Re: New HA product development

["Joel Kolstad" <JKolstad71HatesSpam@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Richard Henry" <rphenry@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3hts0cFiqqj7U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Don't the airwaves belong to the people?

Yes.

> Shouldn't the people be allowed to
> make any use they want of the airwaves, as long as they don't interfere with
> properly licensed/permitted signals, or cause a hazard to others?

Change the word "airwaves" to "air" or "water" or any other public resource.
All have regulations because, in general, your actions in them can affect
people quite a ways away without your knowledge.  Just as fertilizer runoff
from a field can pollute the wells of people far away, transmitting even small
amounts of power can prevent reception of ("pollute") someone else's signal
far away.  Hence, regulation is a reasonable thing.

> The feds can be so picky.  I am aware of a local ham who altered his
> portable to be able to listen to police bands.

In the U.S., you can legally receive whatever you want... other than the old
AMPS cell phone bands, and in my opinion the feds making that illegal was a
mistake that, if anything, only delayed the introduction of reasonably secure
cell phone technology.

> While mountain-biking with
> friends, one fellow got badly hurt.  He called for help on the Sheriff's
> frequency, and the victim was saved.  A few days later, the FCC paid him a
> visit and confiscated the device.

Ah, well TRANSMITTING on the police bands is another issue.  That certainly is
illegal (for your friend).  But note that the FCC confiscated the device
specifically because it was modified and therefore no longer type accepted...
if you friend had purchased, say, a police radio from eBay and had used it,
technically I believe he would have been OK!  (Since, in general, during an
emergency you're allowed to use whatever frequencies and equipment you want to
obtain help, but if the cops discover anything illegal after all the dust has
settled, they can still pursue it.  Say your friend had smashed the window of
a car to grab a cell phone to call 911... technically I think he could then
still be prosecuted for vandalism, although the cops might be a little more
understanding because it was a spur of the moment decision, whereas modifying
a radio to transmit on the police bands is highly premeditated!)

Keep in mind that while you can find stories where doing something like your
friend did ended up saving someone's life, someone else could find a story
where some moron transmitting on the police bands to report someone's house
being robbed prevented a cop from calling in that he'd been shot and was lying
there dying.

You have to put everything in perspective.  Would I be willing to risk going
to jail if I thought smashing a car window to call 911 in a true emergency
would help?  Absolutely.  There's the old story about Thomas Edison smashing a
the front display case window of a store to steal a large mirror so that a
surgeon would have enough reflected candlelight to be able to perform surgery
to save his mother.  You have to decide for yourself when the overall good
outweighs the bad if you choose to commit a crime...

---Joel Kolstad