[517] in libertarians
Re: Free Radio Berkeley
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin THEOBALD)
Tue Dec 20 16:30:12 1994
From: theobald@duke.cs.mcgill.ca (Kevin THEOBALD)
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 1994 16:23:43 -0500
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
In your message [Free Radio Berkeley]
+------------------------------
| Dunifer acknowledges his transmissions are illegal under current laws, but
| maintains the Constitution guarantees him the right to free speech - even over
| the airwaves - under the First Amendment. Moreover, he maintians the soaring
| costs of licensing and operating a legal radio station have made radio elitist.
| The result is that most stations are run by corporations and wealthy
| individuals, leaving many segements of the community without an outlet, he says.
|
| Peter Franck, an attourney with the Committee on Democratic Communications
| in San Francisco, which filed court papers in support of Dunifer, said the
| FCC has set up a system that would be equivalent of charging money for someone
| to get up on a soap box.
|
| "The structure of the FCC's regulations bans anybody who hasn't got huge
| amounts of money from broadcasting, which disenfranchises minority
| communities and the poor," Franck said.
It's hard to know whether or not to support this guy. Some of his
rhetoric, such as equating FCC licenses with charging money to set up a
soap box, makes me wonder how he would act if radio frequencies were
allocated by a free market. Since radio frequencies would still cost
money, would he still complain about how only the wealthy have access?
Kevin
