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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.ham-radio
Subject: Re: Ham Radio and Computer Networking
Message-ID: <752@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Aug-85 15:10:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.752
Posted: Thu Aug 22 15:10:21 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 17:27:42 EDT
References: <312@harvard.ARPA>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 30

The ham bands have a number of very significant limitations as 
far as computer networking is concerned:

1) No traffic that is even a little bit commercial can be transmitted.
   Much Usenet traffic falls into the "somewhat commercial" area,
   including queries from people working for some company for some
   software or product, other people announcing software and
   products, etc.  Job announcements, etc. also fall into this
   area.  In general, there is a lot of content on Usenet that would
   be considered commercial under FCC rules.

2) Rules for content (no libelous, copyrighted, obscene, etc.)
   material are very strict.

3) No unscreened third-party traffic may be transmitted on the ham
   bands.  Virtually all netnews materials, other than particular
   articles written by the person owning the radio him/herself, would
   fall into this category!  A ham would have to sit there and screen
   every article before initial transmission into the ham bands,
   and would also in practice be taking responsiblity for the "legality"
   of those messages under points (1) and (2) above.  A pretty risky
   situation.

4) Encryption for the purpose of obscuring message contents is
   absolutely forbidden on the ham bands.

As you can see, the rules governing the ham bands are fairly strict
and introduce a number of VERY significant limitations.

--Lauren--