Rules, Policies and the ALPB

I'm curious as to how you think a petition could get millions of signatures (or even hundreds of thousands) by talking over the air to our tens (maybe hundreds) of listeners (combined).

You know, I would really like to read NZ's equivalent of our Part 15 rules. Anyone have a link?

The following is excerpted sections from a book I've been skimming through, written by a lawyer concerning numerous different aspects of the national airwaves (not just AM and FM) and how the system works with who can do what. The book is: The Future Of Ideas - THE FATE OF THE COMMONS IN A CONNECTED WORLD by Lawrence Lessing, Published 2001.
You can read more of it online at googlebooks or on the internet archive, the following kind of addresses some of the discussions here..

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'..On the wall in my office is a multicolored poster. The poster is large (maybe 30 by 42 inches), and it is titled, in beautifully retro typewriter font, "United States Frequency Allocations— The Radio Spectrum." To the left are thirty-three colored boxes, listing the legends for the poster. Thirty list "radio services." Three list "activity codes." Among the activity codes are "government exclusive," "government/non-government shared," and "non-governmental exclusive." (Appropriately enough, government exclusive is red, while nongovernmental exclusive is green.)

If you could tilt this poster and give it a bit of a 3D look, it might remind you of the famous New Yorker cartoon maps, where everything close is detailed and significant, while everything far is wide open and unimportant. So it is with spectrum as well. At the highest frequency (30-300 gigahertz), the allocations are a patchwork of tiny colored boxes, sometimes four deep; but as you move down the frequency range, the allocations get wider and less precise. The largest swath is AM radio.

This map, however, doesn't mark out any physical space. It marks the allocation of radio spectrum. The map says what kind of use will be permitted at what range of radio spectrum in any particular part of the territorial United States. It does not say by whom.

As I described in chapter 5, the "by whom" part is determined by a complex set of federal regulations. The FCC makes a decision about who gets to use what spectrum when, and under what conditions. These "licenses" are not really licenses to spectrum. As Thomas Hazlett describes them, they are simply permissions to use certain kinds of equipment at certain times for certain purposes. Their effect is therefore not so much to regulate a resource (spectrum) as it is to determine who has the rights to engage in certain kinds of businesses, where. To say that company X has an FCC license is to say that the government has given company X the right to engage in a certain kind of business (say, radio broadcasting) using certain equipment tuned to certain radio frequencies.

The manner in which this allocation of rights to use spectrum is made has changed, and it changes still. As Eli Noam describes, in the first era of spectrum use, spectrum was allocated on a first come, first served basis. This was before the federal government entered the field. After 1912, Noam's "second era," it was the government that chose who got what spectrum. This invited predictable biases: existing owners bought the favor of regulators, and regulators in turn protected them..

In the third era (now), the right to use spectrum is increasingly allocated through auctions. The government sells the right to the highest bidder (subject to a scad of typically governmentlike, mainly silly, conditions). That bidder uses the spectrum as the auction specifies or, in a small set of cases, the bidder is then free to reassign the right to others.

Politicians from the Left and the Right just love auctions. For the Left, auctions promise more money for the government to spend; for the Right, auctions sound like markets, and markets are always good..

...If a court addressed that question now, my sense is that it would clearly decide that the FCC's system for allocating spectrum is just fine...

..No investor or corporation built the radio spectrum. This resource was given to us prebuilt by Mother Nature. Thus, the claim to free access is simply a claim that the government not get in the way of experimentation by innovators.

at the very minimum, this possibility suggests a strategy for government regulators (if those regulators were not effectively captured by existing spectrum users). The strategy builds on what we know: that government control over spectrum use has stifled innovation; that it will continue to stifle innovation as long as existing users have a political channel through which they can defend their existing privilege. We therefore should move — as quickly as possible — to a regime where the right to innovate does not depend upon the permission of someone else...

We need to have some slack in the system. We need to have a certain amount of the spectrum not be in the category where it's owned...

As I've already argued, this is nothing new. The surprise is how blatantly this protectionism continues. Consider, for example, the effort of former FCC chairman William Kennard to license low-power FM radio stations.
This was a good move from the standpoint of increasing competition and diversity in speech. Kennard was committed to finding a way to free spectrum resources to enable a broader range of speakers. And there was very good technical evidence that these low-power radio stations— which might support a community action center or a local school — would create no technical interference with existing radio stations.

The aim of the FCC was to enable local community broadcasts while assuring the broadcasts would not interfere with existing radio stations. The technical staff of the FCC conducted tests to determine how low-power the stations would have to be to assure no interference; the rules the FCC eventually proposed were more conservative than the technical staff recommended. "As a result of the FCC's conservatism, community groups in large urban centers with many incumbent broadcasters would find it difficult, if not impossible, to operate. But it would have enabled over 1,000 community organizations, churches, and schools to create a new medium for local discourse."

But the existing stations balked. At first they complained to the FCC. When the FCC concluded that their evidence of interference was not substantiated, the broadcasters went to Congress. Congress didn't care much about these low-power stations (not many campaign dollars, after all, come from them). It did care about the broadcasters who were threatened. So Congress passed a law to restrict low-power broadcasters. Large FM stations were protected from increased competition; that protection was effected through a law that silenced other speakers. So much for the First Amendment's demand that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech."

An example closer to the technology at the core of this chapter is the case of "AirPorts" in "airports." The AirPort is a wireless device sold by Apple Computer.. The device uses spread spectrum technology within one of the three swaths of spectrum that the FCC has allocated for "unlicensed use" for data...

Now, I don't doubt that interference is possible for some of these new technologies. It is important that we be certain that new technologies don't damage important pieces of the existing infrastructure— at least those parts that we want to keep. But this complaint about air traffic was just silly. There is more interference caused by a hair dryer than by an Apple AirPort modem. And the notion that airport authorities should be able to stop progress to protect their telephone revenue is absurd.

What's needed in contexts like this is a balanced way to evaluate these claims of interference to resolve whether they are real or just pretext. More generally, what's needed is a commitment to progress in the use of spectrum resources.

Instead the politicians have done just the opposite. Claims of technical interference are not credibly evaluated. Indeed, the FCC has placed the burden on new technologies not to harm existing use at all. As Hazlett puts it, the "system is booby-trapped against new rivals, an irresistible 'attractive nuisance' to anticompetitive constituencies." Thus, for example, amateur radio operators are allowed to veto new spectrum uses if they interfere at all with existing ham operations. And this pork is not just because of a special favor to amateur operators. Any new use that interferes with any old use must step aside...

These are technical rules that protect the old from the new. So too are there political rules that achieve the same end. Among these, none is more significant than the commitment and eagerness of the government to sell rights to spectrum, in the way spectrum rights are sold now. This form of auction essentially entrenches the use of spectrum for particular businesses. The license "does not yield the right to deploy spectrum in alternative uses." It entrenches a way of speaking of spectrum that is resistant to modern sharing technologies: that the spectrum is "my property." Once that property is established, it will be harder to deploy technologies that "share" other people's "property." (This despite the fact that an applicant for an FCC license must first certify that it will not assert any propertied interest in radio spectrum.)...

It's not just a question of interference now. Now it becomes . . . opening the door by their consent to competition. And the last damn thing big companies want is competition...

..A policy from the FCC that does not create a strong opportunity for an alternative to develop is designed to protect existing interests. To not encourage or permit wide-scale experimentation, to not set aside much broader unlicensed spectrum, to protect existing uses against any interference— these are policies designed to preserve the old against the new. They are just what we would expect from government regulation of spectrum; they are much less than we should demand after the experience of the Internet.

The government's role should be to induce investment where there is a great deal of social value to be created. This is precisely the opportunity with unlicensed spectrum.

I remember the BA1414, that was in my first Ramsey kit from so long ago. It was an amazing thing to go on FM and see the stereo light come on and hear stereo from the speakers! I'd used wireless mics and stuff for a long time, so that was a breakthrough, though the sound wasn't exceptional after all.

In stereo, the transmitter had a really hollow sound between the speakers, like the sound was out of phase and on some CDs it clipped the treble badly, needing some filtering and audio conditioning. Some of it might have been the 38 khz VFO used to generate the stereo subcarrier and pilot, I was always fiddling with that tuner cap to make it try to sound better.

The BA1404 was the first generation, and I don't think it's used in any new production. The BH chips took its place, and those are highly different and advanced stereo chips. You might want to compare some schematics Legacy, between the BA and BH devices.

Now I'd like to see an all-in-one C-QUAM stereo generator chip. In a way I think it's something Motorola should have designed and put out, made it so compelling and useful that many hobby transmitters would have been built with it. It would be consumer grade so as to not compete with their high end radio station stereo exciters.

Boomer

Calling it What it Is

TheLegacy said: "Educated White listeners who Can't stand or will not stand for Rap destroying talented Rock on the Radio."

Oh, so it's a racist thing. Talk to Attorney General Jeff Sessions... he's your go-to attorney for racial hatred.

What about educated non-white listeners who like rock? Will they still be allowed to like rock?

What about me... although "white" I think rap is a clever invention and has uses in advertising and education. The fact that some of it contains explicit language is no different from any other music that contains explicit language. Sometimes explicit language is a sign of honesty and meaningful expression.

How do you feel about classical music? I was thinking about getting ballet tickets for all members of the ALPB.

Free Educational Tids and Bits

TheLegacy might be interested in learning that rock music... all rock music... had its roots in negro music of an earlier time. The professional rock musicians know this and take great pride in knowing and playing with the old time black musicians.

"Rap" music is simply another evolutionary branch of the musical tree, and the stations that carry it are not at war against album rock, they are earning money from playing music that a large number of people want to hear.

Some of the prose poetry and word play in rap music is very intelligent and carries messages ranging from romantic to protest.

There are music schools that teach this stuff.

I myself favor the key of a minor because it can be played on a violin which I once studied. My interest turned to composing and after 4 symphonies, a violin concerto, some tone poems and numerous video scores I decided to conduct an orchestra on the radio which I am doing as I type this.

I can feel for what TheLegacy is saying, commercial radio groups desperate to follow the trends and hence the dollars have changed the landscape of radio and keep it bland as possible. Remember when there were songs on the radio that caused controversy, not over rights issues like today, but social issues, Madonna songs, or whether there was satanism in a Led Zeppelin track, or even Boomer Castleman's Judy Mae song? I don't think that sort of thing would be possible today.

Legacy, there's a bigger picture than a rap takeover. Musical styles constantly change and evolve, and since funk and disco times pop music has gone over to be more beat and rhythm dominated. A style of music will peak, and where do you go after? Try something all new that's been brewing and start over, clumsily again, that's what every new wave of artists seems to do. Standard jazz probably peaked in 1959, and later you got the likes of Miles Davis and fusion artists who were played extensively on early underground radio, where pop radio took the smooth jazz side for a while.

It's the same with rap, on commercial radio it sounds like it's all about the booty and sounds like the same beat with 808 drums, and that's probably what you're hearing, only the most benign stuff. There's a great underground of more experimental hip-hop and rap fusions out there, but it's not given a chance on an easily accessible system, like on a radio station.

It's the same with Album Rock I think, people today might not know this fine music even existed, but it's really the fault of big radio companies that aren't allowing diversity on the airwaves, that's whose doorstep I lay that on. The net is our savior right now, with many Album Rockers carrying the torch in a lively scene.

If I-heart Radio falls soon as predicted, the best case would be for radio stations to go back to local owners again, and maybe there will be more Album Rock stations, because we shouldn't forget about the good music of past, as if it never existed.

I play all kinds of music, but here's some songs from a recent playlist on my station:

John Fred And His Playboy Band - Who Could Love You (Like I Do)
London Underground - Ridley Road
Nash The Slash - Swing Shift Flexi Version
The Poppy Family - Endless Sleep
Tomorrow - Revolution
Ultimate Spinach - Pamela
The Neighb'rhood Children - Up Down Turn Around The World
The J. Geils Band - Believe In Me.mp3
Atomic Rooster - Tomorrow Night.mp3
East River Pipe - Dogman
Clear Light - She's Ready To Be Free
Jefferson Starship - Stairway To Cleveland (Found courtesy of TheLegacy!)
Plastic Penny - She Does
Poppy Family - Endless Sleep
Everybody - The Shape Of Things To Come
Wonderland - Poochy
Paul Revere And The Raiders - I Had A Dream
The Bees - Voices Green And Purple

I deleted some of the Star Wars songs and bits used in there for Star Wars Day, but it's lots of British Invasion rock and pop, and a few others.

Boomer