radio spectrum in trouble - sign the moveon petition now! or not.
Submitted by greggles on
I was recently sent a link to this petition from MoveOn.org and asked what I thought about it. I'll quote a section from the petition:
Use the public airwaves for the public good, or turn them over to big companies who will stifle competition, innovation, and the wireless Internet revolution. We're urging the FCC to mandate that whoever wins the auction cannot stifle competition and innovation.
First, I generally dislike MoveOn.org because they water down the issue into platitudes so that you have to agree with their position in the petition. Who wants to support anticompetitive regulations? Who wants to stifle innovation? Obviously I should be in favor of their position, right? But they water down the issue in such a way that you can't research it either the issue or their actual position. What is the issue? What is their actual position on the issue?
I don't know so, here's what I have to say in broader terms.
Researching Geek Topics and Spectrum Use
When it comes to geek topics, the place that has the best articles, news, and commentary weighing boths sides is generally slashdot. I went to their page for Communications Articles which shows this was discussed exactly zero times over the last 30 articles which goes back to December of 2006. So, not discussed at all. MoveOn doesn't scoop slashdot. So this is apparently unimportant to slashdot which means I don't care either.