K4YZ wrote:
wrote:
K4YZ wrote:
wrote:
wrote:
wrote:
Dick Bash disagreed with you then and he disagrees with you now.
No.
Dick Bash disagreed with the federal government.
Yes, he did.
He violated federal law in the process.
Maybe he did and maybe he didn't. He was never charged with anything
for his publishing activities, let alone convicted. (Innocent until
proven guilty, right?).
He should have gone to prison a long time ago.
IMHO a fine and license revocation would have been more appropriate.
Perhaps.
I think prison was more in order, but OK...take his license.
Prison costs money. Fines generate money.
The fact is that FCC never went after him, despite folks like K2ASP
wanting to do so, because the folks at the top said no. Seems to me
there are several possible explanations for that lack of action:
1) Corruption (no evidence of that)
2) Incompetence (?)
3) Lack of hard evidence. IANAL, but IMHO the books themselves are not
hard evidence; and Bash would not have had to testify against himself.
FCC would have had to get someone with firsthand evidence of what Bash
was doing.
OK..I can buy those.
Any one of those explains what happened, but #3 is the big one. Maybe
FCC
tried to put a case together but couldn't come up with the hard
evidence.
It's easy for laymen to play lawyer and say what should and should not
happen.
But the legal folks in charge have to deal with the real world and how
things
may turn out. They usually have the experience and knowledge to know
what
is a viable case and what isn't.
4) Unclear law. Bash didn't steal or copy the exams. He didn't ask
others to do so. All he did was ask people questions and write down
their answers. It could be argued that those who talked to Bash and
accepted the money were breaking the law, not Bash himself.
Jim, if I physically reach in to a persons wallet and take their
money, that's theft.
If they don't want you to take it, yes, it is theft.
Is it any LESS theft if I demand that they take it out and hand it
to me?
Nope. Theft by force or threat of force vs. theft by stealth doesn't
matter
- it's still theft.
But the question arises as to who did the theft, if one actually
occurred.
Bash did not steal exams. He did not sneak into FCC offices, etc. All
he did was gather information and publish it. Whether that information
was a protected secret of some kind isn't clear.
It could be argued that the *real* theft, if any occurred, was done by
those who gave the info to Bash. Nobody had to talk to him. Nobody
had to take his money. People could have said "I'm not allowed to
tell you what's on the test" or "I don't remember".
For that matter, they could have been really sneaky and told him
wrong information and taken his money anyway. Then his books
would have been worse than useless.
But more than a few people talked to him, gave him the info he wanted,
and took his money. That's as bad or worse than anything he did, IMHO.
Because without them, he could not have succeeded.
And was it clearly spelled out to everyone who took an FCC exam that
they were not to divulge the contents of that exam?
Sure was when I tested, in Ohio, Atlanta and Long Beach, CA
offices all three.
And that was when? Before or after Bash?
My High School science teacher who administered my
Novice read his part of the insructions which stated it was unlawful to
divulge the contents of the test.
Ah, but that was a Novice test administered by a volunteer examiner,
not
an FCC office test!
In 1967, when I took the Novice at K3NYT's house, (Keystone Ave in
Upper
Darby, across from the 69th street terminal) the envelope that held the
written
exam was covered in specific instructions about how to administer the
test
and not to divulge anything. K3NYT wouldn't even look at it - he just
opened
the sealed envelope and gave me the papers, then when I was done put
them all in the return envelope and sealed it up.
In those days you could get a Novice, Tech or Conditional by mail. So
it
would have been a simple task for an unscrupulous person to make a copy
of the written exams for those licenses. But Advanced and Extra were
not
so easily obtained by mail.
I just don't know how many ways you can say "Don't discuss the
test", Jim!
When I went to the FCC office in 1968 (Tech/Advanced), 1970 (Extra),
and 1972 (Second 'Phone) I don't recall anybody saying anything about
keeping mum about the test contents.
Was it clearly
spelled out in the regulations that the exams were to be kept secret
and what the penalties were for making them public? If not, FCC might
have lost a very embarrassing case had they gone after Bash.
If they HAD gone after him, at least it would have set case
law...Or at the very least SHOULD have pushed the reg writers in
Washington to "get hot".
Or it could have gone the other way and set a precedent that the
exams were not protected secrets at all, and killed any hope of
FCC ever having secret exams again.
5) Planning for the future. The folks at the top who did not allow
prosecution of Bash might have already been thinking of going to public
question pools when Bash did his thing. If so, it would have been a
waste of time to prosecute him, because by the time they got a verdict,
what he did would not have been an offense any more.
It's clear he violated the *spirit* of the old exam rules. But whether
he violated the *letter* of those rules, and could have been convicted,
will probably never be certain because he won't ever be charged or
tried.
Our loss, then and ever since.
Agreed, but a moot point now. FCC isn't going back to secret tests in
the
foreseeable future. Our main possibility is to make the pools so large
that
it would be easier to simply learn the material than to memorize the
answers.
Anyone can submit questions to the QPC, so we have no complaint
unless we've submitted a bunch.
btw, I'll add a few mo
6) Lack of resources. FCC was strapped for enforcement resources in
the 1970s, due in large part to the cb mess, and going after Bash may
have been judged to be not worth the cost.
7) Embarrassment about the tests. FCC really had only a few versions
of each test. That was a big reason for the 30 day wait before
retesting.
Going after Bash would have simply publicized that fact even more.
73 es HT de Jim, N2EY
8)