Mark “Stanford Center for Internet & Society” Cooper: the First Amendment radically tips the scales in favor of the commons. The broadcasters want to know why their spectrum should be treated different from cellular carriers. It’s because the broadcaster control the conversations that fly over their spectrum — this isn’t commodity spectrum.
Once people have property rights to distribute speech, they get grabby. They never give up their franchise or their licenses. These non-human economic entities (corporations) claim the same free speech rights as human beings, and their free speech trumps the public’s speech.
This is how corporations are supposed to act — they’re supposed to maximise their profits.
Individuals could form collectives to bid on spectrum (but they’d go bankrupt and sell them to someone else. There are a small number of voices that get to speak on the airwaves. The essence here is the right for people to speak.
Early in the 20th Century, Congress recognized the importance of electronic voices. Electronic voices drown out individual voices. Politicians get elected with TV ads, not handshaking.
There are 400 owners of major TV outlets and fewer than 40,00 radio owners. For most commodities, those would be wonderful numbers, but for speech, this is utterly inadequate [applause].
Privatizing the spectrum won’t fix this, but commons allocation will let millions speak — which beats the heck out of 400 or 4,000. The FCC should be compelled by the First Amendment to take up the commons approach.
The people’s First Amendment rights should not be auctioned off to media barons.