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"Deregulating Spectrum" by Lawrence Lessig

Larry Lessig has put a new 27-minute narrated slideshow on his website called "Deregulating Spectrum."

It is an excellent presentation of the threat and hidden agenda behind the theoretical/academic argument that propertyizing spectrum is the best way to distribute it. Don't miss this. Some excerpts:

"There's an important battle being waged in Washington right now over something called [quote] 'spectrum' - a battle that is extraordinarily important to the future of the Internet, and one in which the extremists are now prevailing. This is a battle over whether we will sell all spectrum, such that access to spectrum is controlled by those who own the property right. If the extremists win, then this will destroy the potential for cheap, ubiquitous, uncontrolled access to the Internet, which is increasingly spreading throughout the country right now. We need to do something to stop this shift, before the shift becomes permanent...

"Now there's an important subtlety in Ronald Coase's argument, one often missed by those most vigorously supporting Ronald Coase. This is something I call Coase's First Question. Ronald Coase didn't say always you should use a property right to allocate resources. Instead Ronald Coase asked a first question: is property necessary at all for a general allocation of a particular resource? As Ronald Coase wrote,

'All property rights interfere with the ability of people to use resources. What has to be insured is that the gain from interference more than off-sets the harm it produces.'

"So for example, think about the air - a resource necessary for many different functions in our life. Should a property system govern access to air? Well, for certain purposes, such as powerplants that emit carbon, you might say sure, a property system would be a good way to ensure that too much carbon isn't emitted into the atmosphere. But for the ordinary use of most humans, we would say the answer has got to be no, it would be ridiculous to imagine a property system allocating your right to breathe... Laissez faire here is enough. We don't need government here to regulate access to this resource because people are able to regulate access to this resource on their own. And this is the same question we should ask about spectrum: is a property system needed here...?

"The extremists are succeeding in this debate, pushing the FCC and others so that everything is owned... They want to create rights in the right to use spectrum - just like one might create rights in the right to sell hot-dogs. They want to sell those rights to the highest bidder - just like one might sell the right to sell hot-dogs to the highest bidder. But if it's unnecessary to create these rights - like it's unnecessary to create rights to sell hotdogs - and if it could be anti-competitive to sell these rights - just like it might be anti-competitive to sell the right to sell hot-dogs - then we should do something to stop them..."

[Spectrum Policy - 14 February 2007]