Comment by wewewedxfgdf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wewewedxfgdf | Hacker News Reader

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>>"We're only allowed to transmit what we have permission to transmit -- and by default, we're forbidden."

It is not true that by default you are forbidden to transmit. In fact there are quite open rules in some ways for transmissions. Whenever these discussions about transmission come up there's always people who, without really undrstanding, freak out about transmitting anything and declare that all tranmissions are illegal. Not so.

USA hobbyists can legally transmit without a licence under FCC Part 15, but the limits are pretty low and depend on the frequency. AM, up to 100 mW into the final RF stage, with the antenna, feedline and ground limited to a total of 3 metres. FM maximum field strength of 250 µV/m measured 3 metres away. There are special cases, such as 49.82–49.90 MHz, where home-built transmitters can go to 100 mW on a 1 metre antenna. One-off home-built transmitters don't need FCC certification if for personal use not being sold.

It's pretty interesting to read if you are a radio head: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-A...

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/section-15.209

"operation within these frequency bands is permitted under other sections of this part, e.g., §§ 15.231 and 15.241."

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0.009-0.490Mhz 0.490-1.705Mhz 1.705-30.0Mhz 30-88Mhz 88-216Mhz 216-960Mhz Above 960Mhz

We're granted permission to make the transmissions you speak of; it is otherwise deny-by-default. This is described right there at the top of your first link, in the first three paragraphs.

It's broadly possible to sort any rule (or superset or subset of rules) into one of two different buckets:

One bucket contains the rules about the things things we're not allowed to do. Like a firewall with a blacklist, whereby we can do whatever we want that explicitly isn't blacklisted. It is allow-by-default.

The other bucket contains the rules about things that we are permitted to do. This is like a firewall with a whitelist, where we can do whatever the whitelist explicitly allows us to do and nothing more. It is deny-by-default.

Drug laws in the USA are in the first bucket (blacklisting). Radio transmission rules in the USA are in the second bucket (whitelisting).

(There is no third bucket.)

I believe the default state, in the absence of any law whatsoever, is that you can do whatever you want. Nothing is forbidden by default. You could assault another person, and it would be legal absent a law forbidding it.

Then there are laws that prohibit things like broadcasting radio signals without a license.

Then within those very same laws there are exceptions allowing certain transmissions WITHOUT a license, in specific circumstances.

The "default" is that things are legal unless they are made illegal, and I think it's pointless wordplay to try to argue the default state is somehow the law prohibiting unlicensed operation, and not the part of those same laws that allow unlicensed operation in particular bands with particular transmission power limits.

I understand the point you're trying to make that some parts of U.S. law say that all not-explicitly-mentioned radio transmissions are unlawful, but that's not meaningfully different from drug policies that say that all "harmful substances" are unlawful and so forth. They all just boil down to what the law defines as being within its own scope.

Yes.

And in the United States of America, at least: Radio transmissions are illegal by law, except where permission is granted by law.

(Try not to overthink it too much. A previous responder provided a citation that did not serve them well.

This situation can seem ugly or fantastic or jubilant or something else -- and it can be changed! -- but it still is just is how it is.)

I think your analysis of the situation is correct. I just want to point out that what you are describing resembles a form of tyranny to me. Radio, flight, and food are all everyday domains that I appreciate absolutely require regulation for society to function smoothly however the FCC, FAA, and FDA have to be among the most anti-american institutions (or rather bodies of regulation) I can immediately think of.

Maybe I'm an asshole sometimes and legal restraint is what keeps me from mounting a bunch of microwave oven magnetrons on a tower and killing the 2.4GHz ISM band for miles in any direction, or re-tuning my FM transmitter to step all over the aviation band just for the lulz.

I can grow my own food. I can share it with my neighbors. In Ohio, at least, I can sell a ton of produce every day to random strangers at any price that we find to be mutually acceptable, and I can do this without any licensing, inspection, or sales tax burden.

But I don't grow much of my own food; I never wanted to grow up to be a farmer.

I mostly consume products of industrialized agriculture. The USDA, FDA, and FTC help to ensure that the national brands I buy from the grocery store contain what they say they do, and that they're safe to consume, and that I get something close to the amount of it that is printed on the label.

When I buy a 5-pound bag of wheat flour from the grocery store today it weighs in at right around 5 pounds and is made from wheat. Yeah, there's some stragglers from other plants in the process and a completely non-zero number of insect parts and stuff, but it's not like there's a special department that grows bugs just to throw them into the mix. The goal is to simply produce and deliver wheat flour.

There was a time when adulteration and substitution of food was common and deliberate. We used to bulk up flour using cheap minerals that we'd dig out of the ground that had zero nutrition, such as gypsum. This kind of thing serves as proof that companies are assholes when left to their own devices.

I guess we could go back to letting them do just fucking-whatever again, but do you really want to have to analyze all of the food that you buy in order to gain knowledge of what's actually in there? (How else would you be able to make an informed purchasing decision?)

Anyway, that sounds like a ton of work compared to paying a little extra to have other people do it for me, whereby I can just read the ingredients label and know with pretty good surety what's inside the bag.

I live in a society. I make money doing things that I'm good at doing, and I use this money to pay people to do stuff that they're good at doing -- and to make sure that they're doing it right.

> Maybe I'm an asshole sometimes and legal restraint is what keeps me from mounting a bunch of microwave oven magnetrons on a tower ...

That would be illegal regardless? Please note my earlier up front acknowledgement that these areas of society do indeed appear to require some amount of regulation. I never presented an argument for a laissez-faire approach.

> I can grow my own food. I can share it with my neighbors. In Ohio, at least, I can sell a ton of produce every day to random strangers ...

If you look into it more deeply I believe you will find that your mileage varies in some surprising and offensive ways.

> The USDA, FDA, and FTC help to ensure that the national brands I buy from the grocery store contain what they say they do, and that they're safe to consume ...

Certainly they do. (I never disputed the need for this BTW. In fact I explicitly acknowledged it. Are you sure you're actually responding to what I wrote? Like at all?) Although since you brought it up I'll point out that they also fail in a number of ways. Consider for example the long standing failure of the FDA to competently audit the composition of "supplements". Or recall that time that the consumers bringing a lawsuit for false advertising over "real juice" lost. If you simply ignore all the gaps then sure it can be made to look like we do a great job in the US.

> I guess we could go back to letting them do just fucking-whatever again ...

Yeah nowhere did I suggest that. The opinion that regulation of the commercial food supply is necessary and the opinion that the FDA as it currently stands is a flaming pile of shit aren't mutually exclusive.

That sounds like a list of things your permitted to do, by the fcc.

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