courage a wide range of innovation around how that resource is used. But
instead of encouraging the use of this resource, instead of expanding it
broadly, we are quickly whittling away the opportunity this commons would
create. Without justification beyond the knee-jerk bias of our day, we are
swallowing the idea that control is better than freedom.

///\\\

Here again, an idea about property is doing all the work -- but this time
the idea is at its most attenuated. We don't yet have a full property regime
for allocating and controlling spectrum. Yet we are still being driven to em-
brace this single view. We are racing to deny the opportunity for balance,
pushed (as we always are) by those who have the least to gain from a world
of balance. The possibility of a commons at the physical layer is ignored;
even the chance to experiment with the commons is denied. Instead, policy
makers on the Right and on the Left race to embrace a system of perfect
control.

So strong is this idea of property, so unbalanced is our understanding
of its tradition, that we embrace it fully, without limitation, even when it
doesn't yet exist, and _even_when_the_asset_being_assigned_a_property_right_is_
_not_ -- like the wires of AT&T's cable or the creative genius behind Disney's
Mickey Mouse -- _something_anyone_has_created_. We are racing to assign
property rights in the air, because we can't imagine that balance could do
better.

[[233]]

p232 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p233w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p234

v?