Amazon Kindle a private spectrum commons?

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I’m updating my spectrum commons paper and came across the suggestion I’ve made that you could have a spectrum commons emerge in a regime of property rights in spectrum. The most obvious way this could happen is if a device manufacturer bought a band of spectrum and let anyone use it so long as they used a device made by the manufacturer. It’s sort of the reverse of the more common approach where you’re given a device for free and you pay for using the spectrum. The key thing about a private commons is that the owner of the spectrum manages its use, what technology is employed, how, etc.

So this is all to say that I think there’s a great new example of this private commons principle at work: the Amazon Kindle. Buy it for the one-time price of $400 and you get anytime anywhere access to its EVDO data network. Of course, there’s always this:

Amazon reserves the right to discontinue wireless connectivity at any time or to otherwise change the terms for wireless connectivity at any time, including, but not limited to, (a) limiting the number and size of data files that may be transferred using wireless connectivity and (b) changing the amount and terms applicable for wireless connectivity charges.

Dec 4, 2007 | Comments | Tags: , ,

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