Public choice theory is important, but so is the predictable behavior of profit seeking firms in markets with limited competition and where the market is subject to consumer lock-in based on network effects and switching costs.

Given that we have had about 30 years of regulation of the internet and the networks that carry that traffic, and it produced excellent results, I prefer to risk the dangers of regulatory capture to the certainty of rent-seeking behavior by quasi-monopolists. Also, others have pointed out, we are now (with experation of the “phase in” period from last years dereg order) entering a world of intrusive government mandates like CALEA (supported by incumbents because they impose costs on new entrants and small competitors) with no restraint on the ability of dominant firms to exercise market power on upstream providers and downstream customers.

If you are curious in a general rebuttal of the argument that public choice theory demonstrates that regulation is invairiabley worse, please see my post “Outsourcing Big Brother” at http://www.wetmachine.com/totsf/item/440

This question-begging assertion assumes that interference can only be caused by something that can’t cause it. In the real world, the issue with interference is much broader than these naive theories about it. Waves undergo multipath distortion, couple with waves from non-radio sources, undergo various types of fading, and couple with similar waves from different sources.

The real issue with spectrum management has to do more with the ability of real equipment to extract bits from real signals than with any sort of effect that waves have on each other. If bits are encoded on waves from different sources that encode bits the same way, extracting them becomes impossible with the kind of decoders we can actually implement in the real world today.

Here’s a very simple example. Two devices are transmitting in a location such that a third device receives signals from both of them. In this system, 1 bits are encoded as a high energy pulse, and 0 bits as a low energy pulse. The first transmitting device sends high-low-high at the same time that the second device sends low-high-low. The receiving device receives high-high-high.

While there certainly are more sophisticated ways of encoding bits, as long as the two transmitters use the same method your receiver has a problem.

Enigma, interesting. Do you think that people would drive every which direction if the law about driving on the right were lifted? Wouldn’t the great mass of people recognize their own interest in orderly traffic and drive by uniform standards? You and I are communicating using a highly developed protocol called “English” - under no legal compulsion to do so whatsoever! People don’t just flop around but for laws telling them what to do and what not to do.

Luis, I didn’t mean to suggest that broadband is a competitive utopia. It’s not. Rather than allowing the current regulatory barriers to competition metastisize into net neutrality rules, though, my preferred solution is to lift the regulations that prevent full competition - and there are plenty. The paper on spectrum reform is an example of where you could move to a less regulatory model and enhance competition, leaping over the last mile problem with radio. But the FCC are sitting on their hands, enjoying their power and the fawning over them by incumbents.

(You seem to have stumbled into saying, “It’s already screwed up so a little more regulation won’t make it that much worse,” and I doubt if you mean that.)

Don’t know what you mean by the “search” comment. A search on TLF points you to draftnewt? Searching for me on Google gets you to draftnewt? Whatever the case, I apologize that you had to experience that, and I hope you have a strong stomach. )

First-year of law school - Fun! After I got out of law school (Hastings), I had to teach myself federalism and separation of powers. Question authority.

But… (you knew that was coming you write this as if in this particular case this is not already a heavily regulated and deeply flawed competitive space. Were network access a wonderful competitive utopia, of course this would be a terrible idea. But the lobbyists already control competition in this space. Special interests already threaten internet content (*cough*COPA*cough*).

I guess in the end I find it very hard to believe that one additional layer of regulation would make the problem of government control significantly worse than it already is. I weigh that against a particularly onerous threat that I find quite plausible- a default-deny, cell-phone like network instead of a default-accept, current-gen internet network- and in this particular case I have to come down on the side of regulation.

(And to follow up on the last post in the other thread, Jim, I’ve been at Columbia for… a week and a half. So, no, I haven’t taken admin law, though I also have a polisci degree, so I know at least a little bit about how deeply fucked our system is. My plan is to focus in corporate and IP law so as to do more bottom-up innovation (i.e., start a company), so I’m not sure if an admin law course will fit in, but I’ll definitely keep it in mind- thanks for the suggestion.)

(Also, your search is slightly busted- I ran a search and got results… for draftnewt.org

All IP is like that-the owner gets a short term (or in the case of copyright, a too long term) monopoly on the production of an item. This limited time monopoly is enforced thorough laws of the state.

So, for me, the internet, as a critical conduit of the economy and public discourse, deserve protection from monopolization and abuse by corporations.

(I had previously posted a list of several corporate abuses of internet control, when net neutrality was not in effect. One of the examples was of an ISP that closed of access by its customers to the website of a labor union with which the company was having a labor dispute.)