Let's add your idea to the list!
Of course, obviously, why didn't I think of it, the air over our property should only have signals we agree to host, no matter where they come from.
Please turn off the following frequencies in the yard, they are banned-
590kHz, 630kHz, 690kHz, 850kHz, 920kHz, 1010kHz, 1080kHz, 1260kHz, 1320kHz, more to be added later.
OR, expect a tax bill from Rock957 Tax Assessor's office.
Oh, this is only a proposed idea. For a minute I thought it was real.
While many of the suggestions regarding the Krasnow article appear to be interesting in their subjectivity and scope, I have noticed something familiar. These suggestions are NOT new. All of these changes have been discussed and cussed for over a decade prior to over-the-air digital TV and radio. And still, deaf ears and stale ideas prevail.
The FCC is so much behind the curve on much of these challenges, it is unlikely (even with a solid solution) the agency could actually implement the new policy. Additionally, the FCC about a decade ago stepped away from enforcing content and programming issues unless it dealt with dirty language or nudity.
Just like everything else in the U.S., attorneys are the driving or impeding force in communications law. Seldom do executive branch agencies or law makers get involved in developing and promoting innovation in electronic RF-born media platforms. New laws and rules tend to encourage breaking the law rather than encourage true innovation. Attorneys seem to be always at-the-ready with writs and arguments that rarely have the good of the country at heart.
The purpose of the Krasnow article is to get us to think of innovative ideas to develop, fund and promote new media. If not for next year, then how about in ten years or more? Did anyone 30 years ago think we would be embracing digital audio codecs, VOIP, digital audio editing software and effects processors like we have today. I worked everyday in broadcasting then; we had not even a clue.
So, cheeky responses to where media should grow to will only cause media consumers to be the innovators, not the broadcasters. And maybe that's the way it should be. However, are we smart enough to stay slightly ahead of the consumer curve to remain relevant as media professionals and broadcasters? We had better hope we are, or we will go the way of the buggy whip and the steam engine. That path leads to oblivion.
Hitting the nail right on the head is the description of the consumer as innovator rather than the broadcaster. It seems that's the exact position I've taken with my effort to promote personal radio stations where the listener does his/her own programming using Part 15 transmitters, precisely because the broadcasters have failed to provide desirable program delivery.
If the AM and FM bands were discontinued, which is one idea mentioned in this thread, Part 15 would be operating on old legacy equipment and perhaps illegally. Trouble is the low power broadcasters have zero political influence in the big decisions.
Fixing the problem on the professional side, with intelligent spectrum allocation and rehabilitation of the radio industry, seems like a task for activists, but completely beyond the means of a group of sincere low power enthusiasts.
This discussion still lacks a solution clad bottom line, in my opinion.
In the start of this discussion Mr. Johnson linked an essay by Erwin Krasnow, Esq., as a center piece for posing questions about "ownership" and the future of electromagnetic spectrum. I hope everyone does what I am still doing, read and re-read this link with careful attention to how it's composed. It is a rather common form of propaganda. It makes a series of scholarly references to court decisions and quotes from speeches, all hand picked to guide toward the conclusion a former counsel for the NAB would make: "Adopt the approach...(of) applying a public-interest standard based on minimally regulated marketplace forces rather than content regulation."
But, you see, that's what we have now and that's the problem.
So, we are to solve the problem we have by having the problem we have?
Mr. Esquire would flunk music composition class.
The link to the article by Krasnow was offered as a thought starter, not and end all, linear logic solution. Part of the reason for the article in the first place, is that the FCC has lost its focus on what it was originally legally created for. Essentially, a society that forgets or dismisses history is destined to repeat it. Krasnow does add a sense of history in his article, albeit his take on history.
I see the kernel idea in the post as, "The public-airwaves concept, particularly as it concerns the authority and mission of the Federal Communications Commission, has led to much misunderstanding and confusion. It is a mischievous notion that has been misused as a rationalization for government regulation."
I think most of would agree that the FCC has created a conflicting set of rules and regulations for Part 15 enthusiasts. Add in the over-stepping of federal inspection agents, the regulatory confusion escalates in intensity and scope, especially if a gray suit with a badge shows up at your front door. Part 15 compliance with the rules then becomes a game of shooting at the proverbial moving target; with the motion changing sometimes on a daily basis.
I would clearly understand your disagreement with the concept. However, to label the concept as propaganda smacks of conspiracy theorist imaginations. As one broadcaster who has lived in the "shark pool" of the industry for 43 years, it seems somewhat misinformed at best not to consider the view point as logistically credible. Minus the NAB-hater bias included in your previous post Carl, it seems plausible that you need to spend more time reading Mr. Krasnow's other books and white papers. Granted, these are his opinions, but they have been tested before the Commission and the courts.
Propaganda? Maybe. Educated propaganda? Likely. To be dismissed? Foolish.
It seems that the term "ownership" is out of place with regard to the electromagnetic spectrum. The spectrum is a limited resource in which the species (human) holds an interest, but interest and ownership are different.
An FCC (like) organization is needed to regulate the use of the spectrum in the interest of the species, controlling frequency allocation, power levels, hazard limitations, and types of use. Content of programming to the public is another matter.
The Environmental Protection Agency is the pollution watchdog and bad programming is pollution (vast wasteland), but this idea probably amounts only to a very small but cheeky joke. Consider the Gulf.
Previously I suggested that AM, FM licenses should be locally owned and operated in the interest of the local population, but program content "left to the marketplace" is a failed system which should be obvious and having local board of gentries decide on programming will work in some cases and not in others, like jury trials.
What we need are radio geniuses who "know what to do" as a matter of their innate comprehension of community interest. True tyrant prophets who bring the radio arts to life and are given lifetime commissions to guide their stations without interference. I suspect many of these people are living now in the exile of a part 15 existence.