On Apr 9, 1:46 pm, (Michael Black) wrote:
"bpnjensen" ) writes:
On Apr 9, 12:16 pm, "Brian O" wrote:

There are standars of right and wrong. The point is its illegal to operate
a gmrs radio without a license.

And my point is that it is unethical to require an outrageous fee for
a license for this service. That's just as wrong, arguably worse,
than operating wiothout a license.

This has no releveance to rec.radio.shortwave, which is about reception
not transmitting.

Then feel free not talk about it.

It's hardly outrageous, since you get a good number of years on
each license. What you are complaining about is the fact that
it's not an annual license, so per year it would be cheaper. Though
likely it would be higher than the cost per year, since there's be
administrative fees that would run up the yearly license fee.

You think this is only about a fee, and you don't want to pay it,
so it's okay to operate without a license.

No, that's not what I think. Tell me, what's the fee for? Does it
prove that I am going to operate properly? Does it actually make me a
better person? Or just a poorer one?

But I should point out that in the early days of radio, there
were no licenses, or allocations. INstead, you had a bunch of
different people with different needs all operating in a relatively
small part of the spectrum, because technology hadn't advance enough
to make use of more than a tiny bit of the spectrum. So a ship at
sea sends out an SOS, and can't be received because someone is
broadcasting on that frequency, or the ham down the street
is transmitting.

That's the point where regulations came into effect. They did not
proceed the use of radio, they followed.

So the spectrum started be carved up, allocating to different services
and requiring licenses.

And the rules are to protect existing services, including some that
might be really important in emergencies.

And a large fee on one limited-band service helps to protect this -
how?

The rules are not just about making sure that broadcast station won't
interfere with that airplane by giving them different parts of the
spectrum, the rules are also about making sure that someone buying
that radio off the back of a truck isn't going to interfere with
that airplane because it puts out spurious signals. The rules
limit what can be sold so junk won't be sold, but the rules also
set things up so that if you did buy something that was illegal
in the first place, you would be tracked down for interfering with
a legit radio service.

So, the fee is going to make sure that my little 2-mile walkie talkie
is not going to mess up a Homeland Security operation - how?

So you think you should be able to buy a transceiver off the shelf
and use any old frequency, like the one those ambulances use?

No.

That really is no different than your belief that you shouldn't pay for
a GMRS license because it "costs too much".

Wrong. Period. There is considerable actual difference on the
ground. One can directly affect health safety and welfare, the other
cannot.

Because without that license, you are in the same state as the bozo who buys the transceiver for a frequency he has no use using, and transmits away without a license
(which he couldn't get anyway because he's not that ambulance) simply
because the rules don't matter.

Please - a little logic, OK?. How is the intereference with emergency
operations by an off-frequency jerk anything comparable to not paying
some bureaucrat for the ability to pretty much do anything you like on
a radio whose channels do not overlap with emergency freqs, ranging
from reasonable and useful notifications of scientific events, all the
way out to screwing around with your friends on a drunken binge?

If you transmit on GMRS without a license, then the rules can't mean
a thing to you since you've already broken the rule that requires
a license to use the band.

This is an unreasonable illogical emotionally-based extrapolation, and
is beside the point. Once again, what effect exactly will the fee
have on my operation of the radio, other than the vague notion that
some bureaucrat knows I exist?

Bruce Jensen