COMMUNITIES AGAINST CAPITALISM
 

Mayday, mayday
Global media giants are lobbying for the most sinister privatization of all: the airwaves

Jeremy Rifkin
Saturday April 28, 2001
The Guardian

Question: what is the single most valuable piece of
property worth owning at the dawn of the information
age? Answer: the radio frequencies - the
electromagnetic spectrum - over which an increasing
amount of communication and commercial activity will
be broadcast in the era of wireless communications.
Our PCs, palm pilots, wireless internet, cellular
phones, pagers, radios and television all rely on the
radio frequencies of the spectrum to send and receive
messages, pictures, audio, data, etc.

Most of us never give the spectrum a passing thought.
We regard it, more or less, like the oxygen we
breathe, as a free good. In reality, the spectrum is
treated as a `commons' and is controlled and
administered by governments who, in turn, license the
various radio frequencies to commercial and other
institutions for broadcast. In other words, in every
country the electromagnetic system is owned by the
government on behalf of the people.

But now powerful commercial media are seeking to gain
total control over the airwaves. Imagine a world in
which a handful of global media conglomerates like
Vivendi, Sony, BskyB, Disney, and News Corporation own
literally all the airwaves all over the planet and
trade them back and forth as `private electronic real
estate'. A strategy is beginning to unfold in
Washington DC to make that happen.

On February 7, 37 leading US economists signed a joint
letter asking the federal communications commission
(FCC) to allow broadcasters to lease spectrum they
currently license from the government in secondary
markets. The letter, which went virtually unnoticed by
the general public, is the opening salvo in a radical
plan to wrest control of the entire spectrum from
governments around the world, and make the radio
frequencies a private preserve of global media giants.
If they succeed, the nation state will have lost one
of its last remaining vestiges of real power - the
ability to regulate access to broadcast communications
within its own geographic borders.

This story starts several years ago, when the Progress
and Freedom Foundation, a conservative thinktank in
Washington with close ties to Newt Gingrich, former
Speaker of the House of Representatives, published The
Telecom Revolution: An American Opportunity. The
report's authors called for the conversion of the
electromagnetic spectrum to private property. Under
the plan, broadcasters holding existing licences would
be granted title to the spectrum they currently used
and would be able to use, develop, sell and trade it
as they saw fit. Remaining unused parts of the
spectrum would subsequently be sold off to commercial
enterprises and be reconstituted as private electronic
real estate, while the FCC would be abolished.

The study argued that government control of the radio
frequencies led to inefficiencies, and that if the
spectrum were converted into private electronic real
estate that could be exchanged in the marketplace, the
invisible hand of supply and demand would dictate the
most innovative uses of those frequencies.
Congressional hearings were subsequently conducted on
the proposal, quickening interest in the plan.

Still, the notion of selling off the US airwaves to
private commercial interests seemed a bit too
ambitious, even for the most experienced Washington
corporate lobbyists. Then, less than one month after
George Bush assumed the presidency, the letter from
the 37 economists turned up on the FCC's doorstep.

The new thinking: first, secure a partial
privatisation plan, allowing commercial licensees to
sell and lease their leased spectrum in secondary
markets. Once done, the commercial foundation would be
laid for a final conversion from government licensing
of the spectrum to a future sell-off to the private
sector. Other nations would be encouraged to follow
suit and sell off their spectrums to global media
companies. If some baulked at the idea of
relinquishing control over their airwaves,
international trade sanctions could be imposed to
force compliance.

In the industrial age, exchanging property in markets
was the sine qua non of commerce. The role of national
governments was to protect property and markets. But
in the new commercial world being born, having access
to the flow of information in telecommunications
networks becomes at least as important as exchanging
property in markets.


If the radio frequencies of the planet were owned and
controlled by global media corporations, how would the
billions who live on earth guarantee their most basic
right to communicate with one another? In an era where
more and more of our daily communications take place
in cyberspace, access to the airwaves becomes
critical. Of course, those who can pay will be
connected. But what about the 62% of people who have
never made a telephone call, and the 40% who have no
electricity? How will they ever secure access to
cyberspace in a world where the admission fee is
controlled by a few global media giants?

If the flow of human communications is controlled by
global media companies, how do we ensure that social
and cultural points of view and political expressions
that may differ from those of the companies who own
the frequencies will be allowed to flow over the
spectrum? We might face the prospect of a new form of
repression as global media companies tighten their
grip on the airwaves.

Equally ominous, when companies like AOL-Time Warner,
Disney and Vivendi Universal own the channels of
communication as well as much of the 'content' that
flows through them, will the rich cultural diversity
that has traditionally been created and nurtured in
civil society dry up? Will we be left with only a few
global media companies as the ultimate arbiters of
human culture?

How do we prevent these companies from exerting undue
influence over commercial life itself, because of
their control over the channels of communications
through which business is conducted? And finally, in
the new era, when everyone is connected with everyone
else in commercial information and telecommunications
networks, how do we prevent corporate owners of the
radio frequencies from exploiting the data on people's
lives that flows through cyberspace? What safeguards
will people have over their own privacy when every
aspect of their life story is accessible as data bits
travelling over corporate-owned and controlled
communications channels?

At the dawn of the global media age more than 20 years
ago, an American government official made the
prescient remark that `trade doesn't follow the flag
anymore, it follows the communication systems'. When
our very right to communicate with one another is no
longer assured or secured by government but controlled
by global media conglomerates, can basic freedoms and
real democracy continue to exist?

Jeremy Rifkin is the author of The Age of Access and
president of The Foundation on Economic Trends in
Washington DC