Phil:

At the core of the "Radio Act of 1912", and grossly paraphrased here by
me, seems the statement, "Here you guys sign up and get registered, then
take this range of freqs and see what you can do with them. See if you can
come up with ideas which advance the use of radio and we can use in the
benefit of america and its' citizens."

Somehow, along the way, things got bogged down and an abundance of people
came to the hobby who wanted a set of rules which they could religiously
worship and practice and invoke for disciplinary actions to be taken on
others not holding a religious reverence for such, this has been
detrimental to the original purpose and goals...

This now lays at the extreme end where you must be careful what
experiments you undertake, how you undertake them and why you can't
undertake them... in someways there are "guards" on the bands as exist in
prisons, and you are "allowed out in the yard" if you obey all the
rules... strange for a hobby first created as a means to try new ideas
which could possibly lead somewhere...

BPL is perhaps a very good example, where arrl and other "status quo"
forces banded together and ended up having the effect of saying, "We
already know that won't work! Don't attempt any experiments, don't do any
testing, don't gather any data, don't lay any plans. Don't plan on being
able to change and redesign hardware/software to attempt to make it
work! Cease and desist immediately, we so command you!"

John

On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 17:14:57 +0000, phil-news-nospam wrote:

On 17 Aug 2005 09:36:19 -0700 wrote:

| I don't see how someone can "hide behind the rules".

How about someone operating in such a way that they are in literal
compliance with the rule, but many others believe they are violating the
intent. Sorry, I can't give an example of such a situation; maybe one can
be found from other people's experience.