[Discuss-gnuradio] Fear and loathing of GNURadio in D.C.

[Steve Schear]

Does Open-Source Software Make The FCC Irrelevant?
Daniel Fisher, 10.18.05, 10:00 AM ET
<http://www.forbes.com/businesstech/2005/10/18/open-source-software- 
FCC_cz_df_1018opensource.html?partner=rss>

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Should the FCC try to crack down, the hackers have a powerful weapon:
The First Amendment. An offshoot of the Free Software Foundation
called GNU Radio is developing a new generation of radios and TV
receivers that use software for just about everything except the
antenna and the power source. The FCC can prohibit manufacturers from
selling radios that transmit on illegal frequencies, but it would
have trouble shutting down a Web site distributing software that does
the same thing.

"You cannot regulate code without going through the First Amendment- type 
balancing tests we have for any other type of speech," says
Cindy Cohn, a lawyer at the Electronic Freedom Foundation in San
Francisco. "Code is speech."

Broadcasters fear that an unregulated community of hackers could
throw the airwaves into chaos.

"There's a reason there is the FCC--to protect the integrity of the
broadcast band," says Dan Wharton, spokesman for the National
Association of Broadcasters in Washington, D.C. "We're very concerned
about the potential for interference."

Techies assume they can solve such problems with better software. But
regulators have to anticipate that people will try to drown each
other out with transmitter power, says Gerald Faulhaber, a former
chief economist for the FCC who now teaches at the University of
Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

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