anyone up or shooting anyone. Cops are able to do this without dictating exactly where everyone is allowed to walk. There's no reason the FCC can't do this too.

      • Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jacksonj04 ( 800021 )
        No, but the people have places to be so that they don't end up causing chaos.

        Someone dictates that people walk along a pavement, and vehicles move on the correct side of the road. Removing this dictation is likely to end up with 18 wheelers hitting each other at 55mph. In countries with a sane speed limit, like the UK, this means 18 wheelers hitting each other at 70mph.

        It's not just common sense, it's regulated for a reason. Radio spectrum is regulated for a similar reason - so that radio stations don't cla

      • Re:No (Score:3, Funny)

        by NateTech ( 50881 )
        Walk down the center line of an Interstate and see if the cops don't bother you.

        Your analogy is seriously screwed.

        • Re:No (Score:2)

          by TGK ( 262438 )
          I can assure you that you won't get any problems from the cops if you do this.

          Now you'll have some very short lived arguments with some of America's larger trucking companies... but you probably won't feel a thing.

    • He also said some very.. odd things about OSS..

      Because open-source software is so easy to modify and use

      Yeah... that's why I've spent the last four days at my work simply documenting the include tree of Cacti so that I could write a script that can authenticate and crawl to grab an image.

      OSS currently is absolutely hell to integrate, and the only thing that makes it easy to modify is that the source is free.

      ...

      Sorry, my job has just been hell with this particular piece of OSS.

  • Uh... no. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:26PM (#13819161) Homepage Journal

    While better encodings might make it possible for multiple signals to exist without interference, that doesn't mean thatthe FCC isn't necessary. The day that we see megabroadcasters fire up a gigawatt transmiter that plasters a broadband range with religious TV broadcasting across the entire country, you'll understand the problem. Not everything can practically switch to frequency hopping. In particular, anything based on broadcast concepts cannot do so because otherwise clients can't reasonably locate it.

    Moreover, even frequency hopping requires a fixed frequency starting point in at least one direction in order to get communication started in the first place. At the very least, the FCC is necessary in order to prevent those frequencies from getting trampled upon.

  • It's just like how communism has made government irrelevant in the workers' pardises of Cuba and North Korea!

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:27PM (#13819175)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The answer is.....NO! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slashname3 ( 739398 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:27PM (#13819177)
    The FCC is still needed. There is still a finite set of bandwidth available. Technology may allow more and more things to utilize that bandwidth but there are limits. And if it is unregulated then the most powerful transmitter wins will be the way it works. This would result in areas where lower power devices would not be able to operate because someone is splattering the spectrum those devices use with their own noise.

    Actually it might not be bad if you could walk/drive around with a cell phone jammer. Or even better a high frequency Ham radio that can cause that rolling speaker that pulled up next to you some serious interference directly into the speakers. :)

    Just need enough power to permanetly damage his speakers with one ear shattering squelch!
    • "There is still a finite set of bandwidth available." Clarification: saying that there is a shortage of radio spectrum is like saying there is a shortage of colors. Both are infinite. Colors become finite only when you restrict yourself to a discrete color-space, like a box of Crayola crayons. Radio spectrum becomes finite only when you chop it into big discrete chunks, like radio stations. Reference, for example, http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/intere s ting-people/199507/msg00023.html [interesting-people.org], as w
      • I never said there was a shortage, I said that there is a finite set of bandwidth available. You can slice the bandwidth only so thin. True, technology advancements will allow you to slice it ever thinner but there is only so much available. It is similar to the microprocessor industry. They have been able to reduce the size of their processors significantly. However there are limits to how far they can go. The limit in that case is down at the atomic level. It will be virtually impossible to go beyo
      • Total garbage. There are laws of physics involved and they won't change just because you wish that they would.

        None of the "solutions" in the article, or so far on this discussion would work in practice.

        Its possible to make use of some statistical tricks to apparently cram more into the same space, and its possible to take advantage of the piss-poor perception of the average human to inflict sub-standard audio and video on them -- and tell them its all wonderful "because its digital". But the fact remain

      • Yes there is (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Andy Dodd ( 701 )
        While the electromagnetic spectrum is in theory infinite, the physically usable spectrum is finite.

        We have at most 20-24 GHz of economically usable bandwidth. For some applications (point-to-multipoint broadcast), LOS restrictions and the difficulty of generating appreciable amounts of power at higher microwave frequencies limits us to far less than that.

        Honestly, the only economical transceivers I know of that work above the 5.8 GHz ISM band are specialty devices not well suited to communications. (Gunn

  • Moglen knows beans on this topic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by puzzled ( 12525 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:28PM (#13819179) Journal

      If we were a nation of boy scouts that might work, but experience in wireless band usage in the unlicensed ranges indicates this is not the case :-)

      Unlicensed wireless spectrum in Omaha, Nebraska, population 500k, is managed by a mixture of microwave design and troubleshooting, back stabbing, jamming with amateur gear, intrusions into ISP's networks, 'uncoordinated' adjustments of competitor's antennas and radios in shared facilities, lawsuits, character assassination, 'testing' of heavily amplified frequency hopping products, and occasional play on the part of aircrews on RC-135 Rivet Joints flying out of Offutt AFB.

      Never in a million billion zillion years would the licensed band network operators here tolerate that sort of conduct. Eben needs to stick to software licenses and leave radio physics alone ...

    • Re:Moglen knows beans on this topic (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cats-paw ( 34890 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:59PM (#13819504) Homepage
      He may not know beans but he does have a point.

      You are confusing regulation with enforcement. People using illegal transmitters should be prosecuted as they are not allowed to do that.

      Moglen's point is that the FCC is currently in charge of allocation and that's the problem. Because the FCC is a government entity, spectrum control is, in fact, going to be driven by those with the most cash, and not for public benefit. Opening up spectrum to general use and placing very clear rules on transmitter power in a meaningful way, i.e. limits on antenna gain and spectral density , pretty much solves the problem.

      Opening up the spectrum and then ENFORCING the rules is what should happen. The current spectral micromanagement by the FCC is in fact a bad thing.

      Then there is the fact that they are not trying to enforce things like the broadcast flag which affect your RECEPTION of the airwaves. The fact that it is illegal to receive satellite broadcasts without "approved" hardware is insane, and yet it is currently the law.

      We all share the roads, but that doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want.
      It should be the same with spectrum.
      • You are confusing regulation with enforcement. People using illegal transmitters should be prosecuted as they are not allowed to do that. So what's an illegal transmitter if there are no regulations? That's the dumbest comment I've read in this thing so far... In order to set transmitter standards, one must know their purpose, their emission type, their expected use, the needed coverage (power), and a lot of things the FCC *does* today. If you take away the regulations, you automatically take away the a
    • The key to your comment is this :

      " Never in a million billion zillion years would the licensed band network operators here tolerate that sort of conduct. Eben needs to stick to software licenses and leave radio physics alone ..."

      I.E. the corporations who shelled out big bucks and have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, as opposed to the startups or hacker in his garage who did not.

      Solution: one set of rules for analog broadcast and a more open set of rules for packet broadcast. E.G. any type

  • Simple Answer: No (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:28PM (#13819187) Homepage Journal
    The FCC does far more than just regulate the airwaves. They also regulate satellite TV, cable companies, cell phone companies, and phone companies. They also provide the National Do-Not-Call list, and regulate telemarketers. They regulate and monitor 911 services. They fine the phone companies when there are major outages, making sure the phone companies do a decent job even though they have a near monopoly in their geographic areas.

    If you can show me open source software, or closed source software for that matter, that can do ALL of the above, then I'll agree. Perhaps the FCC just needs to be reduced in size and scope, just like every other government organization.

  • Ethics (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Skadet ( 528657 )
    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.

    Yeah, that's possible. It's also possible that I want to set up a huge-ass transmitter and saturate the neighborhood with radio waves. The type of thinking that's expressed in the summary assumes that everybody -- not "most people", but everybody -- will act ethically, at least in a utilitarian or "common good" sense. I sa

  • keep dreaming... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Smarty2120 ( 776415 ) * on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:31PM (#13819207)
    "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"
    You're kidding, right? Look at what a mess the 2.4ghz band is. Every cordless phone and nonstandard wireless protocol device (wireless TV repeater from radio shack, etc.) uses it along with 802.11. I run into interference conflicts frequently enough that I still keep my networks wired whenever possible unless it's a laptop. Letting people blast away at 200mw is bad enough, imagine the mess that'll ensue if you do that with higher power transmitters.
    • Letting people blast away at 200mw is bad enough, imagine the mess that'll ensue if you do that with higher power transmitters.

      High Power Transmitters. adj.
      1) Enough RF to cook your eyeballs while they are still inside your head.
      2) Enough RF to make you smell like a cooked thanksgiving turkey.

      Synonyms: Multi-Megawatt Transmitters. Gigawatt Transmitters.

  • Repeat after me: bandwidth is a scarce resource (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr. Zowie ( 109983 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMdeforest.org> on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:31PM (#13819210)
    There is only so much bandwidth in the radio spectrum. In signal theory, the bandwidth of an analog channel is pretty well defined: it's log(S/N)(fmax). That is to say, it's the logarithm of the signal-to-noise ratio, multiplied by the maximum number of samples per second you can send. The S/N logarithm determines how many bits you can commmunicate with each sample of the channel; the fmax determines how many samples per second you can transmit.

    The current FCC strategy for allocating bandwidth is to let the natural background S/N dominate, and allocate pieces of frequency spectrum. The UWB strategy is to increase N over the entire frequency spectrum. They both consume bandwidth in the public airwaves. Remember, unless you're using angular encoding (like a camera) there is only one signal to be had: the voltage off an antenna, versus time. Traditional radio broadcasting uses the Fourier basis to describe that voltage signal and to cut up pieces of the signal for different people to use. CDMA, TDMA, and other WB strategies use different bases -- the effect is that their interference is spread over a LOT of Fourier space, so no one user affects any one channel more than infinitesimally.

    But there's no free lunch. A zillion users, all degrading signal infinitesimally, are just as bad as a single doofus who's stomping on your allocated frequency band. Even worse, actually, because you can (usually) find and unplug the doofus's equipment -- but nothing short of a nuclear strike will stop the UWB interference once it gets bad.

  • That raises the question of why Rupert Murdoch, say, needs exclusive access to a slice of the radio spectrum for his Fox television network when he could just as easily put his content out over the Internet for customers to pick up using low-powered wi-fi receivers hooked into the Web.

    So his argument is that because stations can send out information over the internet, TV is obsolete? There's at least one problem here. Aside from the necessary internet bandwidth required, not everyone has a computer/go
    • Ironsides wrote: "People want to watch in real time, not download and then watch."

      Actually if people used PVR systems they would get used to the "downloading" or recording of shows and then watching them when they want where they want. Using a PVR (mythtv, tivo, freevo) system changes the way people watch TV. About the only type of shows that anyone would want to watch "real time" would be sporting events or space launches. Most everything else does not suffer anything by being watched at a later time.

      • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Ironsides ( 739422 )
        Actually if people used PVR systems they would get used to the "downloading" or recording of shows and then watching them when they want where they want. Using a PVR (mythtv, tivo, freevo) system changes the way people watch TV. About the only type of shows that anyone would want to watch "real time" would be sporting events or space launches. Most everything else does not suffer anything by being watched at a later time.

        You can add some types of news into that list of yours. If there is a tornado, bli
        • You can add some types of news into that list of yours. If there is a tornado, blizzard, flash flood warning or a few other things headed my way I want to know NOW. TV via the Emergency Broadcasting Service and Emergency Interuptions helps people find out what they need to know quickly. Additionaly, the Amber Alert notifications use this kind of system as well. Those kinds of emergencies work well for TV and Radio broadcasts. Not so well with websites. Especially when during a "Severe winter storm" most lik
        • If there is a tornado, blizzard, flash flood warning or a few other things headed my way I want to know NOW. TV via the Emergency Broadcasting Service and Emergency Interuptions helps people find out what they need to know quickly. Additionaly, the Amber Alert notifications use this kind of system as well. Those kinds of emergencies work well for TV and Radio broadcasts.

          Maybe you do, but I don't. As the sibling post pointed out, this sort of notification is rather pointless -- you would know by looking out

  • FCC (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ViolentGreen ( 704134 )
    The FCC is necessary but they aren't doing what they should. The best example I can give is the FCC's deregulation of radio in the late ninties. In the markets near me, Clear Channel bought every station and left radio in a sad state.

  • 'broadcasting is unconstitutional' (Score:4, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:31PM (#13819218)
    "...GNU Radio is developing a new generation of radios and TV receivers that use software for just about everything except the antenna and the power source. The FCC can prohibit manufacturers from selling radios that transmit on illegal frequencies, but it would have trouble shutting down a Web site distributing software that does the same thing."

    Look dude, I just got a brand GNU radio!

  • Is he nuts? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Loconut1389 ( 455297 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:33PM (#13819238)
    What would prevent the kiddie down the street from buying a 1000 watt transmitter, radiating himself and his neighbors, overmodulating his signal and washing out half the FM radio spectrum within a nearby radius?

    There is no way to mandate computer networked transmitters, or to enforce things from the transmitter side.

    The fcc handles figuring out land topology, power, assignments, and a myriad other factors involved in assigning a frequency and maximum power- for the entire country's radio space over several ghz of spectrum.

    What does open source really have to do with this anyway? Sure, open source could theoretically implement the system he talks about, but the post is more about the supposed irrelevance of the fcc and is using OSS as a buzzword to generate hype.
    • What's to stop that child now? If he really wanted to do so, he could obtain such equipment today, just as he could without the FCC.

      • What's to stop that child now?

        Well, for one, this little agency called the FCC.

        In the final analysis, bands have limits dictated by the laws of physics. And communications within these bands can be disabled by overrunning these limits. You'd still need the FCC to set emission limits (probably on a per band basis) and for enforcement against people whose transmitters were a bit too powerful or whose antennae were a bit too long (my apologies to any Martians in the neighborhood). Otherwise, anyone could s

        • You missed the point of my post. Go back and read the entire thing. All two sentences of it. You'll note that I refer directly to the FCC in the second sentence, pointing out the fact that even today they can't necessarily stop a child from doing that.

          Perhaps you're confused by what I meant by "stop". The FCC cannot necessarily stop a child from doing something like that beforehand. If the child is eager enough, he will find such a transmitter, with or without the FCC. Now, perhaps they could stop him later
  • You've got to be kidding me, I stood in the parking lot after a football game on Saturday and tried to call the same person 65 times before getting through. I would love to know where these super-intelligent networks are, because I wasn't near one yesterday.
  • While the job the FCC has been doing is certainly debatable (although not necessarily debate worthy), the fact that they do provide some form of regulation is good. Even if everyone can adapt their radio to work at other frequencies:

    A. we are a long way from having adaptive radios in everything, it would cost sooo much to update all radios, even over the next 20 years - it wouldn't quite be as bad as the U.S. converting to metric, but someone has not thought this through entirely. Think the U.S. is going to

  • Grain of salt recommended (Score:4, Informative)

    by jomegat ( 706411 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:36PM (#13819269)
    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...

  • Get rid of the FCC so I can put a transmitter in the trunk of my car that is set to the same frequency as the local country station. This way I could drive around and jam the station with an endless loop of "Tooling for Anus" by The Meatmen.

    That would rock!
  • Come on, with the education listed in The Fine Article, can these people REALLY be that clueless?

    Sure, it is possible to regulate radio equipment using OSS to use finer and finer pieces of spectrum. That's really irrelevant. If I decide I want to use 97.111 MHz for my open-source-audio-blog, and the local radio station wants to use 97.111 MHz for teeny-bop-around-the-clock and Motorola wants to use 97.111 MHz for emergency radios, who gets to use that frequency? The FCC's role is critical to keeping the

  • Here's a very informative statement by Kennard about the FCC status in 1998... It helps us see where we are now came to be.
    http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/0610ken.pdf [senate.gov]

    Kennard maintained that the purpose of the FCC was to promote competition and UNiversal Access (both to telephone and internet).

    So what happened to the FCC? Why does the FCC still want to regulate radio transmissions, when as TFA points out, there is no appreciable limit to transmission based on frequency?

    Well, Kennard resigned i

  • What Moglen -actually- said... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Parity ( 12797 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @02:39PM (#13819296)
    The hard quote here is this:

    "My goal is to do all of the work it takes to be explaining to the Supreme Court in 2025 why broadcasting is unconstitutional," says Moglen, who speaks in perfect, rolling sentences. "We have a long march to do, we have a lot of education to do, society has to catch up with our vision of the future, but we are going someplace and the only question is timing and skill in driving."

    Which first of all, implies he wants deregulation of broadcasting by 2025 and second of all implies that broadcasting is all he cares about, not, say, FCC regulations on interference caused by computer power supplies. Extremely hard to say with no context other than Forbes' interpretation.

    There doesn't appear to be any source that puts his words in context. Other articles are appearing now on ZDnet, et al, but they only cite Forbes.

    I don't think this is even remotely an accurate statement of Eben Moglen's ideas. Not to be an apologist; I think deregulation broadcasting is a stupid idea. I wouldn't mind seeing the airwaves repartioned to give more space over to public use, etc., but simple deregulation I wouldn't support. However, I strongly suspect Forbes of putting words in Moglen's mouth with its interpretation of whatever he actually said.

  • Sorry, no (Score:2)

    by tgd ( 2822 )
    Thats grasping at straws trying to link OSS and radio and freedom. Its just a silly connection to make, unless you're a mindless OSS fanboi.

    Seriously. If you think the FCC's role is not an important one, you don't understand some combination of: human nature, radio communications, electronics, telecommunications history, etc. I'm sure others can come up with more broad areas believing that shows a lack of understanding in.

    And trying to pass off the "OSS means freedom" argument really sends things into left
  • Ms. Jones and Mr. Moglen refute [groklaw.net] the Forbes piece
  • All information broadcast wirelessly requires some finite bandwidth and power. Two transmitters broadcasting in the same space at the same time can jam each other. Someone needs to enforce rules and specifications about how transcevers interoperate, whether broadcast, pont to point, or whatever. Otherwise, incompatible technologies will interfere with each other. Also, what's to stop someone from taking huge chunks of bandwdith for square miles without a regulating agency?
  • Advertisers, that is. A whole lot of them will crawl out of the woods and you will discover unknown items that can act as radio receivers. Not very smart, software-controlled radios, but things like fillings in your teeth.

    You see, without regulation there would be no power limits. Without power limits it would be a short race to see who could have the biggest gun, er, transmitter. You would be able to pick up their transmissions on your cell phone, your car radio, your TV, your wired telephone and just

  • The article implies that if everyone has a radio that can broadcast on any frequency (via the magic of OSS), then it can't be regulated. And they can't stop anyone from having the radio, because the software will be GPLd.

    Sorry, kids, but we're talking about a finite resource here. Frequencies aren't virtual, there is no magic multiplexer that will let everyone share the same bandwidth. Just imagine if someone wrote an Ethernet card driver that didn't respect the Ethernet protocol: that one card would mon
  • Quote #1: "...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."

    There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits people from charging money for GPL software. See Red Hat, Novell, IBM, et al.

    Fuck-up #2: Linking http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/compinf o/CompanyTearsheet.jhtml?tkr=APA [forbes.com] to the Apache web server!

    -Charles
  • is making it possible for anybody to use the airwaves without interfering with anybody else

    Except, of course, those who WANT to interfere for negative purposes.

    You can flood a bandwidth with noise, and make it unusable. I don't care how much coding you use. There is no magical way to have infinite bandwidth across any portion of the spectrum.

    All you'll wind up with is rich script kiddies (ham kiddies?) with klystron transmitters in their attic that papa bought them with petty cash from the trust fund.

  • Short answer: No.

    Longer answer: No, of course not.
  • As the FCC moves more towards law enforcement, and censorship, they really have little to do with conflicts anymore.

    /in solviet russia, your radio transissions police you.
    //ducks
  • 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.'"

    And the fact that we have laws means we never need police.

    I guess the author never heard a psycho CB operator talk about killing and raping everybody he meets (perhaps running a few hundred watts) or a schizo amateur operator running his VFO back and forth over people he disagrees with or somebody intentionally or unintentio
  • ...'cause the FCC is going to do everything it can to remain on the public's payroll. There's too much at stake for them -- to wit, all their jobs.

    Kinda like the DEA: a complete and utter failure by every conceivable measure, yet they still suck bajillions of dollars out of the taxpayers' pockets.

  • FCC action ageinst interference sources helps (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @03:16PM (#13819691) Homepage
    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 [homestead.com], 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.

    • ... and then there are all the analog ham radio, etc broadcasters out there who, in the absence of the FCC, would be prefectly happy cranking the power output from their transmitters in order to gain distance. The FCC is the entity that keeps these guys in check.

      A few years back, we had a neighbor with a ham radio who would crank it up whenever he thought nobody was paying attention. It was strong enough to actually hear his voice coming out of the home theater audio system in our house. Did he care to re

  • FCC isn't irrelevant, and never will be (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JSBiff ( 87824 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @03:22PM (#13819752) Journal
    The reason people can make such profoundly ignorant statements as "The FCC is obsolete", is precisely because the FCC has done a pretty darn good job of doing it's job. The FCC, at least in terms of frequency regulation and enforcement, has done a good enough job that they are largely invisible to the general public. Hence, a lot of people might think they are irrelevant.

    Let me explain: the reason we are getting technology to make ever-more-efficient use of available radio spectrum, is in part due to the fact that the FCC, the ITU, and all the counterpart communications agencies of governments around the world recognized the need to regulate the radio spectrum, to slice it up for use by many different 'users'. Part of the FCC's job is to make sure the USA abides by the international radio-spectrum treaties, so that a resource that is fairly scarce, can have optimal usage.

    These regulatory agencies, by the very work they do, encourage maximum usage of the available spectrum, and keep people from stepping on each other's signals. This is why we live in a world of wireless devices, wireless digital communications, cell phones, amateur radio, marine radio, military radio, tv, commercial radio, etc, etc and everyone can make use of the airwaves with minimal interference to each other. Once allocations have been made, you need someone to do enforcement (investigation and prosecutions of violations of the allotment), or else the allocations mean nothing.

    If you got rid of the FCC, some people would stop playing nice with each other (even though the technology exists to co-exist). Some people would get frequency 'greedy'. And then the whole system would collapse. The sad thing about humans is, a certain percentage of the population always need 'police' to keep them honest (and some are crooked anyway, but at least you have a chance to stop them before they do too much damage, if you have police).

    Another important thing to remember about radio frequency, is that different radio frequencies *behave differently*, and allocations need to take this into account (and currently, largely do). Shortwave radio allows worldwide communication with relatively low power output. But, because it is world-wide, it means you also have a truly global 'collision domain', to borrow a term from digital networking. So, if you just need to do local communications, you *don't* use these 'global' frequencies.

    The FCC provides a truly useful service to the public (despite all the snarking about decency standards - something the FCC doesn't really want to be involved in, but is forced to by public demand, btw - remember, the FCC ultimately answers to politicians, whose chief concern is keeping the most people 'happy' so they can get re-elected). Let's give them a little respect.
  • In the government anyway. There is still National Peanut Board, for example. Ever since there was actually hunger in America and peanuts were considered an important staple.

    Likewise, there is still rent-control in New York City -- introduced as a temporary measure during World War II (to protect the families of the soldiers from "greedy landlords", you see).

    The Spanish War took place more than a century ago, but we are still paying the tax introduced to finance it [taxfoundation.org].

    Relevant my behind... FCC will stay w

  • 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
    That is one of the functions performed by the FCC, although other mechanisms certainly would have taken care of that if the FCC had not. The FCC's powers went far beyond that. Congress nationalized the spectrum and took upon itself the authority to grant revocable licenses that must be used "in the pub

  • Tell that to... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MrFlannel ( 762587 )
    ...is making it possible for anybody to use the airwaves without interfering with anybody else.

    Tell that to my microwave.

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