Ron Collins at the First Amendment Center poses an interesting question: Will the “public airwaves” argument — which has been used as justification for the Fairness Doctrine and other content-based broadcast regulations — be used to urge regulations on wireless downloads to e-book readers?
I hope not, either because radio and non-cable television will be upgraded by the Court to full First Amendment protection, or because the public airwaves argument would at least be limited so as to exclude nonbroadcast communication (though if you’re serious about the notion that the government has more power to impose content-based restrictions when the “public airwaves” are involved, that notion would seem to apply to cellular communications as well as to broadcast ones). Still, Collins is right to note the potential dangers of the “public airwaves” rationale.