Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm (Hardcover)

~ Peter Huber (Author) "As Lenin once remarked on the subject of tanks, quantity has a quality all its own..." (more)
Key Phrases: etheric bedlam, scarcity logic, time brokering, Supreme Court, First Amendment, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 2, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195116143
• ISBN-13: 978-0195116144
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,658,799 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Abolish the FCC?, June 19, 2003

By	Jerry Brito (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

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!

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful, Provocative Look at Telecom Regulation, October 6, 2009

By	Seth Cooper "cooper76" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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A dozen years after its publication, Peter Huber's "Law and Disorder in Cyberspace" remains relevant and as insightful as when it was first released.

The book takes the reader on a quick trip through federal regulation of telephone, broadcast, and cable. It's no warm, fuzzy tale. Huber's retelling of how regulations stifled investment, chilled innovation, and delayed deployment in new media and communications technologies is positively cringe-inducing. The saga runs from the federal government's first forays in broadcast licensing on down to the demise of the "fairness doctrine" in broadcast regulation. There is a run-down of the federal monopoly regulatory regime for telephone service, from Carterfone and Hush-a-Phone, to the Computer Inquiry rules, on to the consent decree in Judge Harold Greene's Court. (Importantly, this book takes into account the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which brought an end to the decree.) A tour of cable regulation shows how that disruptive technology disrupted pre-existing regulatory models--though that didn't stop regulators from asserting jurisdiction over it in order to protect broadcasting.

A larger take on regulation also comes into view in this book. One theme to emerge is the unfortunate imposition of pre-existing regulatory categories (designed for older technologies) on newer technologies. Another is the extent to which public officials went out of their way to protect "free" ad-supported broadcasting or local broadcasting from competing technologies and offerings.

What still stands out most in "Law and Disorder in Cyberspace" is the book's provocative thesis: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should be abolished and "telecosm" regulation should be replaced by common law. Huber looks to the bottom-up method of incremental, distributed, ex post decision-making that characterizes the common law as a superior way to unleash the forces of competition and innovation. After Huber's grim history of telecommunications regulation, the contrasting top-down, centralized, ex ante approach of a federal regulatory commission certainly looks less attractive. As a practical, political matter, abolition of the FCC seems unrealistic, perhaps far-fetched. Regardless, Huber's underlying insights are still worth pondering.

Since the main text of the book concludes at page 206, this isn't a long treatise meant to explain every detail. For instance, Huber mentions in passing that the "essential facilities" doctrine has served fairly well. Even one sympathetic to Huber's arguments and to a consumer welfare-driven antitrust outlook may be left wondering what that means. (The U.S. Supreme Court has since cast serious doubt on the "essential facilities" doctrine.)

Along the way, Huber professes his concerns about the Telecom Act of '96's unbundling mandates in wireline--and was ultimately proven right. He takes wireless a lot more seriously than public officials who put together the Telecom Act of '96. It's now a dynamic, competitive industry that has prompted many customers to cut the chord. Huber also explores the many future implications and breakthroughs coming from broadband. And he takes plenty of jabs at federal regulators--especially the FCC. All in all, the book is thought-provoking take on regulation and the telecosm.