Product Description

When the U.S. Congress created the Federal Radio Commission in 1927, what we now call cyberspace was just "ether." Broadcasting had only begun to carry tinny human voices and music across the fields and prairies, while Sunday afternoon phone calls to Aunt Mabel snaked through wires below, courtesy of an army of operators who switched each circuit by hand. It didn't take long, though, for the wires and airwaves to fill up with untrammeled chatter, so much so that by 1934 after complaints by the Navy that ship to shore communications had become hopelessly chaotic, and under the unproved but widely held belief that the broadcast spectrum was a finite natural resource

all federal authority over electronic communications was forged into a new, powerful Federal Communications Commission. The amount of information traversing the airwaves has increased a million fold since 1927, but has the FCC changed along with the technology? The answer, according to Peter W. Huber, in Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm, is an emphatic No. In this well researched, lively, even witty polemic, Huber recounts the history of telecommunications over the last century to argue that the FCC "should have been extinguished years ago." With scarcity of communications channels no longer an issue, and the virtual elimination of distinctions between carriage and broadcast,the Commission's anachronistic laws have no basis for existence, and have in fact impeded growth and progress to the tune of billions of lost dollars. Today, the "telecosm," that complex universe of invisible communications traffic, has expanded, supplanted, and subdivided itself many times over with each new technological breakthrough. Cable television, direct broadcast satellite, cell phones, the V chip, Caller ID, personal computers, and the Internet have transformed the world. Huber argues that large bureaucratic entities like the FCC fail to adjust to such rapidly changing technologies because they see their mission as maintaining the status quo, and that instead of preserving the rights of common citizens they actually favor rich monopolies. Addressing charged points of conflict such as free speech vs. censorship, privacy vs. right to know, and market vs. controlled pricing, Law and Disorder in Cyberspace energetically proposes that sensible national telecommunications policies evolve through common law--the accretion of decisions arrived at in specific cases where basic principles such as private property and fair business practice are challenged and upheld--and not through the top down, government imposition of inflexible regulatory mandates created in the vacuum of uninformed, theoretical disussion. Given the heated climate on Capitol Hill surrounding debate over ways to reduce federal spending, Peter Huber's arguments are timely, urgent, and meticulously documented. Law and Disorder in Cyberspace is not only informative and entertaining, but will be one of those rare books that will influences public policy before the end of this decade.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1504509 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Amazon.com Review
Has the Federal Communications Commission's capability to coordinate and manage technology kept up with the astonishing universe of computers and communications links that have sprouted in our midst? Peter Huber, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, doesn't think so. In this polemic, Huber traces the history of U.S. telecommunications and regulation in this century. His conclusion: the FCC should have been closed down long ago.

In fact, Huber doesn't believe the FCC should have been created in the first place. It all began with President Herbert Hoover's love of order. Hoover, being an engineer who despised messy solutions when a neat one was possible, didn't want the broadcasting business to go through the chaos that the telephone industry had endured before its regulation. Rather than letting conflicts be resolved gradually through the courts, Hoover had order imposed almost from the start by nationalizing the airwaves and putting them under the protection of the FCC. Huber maintains that a free-market solution, complete with long court battles and a decade or two of inconvenience, would have produced a far better outcome in the long run.

According to Huber, the FCC tends to protect monopolies, blocks streamlined use of the airwaves, aids in censoring free speech, dilutes copyright, lessens privacy, and weakens common carriers. Huber isn't pulling any punches here. In part he blames the large bureaucracy of a government agency and the inherent mindset involved. The FCC, Huber argues, just doesn't respond to rapidly changing technology efficiently and quickly.

Huber prefers to see telecommunications policies develop through common law, letting precedent settle issues of private property, anticompetitive business practices, and privacy. He's emphatically against a top-down infusion of inflexible mandates that he believes just aren't doing the job. His book isn't meant to be a mandate either but rather to prod public policy debates and to get us thinking about how we're going to manage communications resources in the next century. --Elizabeth Lewis

From Library Journal
This is less a book about cyberspace, a term synonymous with the Internet, than it is about the Communications Act of 1934 as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Having gone to print before Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, it offers no discussion of the recent Communications Decency Act, although judging from this title, the author was undoubtedly pleased with the outcome?a triumph of the courts over legislation designed to further empower the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The page adjacent to the title page even states emphatically, "Abolish the FCC." Huber, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, paints an interesting history of communications regulation from 1927, with the advent of the Federal Radio Commission, through the 1996 amendments. He effectively portrays the FCC decision-making process as mayhem rather than regulation. His FCC case discussions are excellent and thoroughly documented. Recommended for graduate collections.?Alan Schroeder, Chapman Univ. Sch. of Law, Huntington Beach, Cal.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Law and Disorder in Cyberspace" presents a thesis revolutionary in the truest sense of the word: it argues for overthrowing the existing corrupt order by returning to earlier, better, more fundamental values....Yet "Law and Disorder in Cyberspace" merits serious attention form scholars and policy wonks. Huber makes a strong case for abolishing the FCC and relying on common law to rule the telecosm. The flaws of "Law and Disorder in Cyberspace" make it not irrelevant, but all the more interesting. -- Tom Bell, Michigan Law Review, May 1999

Law and Disorder in Cyberspace reads like a novel and is accessible to the law public. The book is an excellent primer to the law of telecommunications regulation, even though it lacks objectivity....Huber clearly describes issues at the heart of telecommunications regulation and injects lively debate into otherwise drab topics. -- Joseph P. Quinn, Bimonthly Review of Law Books, September/October 1999

Peter Huber has made a name for himself by bashing accepted political, legal and economic ideas. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Huber is a partner in a Washington, D.C., law firm. After thrashing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for years in magazine articles, he has written Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm. Huber is one of a growing number of pundits who believe free-market forces and technology will solve all of cyberspace's problems. However, Huber doesn't rest his case solely on technology. He believes something more is needed: more lawsuits. This may strike some as a radical mix, as free marketers generally bash lawyers. Huber advocates common law and antitrust law to solve Internet and telecom issues. -- Upside, Jonathan Littman

Customer Reviews

Abolish the FCC?
On the recommendation of a good friend, I read this book to bone up for my internship at the FCC. Peter Huber presents a good history of the FCC, and why it never should have existed. His thesis is simple and compelling: of all things, communications technology doesn't need top-down regulation, but rather the evolutionary flexibility of the common law.

He has a point. Look at the success of an open standard like Wi-Fi. Allow that slice of the spectrum to be free and the free-market will add value to it. But hey, the FCC ain't going nowhere any time soon. The best we can hope for is as much un- and deregulation as possible.

I recommend this very well researched and passionately written book!