[wordup] deregulating the air waves? please don't do that ...

[Adam Shand]

In another part of my life I help organize a community run wireless
networking group called Personal Telco (http://www.personaltelco.net/).
I see this as a way of helping to keep the internet belonging to the
people, keeping to power of corporate interest at bay.

I'm still reading up on exactly what this means but it's almost certainly
a "bad bad thing".

From: http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0428-01.htm
Via:  http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/29/1237240

Global Media Giants are Lobbying for the Most
Sinister Privatization of All: The Airwaves
by Jeremy Rifkin

Question: what is the single most valuable piece of property worth owning
at the dawn of the information age? Answer: the radio frequencies - the
electromagnetic spectrum - over which an increasing amount of
communication and commercial activity will be broadcast in the era of
wireless communications. Our PCs, palm pilots, wireless internet, cellular
phones, pagers, radios and television all rely on the radio frequencies of
the spectrum to send and receive messages, pictures, audio, data, etc.

Most of us never give the spectrum a passing thought.  We regard it, more
or less, like the oxygen we breathe, as a free good. In reality, the
spectrum is treated as a `commons' and is controlled and administered by
governments who, in turn, license the various radio frequencies to
commercial and other institutions for broadcast. In other words, in every
country the electromagnetic system is owned by the government on behalf of
the people.

But now powerful commercial media are seeking to gain total control over
the airwaves. Imagine a world in which a handful of global media
conglomerates like Vivendi, Sony, BskyB, Disney, and News Corporation own
literally all the airwaves all over the planet and trade them back and
forth as `private electronic real estate'. A strategy is beginning to
unfold in Washington DC to make that happen.

On February 7, 37 leading US economists signed a joint letter asking the
federal communications commission (FCC) to allow broadcasters to lease
spectrum they currently license from the government in secondary markets.
The letter, which went virtually unnoticed by the general public, is the
opening salvo in a radical plan to wrest control of the entire spectrum
from governments around the world, and make the radio frequencies a
private preserve of global media giants. If they succeed, the nation state
will have lost one of its last remaining vestiges of real power - the
ability to regulate access to broadcast communications within its own
geographic borders.

This story starts several years ago, when the Progress and Freedom
Foundation, a conservative thinktank in Washington with close ties to Newt
Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, published The
Telecom Revolution: An American Opportunity. The report's authors called
for the conversion of the electromagnetic spectrum to private property.
Under the plan, broadcasters holding existing licences would be granted
title to the spectrum they currently used and would be able to use,
develop, sell and trade it as they saw fit. Remaining unused parts of the
spectrum would subsequently be sold off to commercial enterprises and be
reconstituted as private electronic real estate, while the FCC would be
abolished.

The study argued that government control of the radio frequencies led to
inefficiencies, and that if the spectrum were converted into private
electronic real estate that could be exchanged in the marketplace, the
invisible hand of supply and demand would dictate the most innovative uses
of those frequencies.  Congressional hearings were subsequently conducted
on the proposal, quickening interest in the plan.

Still, the notion of selling off the US airwaves to private commercial
interests seemed a bit too ambitious, even for the most experienced
Washington corporate lobbyists. Then, less than one month after George
Bush assumed the presidency, the letter from the 37 economists turned up
on the FCC's doorstep.

The new thinking: first, secure a partial privatisation plan, allowing
commercial licensees to sell and lease their leased spectrum in secondary
markets. Once done, the commercial foundation would be laid for a final
conversion from government licensing of the spectrum to a future sell-off
to the private sector. Other nations would be encouraged to follow suit
and sell off their spectrums to global media companies. If some baulked at
the idea of relinquishing control over their airwaves, international trade
sanctions could be imposed to force compliance.

In the industrial age, exchanging property in markets was the sine qua non
of commerce. The role of national governments was to protect property and
markets. But in the new commercial world being born, having access to the
flow of information in telecommunications networks becomes at least as
important as exchanging property in markets.

If the radio frequencies of the planet were owned and controlled by global
media corporations, how would the billions who live on earth guarantee
their most basic right to communicate with one another? In an era where
more and more of our daily communications take place in cyberspace, access
to the airwaves becomes critical. Of course, those who can pay will be
connected. But what about the 62% of people who have never made a
telephone call, and the 40% who have no electricity? How will they ever
secure access to cyberspace in a world where the admission fee is
controlled by a few global media giants?

If the flow of human communications is controlled by global media
companies, how do we ensure that social and cultural points of view and
political expressions that may differ from those of the companies who own
the frequencies will be allowed to flow over the spectrum? We might face
the prospect of a new form of repression as global media companies tighten
their grip on the airwaves.

Equally ominous, when companies like AOL-Time Warner, Disney and Vivendi
Universal own the channels of communication as well as much of the
'content' that flows through them, will the rich cultural diversity that
has traditionally been created and nurtured in civil society dry up? Will
we be left with only a few global media companies as the ultimate arbiters
of human culture?

How do we prevent these companies from exerting undue influence over
commercial life itself, because of their control over the channels of
communications through which business is conducted? And finally, in the
new era, when everyone is connected with everyone else in commercial
information and telecommunications networks, how do we prevent corporate
owners of the radio frequencies from exploiting the data on people's lives
that flows through cyberspace? What safeguards will people have over their
own privacy when every aspect of their life story is accessible as data
bits travelling over corporate-owned and controlled communications
channels?

At the dawn of the global media age more than 20 years ago, an American
government official made the prescient remark that `trade doesn't follow
the flag anymore, it follows the communication systems'. When our very
right to communicate with one another is no longer assured or secured by
government but controlled by global media conglomerates, can basic
freedoms and real democracy continue to exist?

Jeremy Rifkin is the author of The Age of Access and president of The
Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington DC.

Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001