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Cartoon Guide to Federal Spectrum Policy
js7a writes "The New America Foundation has published The Cartoon Guide to Federal Spectrum Policy (pdf). An excellent 14 page guide that everyone should print a few copies of to have handy in the backpack or car. Learn what would happen if the government regulated speech the same way they regulate airwaves. Learn the truth about microbroadcasting, smart radio, and so-called intererence (all previously covered on Slashdot.) Learn more creative ways to tell Congress to stop giving away public resources to private corporations. Make the most of your rights to use unlicensed wireless, before it's too late."
This sort of thing is the best way to get something through to the public. What's more likely to get people interested: pages of plain text or a comic strip?
Norml have some excellent comics which do exactly the same thing: put across an issue in an interesting way.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I read an article a few years ago that said that Italy allows anyone to open a radio or tv station that wishes to do so.
According to the article the results were pretty interesting. An enormous choice of things to listen to, some with really limited interest to most of us. One example the article gave was a 24 hour Hare Krishna station broadcasting nothing but chanting 24 hours a day.
I've long wished that the same rights were available in the U.S. If the law was changed tomorrow, I'd be in the market tomorrow for the equipment to set up my own radio station. If it could reach 20 miles, I'd be happy.
Don't reform the FCC. Auction off frequencies, with permanent ownership rights, to the public!
Oh, for fuck's sake, do we have to apply the property meme to every fucking thing humanity discovers?
Shiny rock? Mine! Sexy mate? Mine! Territory? Mine! Land between fences? Mine! Prisoners of War? Mine! Novel? Mine! Audio recording? Mine! Right to build a telephone? Mine and mine alone!
OBEY, proles. I own all.
Et cetera.
"The line must be drawn here!"
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Abolishment of private property might be a bit extreme, but can we please stop inventing new forms of it? It's not benefitting anyone.
None of the great innovations, discoveries, or achievements in human history were made for material gain.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Actually it is quite rare for people to go to jail for intentionall jamming. There have been two cases this year that I recall, and the involved multiple (30+) cases of jamming local law enforcement frequencies before they took action. One guy in LA is notorious for doing it, has even been to jail for it once, and continues.
In my jurisdictional area we have a guy that jams amateur frequencies any time they are being used to assist in emergencies. The amateurs working these situations are Disaster Service Workers under CA Office of Emergency Services and are either ARES or RACES affiliated, and he jams the nets. Our local law enforcement wanted to act, but it is a federal issue, so we gave it to Riley Hollingsworth at the FCC. After months of proof being sent in for review, swore statements by multiple officers that witnessed the crime, Riley sent a letter and told him to stop. Nothing ever came of it, it was a waste of time for everyone.
I wish people would actually go to jail for these things, but they normally don't. So go ahead, jam anyone you want, apparently the FCC only cares about getting money for the bands they can and never spending it on enforcement.
Nick
Butte County Sheriff Communications
[not presumed to be a statement of my employing agency]
from their site "The Foundation invests in outstanding individuals and policy ideas that transcend the conventional political spectrum."
...after all, for all we know, next month they'll get hired by neo-nazis and start promoting death camps and slavery!
and they're funded by "public intellectuals, civic leaders, and business executives." Although if these "intellectuals, civic leaders, and business executives." are so public, why don't they want to publicly put their names to this organisation.
It seems to me that they're a professional political lobbyists - guns for hire, if you will - but who pays their wages? I don't like the idea of raising the profile of an organisation without knowing exactly who they are...
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Well, open investigations leads me to not want to talk in details, but public knowledge is that he has a combination of grudges against the people using the frequencies as well as physical disabilities that leaves him little other entertainment than his radio.
For people that he doesn't have bad past history with he is decent with on the radio. I wouldn't call him a bad person as much as misaligned. While jail time probably wasn't the best solution for this case, I believe a temporary revocation of his radio license would have sent the message that the behavior is not acceptable and personal issues should be resolved in other ways.
On the other hand, I was once trying to radio in a bicyclist down on a back road and requesting medics respond and I was jammed. We belive it was "our guy" by signal strength readings from around the county during the incident and he has history of jamming the person I was reporting the medical call to. That case we don't have enough to legally proove it was him or not, but it sure made me mad either way; whoever did it directly delayed medical attention to an injured person.
Never underestimate the power of those little Radio Shack walkie talkies. Place one of them close enough to the recieving point and all of the victim's "CQs" will be for nothing. You can have all the power in the world to transmit, but if there's a 400mw transmitter deadkeyed on your home channel half a block away, you aren't recieving anything. It takes only a few minutes to change the TX crystal, and with a few D cell batteries the damn thing will be on for a week or more.
Then there was the guy that just went and cut about 18" off the other guy's RG-8. That stuff is a pain to splice.