3 ms·
The spectrum is regulated by governments everywhere, so it doesn't have to. Or, if you prefer, "that ship has sailed" a long time ago, so let's look at what it
by niftich 9y ago
The spectrum is regulated by governments everywhere, so it doesn't have to. Or, if you prefer, "that ship has sailed" a long time ago, so let's look at what it gives us as it exists now.
Technologically effortless dissemination of content from a central source, scaling to infinite receivers with no congestion and no loss of quality. The production of the content itself need not be vertically integrated; individual programs and segments are licensed and syndicated from third-parties.
Airwave broadcast has a natural place in the world, ideally by playing popular content that's always in demand. In our rush to go point-to-point, full-duplex, and on-demand, with both cabling and wireless, we have occasionally reimplemented services that are one-to-many simplex on top of lower layers that aren't made for that, whereas airwave broadcast has always fulfilled the same usecase with a different set of tradeoffs.
- nine_k 9y agoBroadcasting is too efficient. There's no way to require individual authorization from receivers, so subscription fees are hard to collect. For free content, ads are not very targeted. It's great for emergency communication, though.
- niftich 9y agoOne mechanism to recoup a portion of this cost is a state-run licensing fee that's usually worked into the retail price of receivers [1]. A more elaborate evolution of this, to keep up with advancements in technology, is the blank recording media tax [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
- nine_k 9y agoSure these measures exist, but they sort of look arbitrary. They lack the self-adjusting nature of pay-per-view or subscription model. I know that BBC is financed (partly?) by the TV tax in UK. But BBC is state-run; private companies have harder time.