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The reason the FCC needs to regulate public airspace is because transmissions interfere with each other. If there was a magical way to have no possible way to hijack or interfere with entities' assigned frequencies, the FCC would not need to exist.[1]

By your logic, the FCC should regulate a conversation two people were having in person just by virtue of them being on public land. Yet the FCC does not. The FCC also does not regulate the signs on the sides of buildings, even though light is reflected from them to public airspace.

1. They also have been given the power to provide censorship of public spectrums as well because some idiots deemed swear words to be scary.



> The reason the FCC needs to regulate public airspace is because transmissions interfere with each other.

It's the exact same situation with net neutrality. If an ISP decides to give traffic from some hosts higher priority than my traffic, then that other traffic is interfering with my communications in the exact same way as an antenna that transmits a 50 GW signal on nearly all frequencies.

> By your logic, the FCC should regulate a conversation two people were having in person just by virtue of them being on public land. Yet the FCC does not. The FCC also does not regulate the signs on the sides of buildings, even though light is reflected from them to public airspace.

It's not that the government must regulate everything that happens in the public sphere. The government should regulate things if it's for the good of everyone (or most everyone), and if those things happen in the public sphere, then it has legitimacy to do it.

So, to address your examples, the FCC should regulate that conversation if those people are so loud that no one else in the city can speak, and it should regulate a sign on the side of a building if it emits such intense light that things in its path catch fire.


>It's the exact same situation with net neutrality. If an ISP decides to give traffic from some hosts higher priority than my traffic, then that other traffic is interfering with my communications in the exact same way as an antenna that transmits a 50 GW signal on nearly all frequencies.

You're paying the ISP to carry your traffic under the conditions in your private agreement with them. When someone spews radio frequencies, you don't have a private agreement with them that permits them to do so. If radio frequency interference was opt-in only, the FCC wouldn't need to exist.




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