Wide open spectrum

There's a lovely accessible article in the Columbia Journalism Review by Jesse Sunenblick about the complex subject of the future of broadcasting. Sunenblick talked to Eben Moglen when researching the article:

" In his office, I told Moglen I was having trouble understanding how an “open” spectrum would differ from a “closed” spectrum, and could he please offer an analogy from the real world that would bring the otherworldliness of the radio spectrum into context?

He leaned back in his chair and spread his arms out wide, as though everything around us were part of the analogy he was about to give. Which was true. “Take the island of Manhattan,” Moglen said. “The level of anonymity in Manhattan is subject to social regulation, like the radio spectrum is subject to political regulation. And it’s variable: sometimes you go places where you have to identify yourself, sometimes not. And as the city imposes restrictions on movement, zoning, and behavior, the federal government places restrictions upon the radio spectrum.

“However,” he went on, “the difference is in the number of restrictions. The essence of life in Manhattan is openness. It’s all free, it’s all here, you can get to it. You can walk from the West Side to the East Side, from Harlem to Chinatown. Or take a cab. But what would Manhattan look like if its social policies were on par with the current government policies concerning use of the radio spectrum? It would be unendurable. You’d have David Rockefeller owning Rockefeller Center. Rupert Murdoch would have a dominant say in everything that happens between the Battery and 23rd Street. Worse, you’d be sitting in Starbucks, having a conversation, and somebody would say, ‘You, stop talking! You, talk about the weather!’ You’re allowed to have person-to-person conversations, but for the privilege of doing so in my neighborhood you have to pay six dollars a minute. And, because there’s nothing resembling a Central Park on the radio spectrum, if you want to gather people and talk about the war in Iraq, tough luck! We need a Central Park for radio!”

If the government tried to license newspapers, Moglen says, the courts would block it on the ground that it violated the First Amendment. “The technological reason that we have given in the past for why a system of licensing — one that would be completely unconstitutional with respect to print — is constitutional in the spectrum, no longer exists! "

And David Hughes:

"last year, Hughes helped another Nepalese entrepreneur add computers and a wireless link to his cybercafé in the Namche Bazaar, the trading center of the Everest region. He used three antenna relays (one hanging off the side of a monastery at 14,000 feet) to extend the network to a school in the nearby town of Thame, where ten Sherpa children are now taking English and computer classes over the Internet from a Nepalese-born, English-speaking Sherpa computer programmer who lives in Pittsburgh.

The computers the Nepalese children use rely on a free software program called Free World Dial Up, which allows them to speak to their teacher over computers, for a flat rate, the way most people do over telephones. To Hughes, when Nepalese children are talking to their teacher in Pittsburgh and handing in their lessons by computer, giving them, as he says, “half a fighting chance to succeed in this world,” that represents more than a demonstration of the possibilities of technology. It is a paradigm shift, a revolution. "