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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>Hi, Steve.<br><br>I agree with some of your statements, but I have some questions about others.<br><br><div>> From: steve@dimse.com<br>> There is an important subtlety here in the US rules. The RF-originating station<br>> of an automatic message forwarding system accepts responsibility for the<br>> content of the message, unless s/he has verified the non-RF originator was<br>> a ham. If there is nothing in the message that a ham cannot transmit (e.g. <br>> profanity, commercial or encrypted traffic), it does not matter that it originates<br>> with a non-ham. Is is not whether "the originator is legally allowed to send the<br>> data", it is whether the message content is legal for ham frequencies.<br><br>Actually, aren't there 3rd-party traffic rules, such that, for example, Internet traffic from certain countries can't be transmitted by a US ham (because the US doesn't have an agreement with that country to allow 3rd-party traffic)?<br> <br>> So an IGate that retransmits a CWOP weather report is not violating the law,<br>> unless the comment on the weather report is "F**k you" or "Eat at Joe's".<br><br>Agreed.<br><br>> Nor is there a violation if a non-ham husband uses messaging on findU that<br>> results in a transmission to a ham wife "Buy milk on the way home".<br><br>Unless that non-ham is prohibited from being a third-party for whatever reason.<br><br>> We will notice an ongoing problem long before the FCC, and we can handle it<br>> ourselves without generating any adverse consequences for the IGate operator.<br><br>Uh, how _can_ and _do_ we handle it at the present time? Do we have blacklisting<br>ability in every I-gate to block an offender? That's asking a lot of the thousands of<br>Tx-IGate operators, who probably aren't monitoring every single station gating to<br>RF through them. The problem still exists (in a smaller scale) in the APRS-IS<br>servers, because it only takes one party not enforcing the blockade to let<br>offenders through.<br><br>Frankly, I don't think this whole thread would have gotten started if it weren't for the problem that we _don't_ have a way to handle it. APRS-IS doesn't have the central<br>authority and resources to automatically and selectively censor traffic.<br><br>> But the key point to me is that all of this effort, which requires the mandatory<br>> signing of each and every packet, does nothing except indemnify IGate<br>> operators from the regulatory risk of retransmitting profane, encrypted, or<br>> commercial messages - something which AFAIK has never happened, which<br>> certainly has never brought the involvement of the FCC, and which because<br>> of the legalities involved in proving it, is extremely unlikely to involve the FCC.<br>> Two extremely rare events are extremely-extremely rare to occur together ;-)<br><br>I tend to concur with your legal assumption; I was merely stating technical issues<br>in my previous email.<br><br>> As you mention this is the US viewpoint, and I'd like to hear if there are any other countries where this makes more of a difference.<br>> <br>> Unless something more significant can be accomplished I'd say that is not worth the effort and the contraction of the network involuntary removal would cause.<br>> <br>> Steve K4HG<br><br>Andrew, KA2DDO<br><br></div> </div></body>
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