"N2EY" wrote in message
...
In article . net, "Bill
Sohl"
writes:

"Phil Kane" wrote in message
. net...
On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 21:20:28 GMT, Bill Sohl wrote:

In a way, buying a Bash book was akin to receiving stolen property.

In your opinion anyway. Again, no such claim or
argument was ever leveled against Bash as violating any
FCC rules...much less any "criminal act" such as
receiving stolen goods.

Not for the lack of us around whose office he lurked wanting that
action taken.....

Need we rehash this again ??

What for...by your own statements you admit nothing
was done by the FCC? The fact that one or more
FCC attorneys may have wanted action taken doesn't
validate anything other than those FCC folks that
wanted action couldn't convince their management
that the case either had merit or was worth the time
and expense.

That's one way to look at it.
(insert standard "I'm not a lawyer and the following is just my layman's
opinion" disclaimer HERE)

Here's another:

Perhaps what Bash did *was* illegal, and prosecutable under the rules at
the
time. Maybe the top folks decided not to go after Bash because (choose any
number of the following):

- they made a dumb mistake
- they were planning to publicize the Q&A anyhow
- they wanted to focus on other areas of enforcement
- they didn't think they could win
- they were concerned that prosecuting Bash would bring other things to
light,
such as the limited size of the pool actually in use
- they were concerned that prosecuting Bash would sell more of his books
and
encourage imitators to do the same thing

Perhaps...and that is exactly my point. We will never
know because the opportunity to have prosecuted
is long gone and all this comes down to is academic
discussion or a BS session over a couple of beers.

All the academic discussion of what may have been
the legal outcome had Bash been challenged means
nothing in the end.

I disagree. It's an example of how things used to work, or not work.

I'll give you that. My point had to do with the legality
or illegality of what Bash did.

Most of all, the fact that no enforcement action was taken does not mean
there
was no violation. If a driver zips past a police radar setup at, say, 15
mph
over the posted limit but the police don't go after that driver, a
violatiuon
still occurred. The police in that particular case just decided not to go
after
the violator, for whatever reason.

But even in the case you site, the driver, if actually
prosecuted (given a ticket for 15 over) might be
found not guilty for any of a number of reasons.
Martha Stewart was NOT prosecuted for insider trading.
Was she guilty of insider trading? Many people
believe so...but apparently the prosecution didn't
believe their case strong enough to win and only
went after the lieing to federal investigators.

Cheers,
Bill K2UNK