Date: Fri, 3 Dec 93 04:30:14 PST From: Ham-Policy Mailing List and Newsgroup Errors-To: Ham-Policy-Errors@UCSD.Edu Reply-To: Ham-Policy@UCSD.Edu Precedence: Bulk Subject: Ham-Policy Digest V93 #509 To: Ham-Policy Ham-Policy Digest Fri, 3 Dec 93 Volume 93 : Issue 509 Today's Topics: Ethics and Ham Radio Welcome to rec.radio.info! WHOA! Beavis, this SUCKS!!! (2 msgs) Send Replies or notes for publication to: Send subscription requests to: Problems you can't solve otherwise to brian@ucsd.edu. Archives of past issues of the Ham-Policy Digest are available (by FTP only) from UCSD.Edu in directory "mailarchives/ham-policy". We trust that readers are intelligent enough to realize that all text herein consists of personal comments and does not represent the official policies or positions of any party. Your mileage may vary. So there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 23:55:54 GMT From: mdisea!mothost!lmpsbbs!bowalker@uunet.uu.net Subject: Ethics and Ham Radio To: ham-policy@ucsd.edu Following is a note by Norm, W2JUP, internet address 74055.140@compuserve.com, that he placed in hamnet on C-$erve. It generated some interesting comments so I've reposted it here for "all". 73, Bob, N4CU -------------------------------------------------------- There seems to be some misunderstanding about the use of amateur radio in regard to the discussion of copying and distributing certain types of computer software We'd like to assist newcomers to better understand certain terminology. We'd also like to expose possible consequences of openly discussing copying of certain types of software over voice repeaters. Here is a brief explanation of three general types of computer software programs, and what types of programs can and cannot be copied and given to fellow hams. 1. PUBLIC DOMAIN SOFTWARE Software programs for which the author has made an open and visible statement to the effect that he or she has "placed this program in the Public Domain." Such Public Domain programs can be openly copied and freely distributed at no charge by anyone to anyone else. The statement that the program is in the Public Domain is usually visible on the program's opening screen, and is also usually embedded in ASCII somewhere in the program's binary files. Usually the author offers no support or documentation, and disclaims any and all responsibility and does not in any way warranty the Public Domain program to do anything. 2. SHAREWARE SOFTWARE Software programs that can be freely copied and distributed. These shareware programs have the specific understanding that after some specific time period of use, the user will register the program with the author. In most cases the author requires some relatively small payment for the rights to use the program and for any documentation that may be available. Some shareware programs have a form of limited life or limitation on available functions. These limitations, should they exist, are removed when the user registers and pays for the use of the program. 3. COPYRIGHTED SOFTWARE These programs cannot - repeat - CANNOT be legally copied and given to another person. Such actions as copying this type of software and distributing it to anyone constitute serious violations of federal law and can result in significant fines and in some cases inprisonment in a federal penitentiary. The use of any amateur radio facility to openly discuss copying of copyrighted software questions the ethics of the people who hold these discussions. As well as revealing their lack of a sense of ethics, people who openly discuss copying of copyrighted software over amateur radio are openly admitting that they are committing infractions of federal laws against the copying and distribution of copyrighted software. Such public admissions could be used as evidence of commission of a federal offense in a court of law. Amateur radio has traditionally been "self-policing". Finding someone operating illegally and taking appropriate action has long been a practice in amateur radio. Finding someone on a local voice repeater or packet radio, in the midst of discussing copying of copyrighted software, should also be cause for the concerned amateur radio operator to notify the individual(s) that they are violating federal laws. Let's keep some sense of proper behavior in this hobby of ours. Your ethics are your own - your behavior reflects on the entire community of amateur radio. Sunrise, Florida 11/18/93 - Norm, W2JUP - Barb, N2RSH ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 21:01:46 MST From: tribune.usask.ca!kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca!alberta!nebulus!ve6mgs!bohica!rec-radio-info@decwrl.dec.com Subject: Welcome to rec.radio.info! To: ham-policy@ucsd.edu Archive-name: radio/rec-radio-info/welcome Last-modified: $Date: 1993/05/16 21:57 $ Version: $Revision: 1.05 $ *** Welcome to rec.radio.info! *** Welcome to rec.radio.info, a group that aims to provide a noise-free source of information and news for the entire rec.radio hierarchy. Two introductory articles about rec.radio.info are posted to the group and to news.answers every two weeks. You are now reading the first article, which explains what rec.radio.info is, and answers some Frequently Asked Questions. The second article is titled "Submission Guidelines", and you only need to read it if you want to submit an article to rec.radio.info. You can skip to the next section of this article by searching for the next " -- " string. The sections available are: - What is the purpose of rec.radio.info? - Why are messages almost always cross posted to rec.radio.info? - What is a 'follow-up', and what does 'moderated' mean? - OK, so now I know what 'moderated' means. Tell me more. - What type of material is considered inappropriate? - I do not have access to news, how can I get the information posted to rec.radio.info? - Will the material appearing in rec.radio.info be archived somewhere? - I have a regular posting with timely information, is there a way to speed up it's delivery, or automate for more convenience? -- What is the purpose of rec.radio.info? The purpose or charter of rec.radio.info is to provide the Usenet community with a resource for information, news, and facts about any and all things radio. All the other rec.radio groups are intended for discussions and general chit chat about radio. Rec.radio.info will contain informational, factual articles only. Follow-ups are redirected to an appropriate other group, and further discussion (if any) will not take place in rec.radio.info. In order to ensure that rec.radio.info contains only appropriate articles, it was decided to create the group as a moderated newsgroup. -- Why are messages almost always cross posted to rec.radio.info? It provides a "tag" for each article to be assembled into a filtered presentation in rec.radio.info (even with cross-posting, only one message, with a unique Message-ID, is propogated across the net). This tag also facilitates a pre-existing method of dropping or cancelling the articles locally within the discussion groups if you don't want to see them. This accommodates individuals who want to separate the bulletins from the discussions, discussions from the bulletins, as well as those who are adamant about not reading another newsgroup and wanted to see everything all in one basket. With the total size of Usenet (in number of newsgroups and total traffic) doubling every year or so, this is no insignificant contribution to reducing information noise and chaos. Making the discussion groups a catch-all, and making extra newsgroups filters on that catch-all, is also the most realistic way to implement such a scheme (It's not intuitively obvious what the charter, contents, and general appropriate topics for each and every newsgroup are. Seeing FAQ's and charter/intro postings in the home newsgroup is beneficial for new readers). By cross-posting one only is adding a few tens of bytes to each bulletin (to specify the extra group on the Newsgroups line), but are adding the capability for very powerful filtering features available on most news servers, listservers and readers. Your local news guru could probably explain these features in more detail. In rn, for example, according to Leanne Phillips in her rn kill-file FAQ, add a line of the form: /Newsgroups:.*[ ,]rec\.radio\.info/h:j either in ~/News/KILL (if you don't want to see rec.radio.info articles anywhere) or ~/News/rec/radio/amateur/misc/KILL (if you don't want to see them just in rec.radio.amateur.misc). The latter method means your kill file will only be consulted during rec.radio.amateur.misc (and hence runs more efficiently), and will probably work for most people. In nn, according to Bill Wohler in his nn FAQ, add a line of the form: rec.radio.info:!s/:^ in ~/.nn/kill (if you don't want to see rec.radio.info articles anywhere), or put the following lines: sequence rec.radio.info rec.radio. at the end of ~/.nn/init in order to see all the rec.radio.info bulletins first, then read the remaining rec.radio.* without the bulletins. -- What is a 'follow-up', and what does 'moderated' mean? If you are new to Usenet and are not familiar with the terminology, you might want to read the general introductory articles found in the newsgroup news.announce.newusers. Doing so will make your life on the net much easier, and will probably save you from making silly beginner's mistakes. If you think that at this moment you are reading an echo, a conference, or a bulletin board, I'd also strongly suggest a trip over to news.announce.newusers. For the rest of this article, I will assume you have a basic knowledge of Usenet terminology and mechanics. A moderated group means that any article that needs to be posted to the group has to be accepted by the moderator of the group. Since we need to ensure that followups to an article (discussion) do not show up in the rec.radio.info newsgroup, the `Followup-To:' header line contains a newsgroup that is appropriate for disussions about the specific article. -- OK, so now I know what 'moderated' means. Tell me more. Rec.radio.info is a moderated newsgroup, which means that all articles submitted to the group will have to be approved by the moderator first. The current moderator of the group is Mark Salyzyn. Submissions to rec.radio.info can be posted, or e-mailed to: rec-radio-info@ve6mgs.ampr.ab.ca Comments, criticisms, suggestions or questions about the group can be e-mailed to: rec-radio-request@ve6mgs.ampr.ab.ca But before you do so, please be sure to check out the "Submission Guidelines" article. The influence of the moderator should be minimal and of an administrative nature, consisting chiefly of weeding out obviously inappropriate articles, while making sure correct headers etc. are used for the appropriate ones. -- What type of material is considered inappropriate? There are three broad categories of articles which will be rejected by the moderator: 1) Requests for information: rec.radio.info is strictly a one-way street. I receive information in my mailbox; I then post it to rec.radio.info. Requests for specific information belong in the normal discussion newsgroups. If your request gets answered, you might consider passing the answer on to rec.radio.info, though. Especially if you can edit it into a informational, rather than a discussion, format. 2) Obvious discussion articles, or articles that appear unsubstantiated. 3) Commercial stuff: a relatively unbiased test of a radio product would be accepted, but any hint of for-profit might be reason for rejection. For three reasons: This is not the purpose of the list, for-profit is a controversial topic, and this list may be passed onto Amateur Packet Radio (where for-profit is prohibited except under certain provisos). rec.radio.swap (or possibly comp.newprod) may be more deserving of the posting in any matter. Similarly, copyrighted material generally cannot be used. If it's TRULY worthwhile to the net, I would recommend obtaining permission from the copyright holder. Please note the source, and if permission was given. I reserve the right to make the final decision concerning appropriateness in all situations. In most cases, a brief summary of, or pointer to, the copyrighted information may be all I can allow. -- I do not have access to news, how can I get the information posted to rec.radio.info? brian@UCSD.EDU (Brian Kantor) has kindly supplied a mail list server for rec.radio.info. Non of the articles will be digested, due to their size, so you will receive individual mailings for every article posted to the group. Mail sent to radio-info@ucsd.edu will be forwarded to the moderator and thus is an alias to rec-radio-info@ve6mgs.ampr.ab.ca To subscribe and unsubscribe via the listserver; the format for that is sub address radio-info unsub address radio-info where 'address' is your full mailing address. Send this request to listserv@ucsd.edu Note that the server will automatically delete any address that bounces mail. If you leave the address portion blank, it will try to deduce your address from the mail headers. This may not work if you are on bitnet, milnet or some other non-Unix host, so it is recommended to put your return address in any case. For example: sub mymailbox@myhost.mydomain.mil radio-info or sub MEMEME01@DMBHST.bitnet radio-info or something like that. -- Will the material appearing in rec.radio.info be archived somewhere? Yes. Still firming up details at the moment but here is a preliminary list: - unbc.edu as maintained by Lyndon Nerenberg - nic.funet.fi maintained by Risto Kotalampi saved to /pub/dx/text/rec.radio.info currently stored as numbered files. Effectively this means that anything you post to rec.radio.info will be permanently stored, so your work will not be lost. -- I have a regular posting with timely information, is there a way to speed up it's delivery, or automate for more convenience? Yes, there is! It may take a bit of chatter with the moderator, but we are willing to take responsible people and provide them the means of posting the articles directly from their site. We will try everything we can as we fully realize that DX (distant signal) and astronomical data can be somewhat transitory. We are also willing to allow regular posters of information the same courtesy, even if the information is not as time critical. We refer to this as self-moderation, which is partly based on the model for news.answer. This requires co-operation and good will to be beneficial to the community in the rec.radio hierarchy. I suggest reading the posting guidelines for more information. I am open to suggestions. I thank the following individuals for their input into this article: rec.music.info moderator Leo Breebaart rec-music-info@cp.tn.tudelft.nl rec.radio.broadcasting moderator Bill Pfeiffer wdp@gagme.chi.il.us Paul W. Schleck, KD3FU pschleck@unomaha.edu Ian Kluft, KD6EUI ikluft@uts.amdahl.com -- Mark Salyzyn -- Moderator rec.radio.info Submissions to: rec-radio-info@ve6mgs.ampr.ab.ca Administrivia to: rec-radio-request@ve6mgs.ampr.ab.ca * Requests for information do *not* belong in rec.radio.info * ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1993 07:59:55 GMT From: brunix!doorknob!sds@uunet.uu.net Subject: WHOA! Beavis, this SUCKS!!! To: ham-policy@ucsd.edu > Then the local school administration is really paranoid. Access to > a weekday test session held in a school can certainly include a sign-in > process at the school administration office before the potential > test taker is allowed to go to the room where the test would be > administered. I am not trying to start a flamewar here, but many schools got a lot more nervous about letting "anyone" into their schools for non-official business (at least in my home area) after a woman named Laurie Dann walked into a public school, pulled out an automatic weapon, and opened fire. The incident rocked the Chicago metro area (well, okay -- it was on all the news channels, lots of people were talking about it, and I as an elementary school student remember people being very concerned). My high school, which is actually more in the "public light" due to its slightly unusual academic structure, has a very strict policy about people being able to pass the front desk -- and they have a small but significant (non-armed) staff to back up this policy. What does this have to do with radio? Nothing! Oops, sorry to pontificate. Filibuster ends here. (Any sites that picked up my empty post -- gnus can be annoying; I apologize. 'Specially to you, Robert the Intolerant ;) Scott scott_swanson@brown.edu - n9sat ------------------------------ Date: 1 Dec 93 15:31:18 GMT From: att-out!cbnewsl!rlt@rutgers.rutgers.edu Subject: WHOA! Beavis, this SUCKS!!! To: ham-policy@ucsd.edu In article <1993Dec1.142953.6617@cs.brown.edu> md@maxcy2.maxcy.brown.edu (Michael P. Deignan) writes: >rlt@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (r l taylor) writes: >> How about having a VE session at the school, either after-hours or on >> a weekend? >The problem we've found is that many schools in the local area have >very strict policies regarding non-school-related access to the >facilities, due to various liability clauses written into their >insurance contracts. How about a Civic Center? Library? Legion Hall? Fire Hall? First Aid Squad Building? Hopefully there's some sort of facility you could use, which would be accessible to the students. >The specific case I am referring to is a 45-minute science class. I know >several general-class-and-above hams, such as myself, who would gladly take >time out of work to go and give a test during this time period. Of course, >we can't anymore... >> No more so than if you're a 12-year old kid who lives in the middle of >> Arizona and can't find 2 General class hams to give him/her the test. >The probability of finding two general-class hams is larger than >finding a VE session. Probably, but...It seems like you and your friends are prepared to give the exam, but, in general, I've found that most non-VE hams don't have the materials on hand. So, once you've found a couple of willing hams, they still need to create (or obtain) the tests. And (usually) brush up on how to fill out a 610. On the other hand, (at least with the VE team I work with) we're willing and able to throw together a session on less than a week's notice. More than once, we've held extra sessions because one person was about to lose credit for something they had passed almost a year ago. Or there's a class going, and the instructors think the students are ready to test *now*. Etc... Obviously, I don't know the VE's in your area. I would hope they would be more than happy to accomodate a bunch of youngsters with an interest in ham radio. Have you tried talking to them? Or, if that fails, get some obliging folks together and get accredited. General class licensees can be accredited now, for Novice exams only. Put together your own team! Find a building you can use for a couple of hours, and hold a session. Or work with the team already in your area. One of the main reasons there aren't more sessions is that there often aren't enough VE's available. >I don't fault you for the inherent inefficiencies in the VEC program, nor >do I blame any other VE. I think its wonderful that you give your time to Thanks! >help new hams get in the hobby. Despite that, however, I still condemn the >VEC system for the bureaucratic monolith that it is. Well, it may not be perfect, but I still think it's a big improvement over the old system. It would have taken me forever to upgrade if I had to go to NYC or Philadelphia to take the exams. And, like it or not, the way things are right now, Novice testing must be done through VE's. So let's pull together and look for ways to make VE testing as available and efficient as possible, shall we? Roberta Taylor, AA2KZ AT&T Bell Laboratories Murray Hill, NJ rlt@cbnewsl.att.com ------------------------------ End of Ham-Policy Digest V93 #509 ****************************** ******************************