Not a lot of free speech.
"But now we have all this new technology where computers direct the
operation of flexible radios, radios whose characteristics are
determined by software, and it's looking like the scarcity of the
electromagnetic spectrum has been pretty grossly overstated. It's hard
to prove, because now we've got a world where lighting up a bunch of
smart, agile radios is a crime against the 'legit' license-holders.
"But Parliament's not going to throw the airwaves open because no
elected politician can be responsible for screwing up the voters'
televisions, because that's the surest-fire way to not get
reelected. Which means that when you say, 'Hey, our freedom of speech is
being clobbered by bad laws,' the other side can say, 'Go study some
physics, hippie, or produce a working network, or shut up.'
"The radios we're installing now are about one millionth as smart as
they could be, and they use one millionth as much spectrum as they could
without stepping on anyone else's signal, but they're legal, and they're
letting more people communicate than ever. There are people all over the
world doing this, and whenever the policy wonks go to the radio cops to
ask for more radio spectrum to do this stuff with, they parade people
like us in front of them. We're like the Pinocchio's nose on the face of
the radio cops: They say that only their big business buddies can be
trusted with the people's airwaves, and we show them up for giant
liars.
Pages:
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226