Free the Airwaves: Whitespace campaign

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Lessig

My contribution to the “Free the Airwaves” campaign, a push to free spectrum “whitespaces.”

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10 Responses to Free the Airwaves: Whitespace campaign

  1. Andrea Moro says:
    August 20, 2008 at 6:44 am

    Interesting point, but you don’texplain why an unregulated broadband would fail, through competition, to provide uncontrolled, undiscriminated use of the internet. If there’s demand for it, there is willingness to pay. Why would the markets fail to provide it?

  2. Walter Underwood says:
    August 20, 2008 at 5:06 pm

    The letterspacing is r e a l l y distracting and annoying. Lose it. 4real. Also, the numberspeak is so last year.

  3. Steve Baba says:
    August 20, 2008 at 5:19 pm

    I heard that argument before, but it was by the anti-net neutrality people arguing that since one can’t predict future innovation, one should not limit business models. The answer is an empirical matter depending on if there is effective competition between a handful or less competitors.

    Ironically, wireless broadband is likely going to technologically throttle (violate net neutrality) large downloads to avoid “clogging up the tubes” with movie (mostly porn) down loads so that mobile users can’t get directions on time, talk on phone without interruption, or text research for their homework. And if you don’t charge for limited resource, it will be overused and rationed.

    And isn’t McCain the guy who actually tried to increase broadband competition. Someone with more time should look up Obama’s local record on contributions from the local cable and phone companies and his votes to see if Obama is the typical politician.

  4. Jim Houston says:
    August 21, 2008 at 5:54 pm

    I’m afraid you have come down on the wrong side of this argument
    because of a false analogy and insufficient recognition of the base
    technology being discussed.

    Broadcast signals in the real world are not independent of each other
    as they are on a digital multiplexed signal of the Internet. A transmission
    source generates peak and sideband frequencies as well as reflections
    during the course of transmission. A receiver will attempt to lock into
    the strongest source (whether local or faraway – it doesn’t know, it just
    finds signal strength). In the constrained wirespace of the Internet, these
    other signals can be filtered or controlled in the analog domain. Not so
    in the broadcast domain. That the signal sources are becoming digital
    does not really allow more signal spectrum in the same region but rather
    allows more conflicting signals. To the extent that an individual digital broadcast
    has ID tags that allow the receiver to filter them, there is some improvement
    in reception, however if the tag itself can’t be detected because of signal
    conflicts, then you just have a noise source.

    There are sound engineering reasons why spectrum isolation is still needed
    even in the realm of digitally encoded transmissions (the broadcasts are still
    open air analog signals, and the new methods of spread-spectrum, etc… only
    spread around digital noise sources across large paths of the spectrum. There
    is the claim that these will be local only — but the history of CB radio affecting
    larger and larger regions and interfering with both TV and medical devices will
    still be true with ‘white space’ devices (a politiical misnomer if ever there was one.)

    History shows that the FCC is actually doing the right thing by not
    allowing white space devices, and you should support that activity
    as the right (physics-based) thing to do.

  5. Prokofy Neva says:
    August 25, 2008 at 8:35 am

    So, the idea of this campaign is that you get Google free bandwidth so that we all go on Google more and click on its Ad Sense ads so it can compete with TV better?

  6. Giovanna says:
    August 25, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    Honestly I don’t understand all the comments on the graphics choices of Lessig’s presentations. If you don’t like them, just close your eyes and listen only… and maybe imagine those “fancy” colourful squares and “sober” animations made in Powerpoint.

  7. NN says:
    September 2, 2008 at 6:02 pm

    Lessig: If you are advocating a total free spectrum, without any FCC at all, you really should speak with some knowledgable people before digging the trenches too deep. This as it is a (very) bad idea, which will make a lot of what we today takes for granted impossible to use: radio telescopes, remote probes on other plantes, GPS, etc. etc. Listem to Jim Houston and others like him, and make sure that you understand their arguments before you discard them. This as it is a very complicated technical issue, with many considerations to make before deciding on any action.

  8. Bettawrekonize says:
    October 28, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    I think we should free the airwaves and not give it to corporations, special interest groups, or the government. There should be a good amount of airwaves that anyone can use anywhere however they please. Google, for instance, should be free to allow everyone free internet access from it if they so choose. People should be able to send and receive messages or host their own databases from it (ie: databses with web interfaces).

    [quote]
    Lessig: If you are advocating a total free spectrum, without any FCC at all, you really should speak with some knowledgable people before digging the trenches too deep. This as it is a (very) bad idea, which will make a lot of what we today takes for granted impossible to use: radio telescopes, remote probes on other plantes, GPS, etc. etc.
    [/quote]

    This sounds like some tactic some special interest group would make up to scare the public into believing lies. Having a total free spectrum won’t interfere with all this other stuff so long as the frequencies of that spectrum do not interfere with the frequencies of the other stuff.

  9. goosoft says:
    November 2, 2008 at 12:32 am

    Why “White Spaces” interfere with broadcasting? It interferes with their pockets. Can you imagine the power to watch HD videos and programs utilizing “White Spaces”? It would also put a dent into cell phone and wireless giants. It would be the second coming of the internet and WiFi. These new WSD devices will allow a new platform for millions of people to broadcast live. As for the wireless mic people they represent a very small number.

  10. NN says:
    November 5, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    “This sounds like some tactic some special interest group would make up to scare the public into believing lies. Having a total free spectrum won’t interfere with all this other stuff so long as the frequencies of that spectrum do not interfere with the frequencies of the other stuff.”

    No, the words are not from a special interest group. But from a researcher in radio science. I.e. me.

    And it depends of what you mean by “a total free spectrum”. If you are talking about the whole electromagnetic spectrum, it leads to chaos. But we could have, indeed we already have, some parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that are “free”, f.ex. the ISM-bands. That is, free within some restrictions. And it works ok, but you still need FCC to set and oversee the restrictions, otherwise you would have a tragedy of the commons.

    There are also a couple of technicalities, like IF-frequencies, intermodulation, passive modulation etc. to understand before making blanket statements about “non-interfering systems”.

    (And I do not apprecieate the statement that I “lied”. What I described was, among other things, the problem with spectrum sensing technologies.)

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