Digital Television and the Allure of Auctions: The Birth and Stillbirth of DTV Legislation

Although relatively few provisions of the 1996 Telecommunication Act relate to digital broadcast television, these provisions have contributed to the ongoing debate over assignment of spectrum for DTV uses. Attention to the disputed issues of DTV has accentuated the differences between methods of spectrum management: how spectrum should be assigned among various services and users, and what roles the FCC and Congress should play. Two camps have emerged from the controversy: one viewing spectrum as a commodity that should be assigned by auction, the other viewing spectrum as a resource that must be allocated according to strict technical criteria and assigned sometimes by auction, sometimes not. In an order released as this article was going to press, the FCC adopted rules for the allocation spectrum for DTV. Although the DTV issues have been resolved (for the time-being, at least), examination of the process by which the Congress and the FCC allocated this spectrum will be helpful for future allocation of spectrum, for this or other uses

Spectrum Rights in the Telecosm to Come

The spectrum of electromagnetic frequencies impact the way individuals and society communicate. The discussion involves reforming the structures governing the spectrum, a debate that centers on the benefits of public versus private control over the resources. This article focuses on articulating governmental standards for managing and regulating public or private control of the spectrum. However, standards will not be easy to establish given the difficult cost assessments necessary to balance the public interest against communication. A regulatory agency can better govern spectrum management that accommodates both commonly and privately owned spectrum. Spectrum conflicts can be remedied easily by defining a class of per se nuisances. The article concludes by encouraging attentiveness to the costs of dispute resolution, the regulators? roles in reducing these costs, and the policy choices inherent in spectrum management. Any regulator agency that is established must play a role in resolving spectrum conflicts

Digital Television and the Allure of Auctions: The Birth and Stillbirth of DTV Legislation

Although relatively few provisions of the 1996 Telecommunication Act relate to digital broadcast television, these provisions have contributed to the ongoing debate over assignment of spectrum for DTV uses. Attention to the disputed issues of DTV has accentuated the differences between methods of spectrum management: how spectrum should be assigned among various services and users, and what roles the FCC and Congress should play. Two camps have emerged from the controversy: one viewing spectrum as a commodity that should be assigned by auction, the other viewing spectrum as a resource that must be allocated according to strict technical criteria and assigned sometimes by auction, sometimes not. In an order released as this article was going to press, the FCC adopted rules for the allocation spectrum for DTV. Although the DTV issues have been resolved (for the time-being, at least), examination of the process by which the Congress and the FCC allocated this spectrum will be helpful for future allocation of spectrum, for this or other uses

Public Television and Pluralistic Ideals

Achieving pubilc service pluralism in the Unites States context is so idiosyncratic, so much a product of particular historic and governmental developments, that it is diffi cult to draw lessons that are useful for the United Kingdom. The differences are rooted in the distinct (1) role of federally licensed commercial stations; (2) expectations about the contributions of public broadcasting to pluralism in program offerings; and (3) structures of public broadcasting. In this brief essay, we try to show what aspects of pluralism and diversity are valued in the very special case of US media policy and how the idea of public service plays out at a time when an increasingly fractionated society faces a fractionated array of media offerings

ALGORITHMIC AUDITING: CHASING AI ACCOUNTABILITY

Calls for audits to expose and mitigate harms related to algorithmic decision systems are proliferating,3 and audit provisions are coming into force—notably in the E.U. Digital Services Act.4 In response to these growing concerns, research organizations working on technology accountability have called for ethics and/or human rights auditing of algorithms and an Artificial Intelligence (AI) audit industry is rapidly developing, signified by the consulting giants KPMG and Deloitte marketing their services.5 Algorithmic audits are a way to increase accountability for social media companies and to improve the governance of AI systems more generally. They can be elements of industry codes, prerequisites for liability immunity, or new regulatory requirements.6 Even when not expressly prescribed, audits may be predicates for enforcing data-related consumer protection law, or what U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter calls “algorithmic justice.” 7 The desire for audits reflect a growing sense that algorithms play an important, yet opaque, role in the decisions that shape people’s life chances—as well as a recognition that audits have been uniquely helpful in advancing our understanding of the concrete consequences of algorithms in the wild and in assessing their likely impacts.