On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 15:58:08 -0400, thomas wrote:

And the Supreme Court of the US has ruled that in spite of what
oral or written advice one gets from a government office, if the
law is otherwise, the oral or written advice is of no value and
cannot be relied upon.

Go read the case of _Richmond v Office of Personnel Management_
where Charlie Richmond relied on a written statement from the Navy
Personnel Office about what he could earn and not forfeit his
disability retirement payments, but on audit the retirement system
found that the Navy office had quoted a wrong figure, and the
penalty that poor Charlie had to pay was no pension payments for 6
months as the law specified.

This was upheld by the Supremes on the grounds that no government
agency official has the power to change what The Congress has
enacted.

This is not true in the case of the federal tax. I saw it clearly on one
IRS pub, that if you filed tax incorrectly based on a response from an IRS
agent, you will not be charged the penalty, even if you have to pay the
right amount later.

AFAIK IRS has been granted the power to waive the penalty in that case.
It's their decision, and good public relations, but they didn't have
to under the _Richmond_ decision unless The Congress ordered them to
do so.

Dieter ??

The FCC doesn't have to waive anything it doesn't want.

Applying the same principle here, you **may** be right that I may still need
to pay a license fee if I get caught.

That's locking the barn door after the horse has fled. You have to
pay it BEFORE you are caught to avoid the administrative or criminal
penalties for unlicensed operation. It doesn't take a graduate
degree in rocket science to figure that one out.

But I won't be fined $10000, given
that I have the print-out of the official FCC email.

If you are not in violation, no one will say anything. If you are
in violation, a "letter" won't help.

We need common sense other than "certificates or professionals" on what is
good and bad to do.

Common sense says that the world is flat. If you are dealing with
law or science, you need to listen to the professionals because they're
the ones who come up with, enforce, and interpret the law or the scientific
principles.

The legal and policy systems are based on common sense eventually.

Boy, are you naive! How long have you been dealing with FCC Rules
and policy? Or even plain ol' traffic laws?

If FCC policy would have been based on common sense there would no
longer be a CB, let alone FRS or MURS or non-licensed wireless
devices, and there wuld have been adequate enforcement from the very
beginning to ensure that that was the case.

But no, certain bureaucrats 25+ years ago (and I do know the names
and faces) were looking for ways to do less work, and we spectrum
users are all paying the penalty and into the forseeable future.

Don't get me started.

--
73 de K2ASP / KAE8605 - Phil Kane