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Comment by bigallen | Hacker News Reader

Doesn’t this kind of rub you the wrong way? The government telling you “hey, private citizen, we decided we are going to manage the EM spectrum, so you'd better follow our rules if you want to transmit anything.” I understand it’s to help coordinate everything and make the space better for the largest amount of people, but referring to transmitting as a privilege, not a right, seems asinine

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I'd love to hear a description of your utopia with a totally unregulated spectrum space.

Or perhaps your thinking is "I wish it was open, and everyone just mutually respected it".

Which is great. Everyone agrees. But most people realize that their mass mutual collaboration ideas will never work by the end of high school. "If we all stopped stealing we wouldn't need locks!"

Great, then you'll have no issue if the government hands me the rights to a band around 430 THz then (red visible light)? You'll soon forget that you used to be able to own red stuff.

That's very obvious reducto ad absurd. The FCC has a clear mandate with regard to radio regulation. Visible light is clearly outside that domain.

Whether the FCC has the authority to regulate visible light wasn't particularly the point, though it is an interesting question. This article [1] was pretty interesting; the Telecommunications Act of 1996 does not restrict their authority by medium in several locations. If the medium is used for telecommunications, they may already have the authority to regulate it. The article in question is talking about lasers, but the same thing would apply to visible light if it were used for telecommunications.

The point I was trying to make is that these are practically the same thing just shifted around in wavelength. That it's somehow reasonable for the FCC to regulate some wavelengths of EM, but "reducto ad absurd" to propose that they could regulate others.

I agree, it would be absurd for the FCC to regulate visible light. I just think it's also absurd for them to plant their flag in another wavelength. I don't think anyone can "own" a wavelength anymore than they can own a particular level of gravity or voltage.

1: https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?...

I mean it does feel right for the government to regulate visible light? The same way you can't have flashing lights on the road or have a massive blinding beacon in your backward, you can't yell on the airwaves. I'm sure if visible light could be seen from halfway across the globe, we would also have that regulated.

hahaha you dont want to be the last person to buy the lead house once the gov't upgrades that badboy to radiation frequency

It's critical infrastructure and it can be abused. What's controversial about this?

Asinine is to suggest society does not need rules and boundaries.

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