Jerry, you commented in L.A Radio regarding the proposed merger of Sirius and XM that the spectrum belongs to us (meaning thae public). You and others are incorrect with respect to ownership of spectrum. First of all, Congress and the FCC has never passed any law or rule that designates ownership of the spectrum to anyone. The government allocates spectrum to various entitities. As a matter of fact, the Defense Department has a lot of spectrum, but they don't have to go through the renewal process as do commercial and public broadcasters.

The spectrum/airwaves didn't exist until technology developed them. Because of interference and other problems, the government determined to allocate frequencies to solve many of the technical problems that existed when broadcasting was in its infancy.

Many years ago, Supreme Court Justice, William Douglas, referred to the public airwaves. However, he was not speaking with reference to ownership by the public, he was referring to that portion of the spectrum that was utilized by broadcasters to communicate with the public.

No one owns the spectrum...not the public or those entities that are licensed to use it. By the way the FAA has some control over the airlines, but that does not mean the public owns the airlines. Because the government has rules and regulations regarding various industries does not imply that the ownership is connferred to the public.

Robert L. Fox

Thanx for the tips, its great to read your blog.

Tell you what, Robert Fox, I'll get myself a big ol' transmitter and start broadcasting on any frequency I want to claiming that nobody owns them, and we'll see what kind of arguments are made. In Brinkley v. FRC the courts laid out the concept clearly that the government has a right to regulate the entire spectrum, because it is something held in common by the people.

So if nobody owns the frequencies used by XM and Sirius, why don't we get an uplink and commandeer them?

PBCliberal

Nice blog with a good read

    I see that this was posted right at two years ago, by a few days.  Not a tech or political expert, perhaps there's something I don't know about that I'm not aware of, but from someone who uses the internet everyday to search answers, pay bills, enjoy e-commerce, it appears things are pretty much the same.

    A few weeks ago there was nothing on the masses' lips but the immenent doom from  gas prices. The heaviness and fear in these scripts was disheartening. (I guess it would be a great time to pick up a boat.) Gas was $3.99 and rose to 4.09, not the $10 a gallon that loomed on the horizon. This morning it dropped to 4.03.

     We all have our fears that life will change as we know it. Mine is what the glutting of corn for ethenol, will do to all the livestock this winter without hay.  Will things work out? Will the powers that be, make their adjustments?  I expect they will.

Dena Hamilton

Actually, a lot has changed. The public interest level in this issue took a giant jump. National news organizations have reported the story. An AP investigation caught Comcast cable red-handed running applications on its network that caused peer-to-peer transfer protocols to be fooled into thinking they were not connected when they were.

When the FCC docketed an investigation and tried to hear complaints, Comcast paid people who had no interest or understanding of the matter to fill the seats of the hearing chambers so that people who did couldn't get access to testify. Caught red-handed again, and facing big media like Netflix wanting to use file sharing to deliver content, Comcast threw in the towel.

So its not as if these things fixed themselves. This very two-year-old blog posting was one little cog in a massive virtual information machine that called Comcast out so that it can appear to the casual user that in fact not much has changed, when this is a battle that we won. No doubt the issue will come back again. There's too much money in a walled garden concept of media to have it rest for very long. But every time the public is smarter and realizes it is more invested in the communications infrastructure that the telcos used to feel were their proprietary province.

Thank you for that response.  I greatlly appreciate it. It was an encouragement to be reminded that sometimes people do make things work. (I'm making a committment to support and defend our internet's connectivity!)

Having just came out of a differnet bureaucracy battle I could not win, you helped put my thinking back on track again. Keep up the good work, I'll keep at it too.

Dena Hamilton