From: Chuck Kuecker (ckuecker@ckent.org)
Date: Mon Aug 26 2002 - 15:57:27 MDT
At 09:59 AM 8/26/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>Well... as usual in the real world, the question is not quite so black and
>white.
>
>If you wish to adopt a thoroughly libertarian position on this issue, you
>must also be willing to accept the natural consequences. If anybody can
>say anything they want at any time on the airwaves, and the FCC has no
>business regulating that, then the FCC *also* has no business allocating
>spectrum. They have no business eliminating signal interference. They have
>no business setting technical broadcast standards.
>
>If somebody doesn't like a television program, why shouldn't they be
>allowed to jam it off the air with their competing broadcast? Why
>shouldn't CBS be able to try frying "Friends" at a crucial moment? Maybe
>they have something important to say at that very moment. Or, for that
>matter, Jerry Falwell or similar religious fanatics acquiring their own
>high-power transmitters in key markets and "stepping on" any episode with
>sentiments they didn't like. Don't they have a right to speak out? Why
>should NBC get special privileges to use the TV channels they use and
>nobody else? Let's take completely unfettered access to the airwaves to
>its logical conclusion --- people would have a right to do things like
>this under a completely libertarian scenario.
The "libertarian" view is that you don't jam someone else's broadcast
because you thereby have injured them. Technical standards will grow out of
companies co-operating for thier mutual benefit.
People have no "right" to do anything that injures another. This is the
basic theory of libertarian thought. To insist otherwise is to ignore the
definition of the word.
>It is one thing to guarantee "free speech". It is quite another to require
>the people of America to supply megaphones to anybody who demands one,
>particularly when the motive is not so much "freedom of speech" but rather
>to make a buck.
>
>--- Kevin
As was stated numerous times before in various different ways - no one is
"supplying megaphones", and if someone DID start broadcasting at high
volume in the audible range, anyone within earshot would have a claim
against them for aural pollution interfering with their right to enjoy
their property in peace. The arbitrators would be called in to figure out
how much the loudmouth needs to pay the unwilling listeners.
Radio waves are entirely a different subject, since there are NO unwilling
listeners...only people too stupid or lazy to change the channel.
Chuck Kuecker
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