Dave is quite correct. Lets make it clear that those of us who want to see improvements in digital technology detection of busy channels, are not in opposition to standard third party traffic handling via amateur radio channels. In fact, I personally am in favor of this. The automated systems simply must have some controls in terms of insuring content so that ANY amateur radio operator who is monitoring can, in fact, be able to determine if there are abuses in progress.
This is a problem with Winlink 2000 since it uses compression techniques that make it much harder to decode. In fact, some Winlink 2000 folks were promoting this a while back as one of the benefits of the system and actually derided anyone who suggested that it was possible to easily decode their system. Even though I support the basic concept of Winlink and Winlink 2000 and PSKmail, and other messaging systems as they are developed, we have not insured that we can self police in all cases. If we hams do not self police, no one else is going to be doing it. This is not a minor issue. And now we have some ARRL Directors supporting actual encryption on the ham bands starting with 50 MHz and above. This is truly a "slippery slope" and I believe we should convince our Directors that this is very bad idea considering the abuses that will surely occur if it was ever permitted. In terms of content here in the U.S., the FCC liberalized the rules some years ago and does allow for some casual "quasi personal business" type messaging. This was made clear when it was pointed out that you could now order a pizza via an amateur radio phone patch such as through a repeater. But just because you can do this doesn't mean that you should. And owners of the radio servers need to be very careful about what kind of traffic is going through their system. We know from recent comments that there have been many borderline and possibly illegal transmissions being made on the Winlink 2000 system. My previous understanding was that the owner of the system was diligent in monitoring the throughput, but it appears otherwise. The same rules should apply to any other system and PSKmail would be no exception either although I would expect that the transmissions would be more transparent in that system? If the hams using the radio servers knew that many people would be monitoring their transmissions, and that they would be blocked from using the system if they were caught, the amount of improper activity would be greatly reduced. 73, Rick, KV9U Dave Bernstein wrote: > Pactor is not the problem, Roger. Ops running keyboard-to-keyboard > Pactor can determine that the frequency is clear before > transmitting, just as you would in PSK, RTTY, or Olivia. > > Other than excluding commercial content, its a slipperly slope to > say what kind of traffic constitutes "true ham radio" and what > doesn't. What's wrong with boaters with valid amateur licenses > sending messages to Aunt Nelly, so long as they obey the rules and > operate considerately. > > 73, > > Dave, AA6YQ > > Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
