I always found the difference between ham radio operators and computer hacker community interesting.
There is obvious large overlap. Both are nerdy and techy and attract similar base groups. But the ham space is dominated by people who want to be "good citizens" through collective action, while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed".
Perhaps it's the clearest example of "The medium is the message" concept.
It is very strange that when you come across anything radio related, people seemingly come out of the woodwork to tell you not that you are necessarily, actively doing something against regulation, but that there is always potential to be breaking the law.
The subject is mostly academic, but in 18 comments no less than 3 different people are warning about doing something against the rules. It's weird. I don't know of any other subject that provokes responses about "the rules" like this.
I could understand if the article title was "How to Aim Laser Pointers at Airplanes", but attach a long enough wire to an oscillator and people start to get uppity.
On the other side of things, I don't know if you've turned on a shortwave radio recently, but the only thing I hear on mine is switch-mode power supply noise.
Hams take pride in being largely self-policing because this is one of the things that keeps the FCC interested in reserving sections of the spectrum for ham use.
Also, I love hackaday for their articles but the comment section there is among the worst on the Internet. You'll find more enlightening discussions on the wall of a truckstop bathroom stall.
Oh but HN is so much more interesting to watch. Recently someone built an app to find property near public lands, and to watch an infantanlized, largely urban population be pendanticly confused at an ungoverned existence.. its like having an ant farm.
I got the Technician license mid 2026 as a genuine ignoramus and super newb. I crammed hard for the test (might have been wise to go for General) but operating in the VHF/UHF (repeater) landscape, I lost much of my initial enthusiasm. Not much going in the handheld realm (HF is where it's at), though the discipline, etiquette and kindness is admirable, and clearly, the hobby tends to draw a particular type of person. I might buy a GMRS license too, which requires no test, can be useful, and is far less formal than Ham.
Not in the budget yet for HF gear, though I do have an RTL-SDR Blog (Rx only) I need to figure out.
As a former trucker; the form of enlightenment one acquires between those walls is limited, and mostly, a dissertation on the virtues of breatharianism and kumbhaka.
One bad transmitter in your neighborhood can cut you off from the hobby. Someone who's into linux and computers can follow an online tutorial to rig together an SDR. Look at a bunch of numbers or static, shrug and move on to a different project without disconnecting that anttena breaking an entire band for all of his neighbors. Then it's on those neighbors to go build a directional antenna and buy portable radio gear and then do their own "in the field investigation" to isolate which house is doing that, then go try to explain to the random person they are polluting a band and hope the person is friendly and cooperative.
In a perfect world the FCC would do that, but getting the FCC to act on small infractions like that is a slow and long process and often goes unanswered. Especially if you're not near a marina or a federal building or an airport. So one hackaday reader can take down ham operation in an entire area because they were just interested in a weekend DIY project.
People throw that "against the law" to limit the damage. But actually getting the FCC to prosecute these issues is a challenge in itself.
I listened to a net on a VHF repeater once- some guy's PTT button got stuck, which ties up the repeater, plus you hear the background sounds from his house. It was quite funny- FCC not needed, instead somebody called him (you heard his phone ring and him saying "What?!" over the repeater).
> Someone who's into linux and computers can follow an online tutorial to rig together an SDR. Look at a bunch of numbers or static, shrug and move on to a different project without disconnecting that anttena breaking an entire band for all of his neighbors.
Why would someone leave an SDR actively transmitting with no purpose?
You have to really egregiously fuck up as an ordinary consumer/non professional to get the FCC to expend the resources to hunt you down and fine you. One example that comes to mind is a guy who continually operated a cellular jammer from his car on his daily commute on a freeway in Florida.
The FCC's enforcement bureau is not very large or well resourced and is primarily concerned with issuing enforcement actions on licensed broadcasters. You can look at their public documents/listings of "Notes of Appparent Liability" for examples. Everyone who gets fined by the FCC is public recod.
True. Local ham chapters hold celebration events when they finally get the FCC to take action on something.
The FCC used to be a lot more active in the 40s and 50s. Especially when there was a general hysteria and fear of soviet spies. The FCC still has various monitoring station everywhere, but they only use them for huge operations rather than policing hobby bands.
I saw a video recently about someone doing home automation work, put some transmitter in his basement, and all his neighbours' car key fobs stopped working because his transmitter was overwhelming them. It's hard to think of some LLM solution for that.
I honestly blame QFT. Like it should have considered this when coming up with the electromagnetic field because as it stands, it’s completely broken. I hope some frontier lab is working on a QFT 2.0 with some LLMs to address the current limitations with the various fields.
first of all, you can only broadcast "on top" of something if you're using an AM mode, and even then who wants to be talking through a spurious signal? Would you wanna have random voices or other sounds played over a phone call, interrupting conversation?
Why are you rationalizing / defending categorically anti-social behavior?
> Would you wanna have random voices or other sounds played over a phone call, interrupting conversation?
For the younger readers: this used to be a not uncommon thing in the POTS era, "lines crossed". And it was indeed annoying, especially if it persisted after hanging up and calling again.
Why would there be? Do you get random voices on a VoIP call done over wifi (radio) or there is interference? It sounds like your protocol needs more work.
> It's not illegal and is a core part of modern radio protocols.
LOL, yes it's for most practical purposes on hobby ham bands.
If you wanna be pedantic about it, the FCC rules for ham operations doesn't mention encryption, it mentions encoding instead [0]. So yes, if you encrypt or encode without obscuring the meaning (by publishing your encoding spec or encryption keys) then yes you can "encrypt". digital mode radio works that way.
Yes pretty much. There are a lot of digital modes for different use cases. Usually packet radio is referring to APRS. You can encode all you want as long as you make the encoding/decoding spec public and as long as the decoded information still comply with the rest of the rules like no commercial use, no profanity, call sign announcement, etc.
most equipment doesn't use trunked protocols like DMR, because it's vastly more expensive, and more difficult to use that honest-to-goodness analogue radio.
Plus, the hypothetical we're discussing here is that some non-ham asshole left a spurious transmitter running. Do you think that a trunked magically protects people from interference? No.
Finally, yes, encryption is illegal to use on ham radio.
There are power regulations. You can't simply broadcast a more powerful signal. And that also only makes the problem worse for everyone else, it immediately turns into a room of people shouting over each other and nothing actually being communicated.
And you cannot simply switch bands, because amateur bands are very specific.
You're left with attempting some form of recoverable signal modulation which can propagate through the problem area, but it becomes akin to making ripples in a turbulent river. The ripples simply do not contain the energy to resist diffusion of the surrounding heat in the environment for any considerable length of time. We definitely have techniques for propagating multiple signals across the same frequency band, it's fundamental to modern communication, but it still comes with physical limitations.
I see this in basically every interesting domain now, from construction to software development to 3D printing to starting a business. There’s a huge cohort that’s always ready to jump on other people for doing something interesting, offering “friendly” discouragement at the earliest moment, often while simultaneously defending bad behavior from incumbents or their half of the political class.
I'm wonder if it's an extension of internet reddit culture where you get rewarded with instant updopamines for making some snappy technically-correct point so we all learned to do that.
> in 18 comments no less than 3 different people are warning about doing something against the rules
I don't know how it is in your country but where I grew up it's well-known that the cops will come knock at your door fast if you transmit at power or frequency bands you shouldn't be transmitting.
"The radio spectrum is a fragile resource". That's the first thing they tell you in the licensing class in my country. So this care is more about keeping a fragile common resource working well, rather then trying to pose as law-abiding.
that may be, and you're right that they're building highways but this is part of a broader power grab on the second amendment.
don't forget that they just banned 'content' by disallowing foreign flir on drones, which is the modern equivalent to a periscope.
they are putting enough satellites in orbit to track everyone all at once roughly.
this is over reach.
this is why i am nervous about 'small government', they're not going to give up ground and will remain 'big data'. it is a tax and a restriction on freedoms of press, of arms, of speech, of movement, of assembly, of association.
where's the redress and representation?
it is a human right to build an emergency transmitter out of barbed wire, not a data center right of way to filter process and categorize.
The spectrum is fragile. A few people being assholes can mess it up for thousands or millions of people with a few hundred bucks of equipment.
While you or me may not cause a mess, there are millions and millions of people around and eventually you hit the random number generator where people fuck things up.
Simple, the blast radius of anything radio related is much, much higher. And if you mess around with transmitters so that they interfere with air or maritime bands or with police/firefighter/EMS comms, it might be the one hole in the swiss cheese too much that leads to a fatal disaster.
Unfortunately, it is at the same time very easy to make innocent mistakes that lead to such kinds of emissions. Say, forget (or mess up) the input filter of a PA, and at the same time mess up the output filter... and whoops, now you're blasting harmonics all over the place.
Short story: if you piss off other spectrum holders enough, amateur radio operators will lose the leeway they get with the service including the self policing aspect.
Also, when you break little rules early (like low power transmission out of band) it makes you desensitized to breaking dangerous rules later (like keeping people away from antennas being driven with high power).
I think it might be because ham radio is still barely legal and the community wants to keep the few freedoms they have so they try not to piss off any groups of interest. Whereas pretty much everything hacking-related is already a felony thanks to DMCA and other similar laws, so they don't have much to lose.
> Whereas pretty much everything hacking-related is already a felony thanks to DMCA and other similar laws, so they don't have much to lose.
Hackers were much more rebellious in former days before such laws were past. My opinion the reason why hackers got more "civilized" is that you could earn quite a lot of money by getting (and staying in) a job in big tech.
Hacking was mostly about gaining access before AOL and there was absolutely a "let's give this kid a summer job" attitude floating around after War Games came out.
The chain of resource acquisition and information gathering necessary to arrive at a point where you need to make a long-distance phone call you could never afford was impressive in itself. Calling card fraud by a bright minor for educational purposes against a corporate entity absolutely loathed by every adult at the time just wasn't that big of a deal.
From my perspective the point of being a hacker is individual but follows observable desire paths. A lot of those have been filled in now.
Probably the biggest reason "hackers" got civilized is just a regression to the mean effect. When you have something extremely difficult to get into, there is going to be some strong selection effect that is going to accidentally select for some other correlated traits. As the barriers to entry dropped, more people get in, so the selection gate drops as well and you get something closer to the average human. You can see this in all sorts of niches over time. For instance, while little music niches will often blame their unique culture getting diluted on "selling out" I think it is often the case just that they attracted more people and got regressed to the mean.
Maybe I'm biased by my young age and lack of knowledge but aren't modern day hackers way more anti-social-norms (piracy, crypto, doxxing) and against "the man" (directly antagonizing big tech, E2EE proselytizing, fighting against electronic surveillance, circumventing online ID requirements) than they were back in the 70s-80s? I always imagined pre-internet hackers to be spending their nights messing around with university computers, not undermining business models of leading IT companies, but maybe I'm wrong.
For ham radio you need an exam. It's not just about the medium.
And are you really surprised the hacker community is less preoccupied with rules? :)
I don't think this is about the medium at all. One is all about rules (due to the license conditions), with the other breaking the rules is the very point.
Don't forget the radio community has this darker side too: the radio pirates. They just don't tend to be licensed because you lose it when you get caught. Though many hams started pirating in their younger years and obtained a licence later.
To be fair, HAMs are typically empowered by actual telecommunications agencies with legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues, whereas script kiddies just make up their own shit.
> HAMs are typically empowered [in their rule-following] by actual telecommunications agencies [who have] legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues
That is, hams (not "HAMs") feel empowered to advise others to obey the law, because they have to work with government agencies who can make life unpleasant for those who don't. It's not "hams [have] legislative authority".
The Radiotelecommunications Act in Canada (1), section 8, describes the powers of ISEC inspectors. They can request warrants to enter private dwellings, and if accompanied by peace officers and if permitted by the warrant, use force.
This was something that was highlighted during my amateur radio course almost 20 years ago.
That makes more sense. Although the image of some 70 year old ham battering down a door with his Zimmer frame to give a 6 hour lecture on spurious emissions is amusing.
> To be fair, HAMs are typically empowered by actual telecommunications agencies with legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues
Citation, please?
I'd really like to see a documented example of some HAM entering somebody else's premises on, what, a self-appointed search warrant to hunt down a transmitter they deem illegitimate? In the USA that seems like a good way to get shot by a homeowner.
'[the] actual telecommunications agencies [under defined circumstances have] .. legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues'
No, OFCOM in the UK or Traficom in Finland (the two I'm familiar with) don't have armed units going door to door but if circumstances & the law deem it so then they can show up with the police and the necessary warrants/orders and do so.
The FCC has authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues. The HAMs are empowered by their ability to see find transmitters, and call the tip line.
I would say that 99.9% of the time I've ever heard of fcc staff entering a location on their own without the staff around it's a licensed broadcaster. Like to visit an AM array in a field that's gone silent and not filed proper paperwork. Never in my life heard of the FCC on its own serving a warrant to search a premises. Tagging along with other law enforcement, maybe.
When it does, it often leads to prosecution, or at least reputational damage. But I can go nuts on my own LAN without affecting yours in any way. It's not possible for me to conduct wild RF experiments in my own house and not affect my neighbors.
It would be hard for me to physically interfere with an airport without having armed guards descend upon me. It would not be hard for me to build a radio that could strongly interfere with airplanes on final approach. The FCC rules that make it illegal and also bring the wrath of the feds down upon you are the sorts of regulations I actually support, along with air and water pollution controls, weight limits on trucks using taxpayer-owned highways, banning of mining in public parks, and other things that keep our shared spaces safe and usable.
NOC / BOFH is a good analogy. These people are highly technical guardians of their commons, who see each others as peers, and pull the plug / Halon drench anyone caught mucking up those commons. Hackers might build a spark gap to send Morse across campus just they might fire up nmap for a laugh to scan their buddy’s dorm connection, or run a fork bomb on the central Unix service. The Network Operstions / Operators / HAMs are the ones that find these hackers and drop one ton(ne) of bricks upon them.
The golden, underlying rule of Amateur Radio is to respect and protect the bands with which we have been trusted.
RF usage is governed by the FCC. Amateur Radio exists at the mercy of the government, and if there is widespread abuse or careless operation by amateur radio operators then that will likely jeopardize the continued existence of amateur radio.
Amateur Radio predates the FCC- so I almost think it should be the reverse, none of this at the mercy of stuff. Of course government is the real coercive force- in Germany the Nazis revoked ham licenses, racially purified radio clubs and made the amateur radio operators work for them.
At the end of the day it doesn't matter what you think, it matters what "we" think.
Most people want their phone to work and other assorted things that use wireless signals. If amateur radio people piss off the general public these things will be stripped away rather quickly.
There is absolutely zero freedom of speech on using radio signals.
Important entities doing important things is why the earliest radio regulations were passed in the first place. When it was a brand new technology and unproven, sure, let the nerds build a sparkgap and spam everything with bullshit, who cares?
By the early 1900s, governments, militaries, and large business were using it for serious purposes. You can't have randos transmitting fake orders to a Naval base or fake distress calls to the Coast Guard. Imagine if some asshole in New York was screwing around on the airwaves in his shed and the land based telegraph stations couldn't hear the chatter from the Titanic and the relay stations sending the messages on. It was always going to end up regulated.
The laws governing radio usage also prevent the Nazis from jamming their local NPR stations. A world without restrictions on radio is worse, that's pretty clear to me.
And at the end of the day people still buy baofengs and operate them at 5 watts on FRS and GMRS channels unlicensed all the time, I'm not set of any enforcement.
there are more kinds of governance than command-and-control only. I concede that some legal relationships are command-and-control. Physics itself and jurisdictions.. not sure but I think Nature bats last
I tend to find myself thinking about the self policing coming from the fact that the radio spectrum is one dimension. We all have to share that space, it's not super plentiful. Plus, ham radio is the one license that doesn't require the hardware itself to be licensed, just the person using it. It's what lets us build our own little radio transmitters in our own band without needing to get it approved first by the fcc.
On what basis do you claim that computer hackers don't generally want to be "good citizens"? I'd counter that HAM is full of people who worship bureaucracy legal compliance, which is almost the philosophical antithesis of the hacker crowd. The hobbyist drone hardware community seems to have a lot of that nonsense as well. (Granted sufficiently over the top recklessness regarding the latter actually has the possibility of killing people so at least the aviation crowd has a fig leaf in that regard.)
When I first came into the tech space, I found myself with quad copters buzzing around my workspace. I had the intention of hacking the signals around me to dissuade folks from flying around my head while sitting at my desk. After walking into a radio shop, looking for a few key items, I chatted for a few minutes with the clerk. He immediately put me into his “you’re a jammer” box and was uninterested in any further conversation. He wasn’t wrong, but it’s ironic given that I was effectively counter-jamming to get work done… and maybe have a little fun hacking at the same time. Point being: some communities have such rigid rules around what a “good citizen” encompasses that they get lost in their own world.
I find myself more on the altruistic side, despite being far closer to a “computer hacker” than a ham.
To be fair most indoor drones (tiny whoops) have ducts/guards on their props, still incredibly rude though. Personally I'd have "jammed" them with a tennis racket.
You would be breaking multiple federal laws (FCC and FAA) by jamming a drone. He wasn't interested because knowingly helping you could get his business shut down.
If you were going to be jamming quadcopters, you were likely jamming one of 900mhz, 2.4ghz, or 5ghz at the time.
Had you done that, you likely would have shut down most wifi in the nearby vacinity, including office networks, credit card machines, wifi cameras, implanted bluetooth heart monitors, baby monitors, and many other devices.
My methodology was not going to be a broad spectrum jamming device. I can see why you might hop onto that notion given my extremely abbreviated description. The signals I would have emitted would have been in line with existing analog signals… in a controlled environment. I’m not an RF guy but I’m also not ham-fisted, if you’ll excuse the pun :)
The thing is, ham and hacker are defined in entirely different ways. Hackers can refer to people doing good, ill, or morally grey things. Think of how the term applies to certain software developers, people who breach networks to steal data, or circumvent security out of technical curiosity. In contrast, a ham is a licensed radio operator. While you certainly have lids, the vast majority have some sense of being a "good citizen" by the simple merit of being licensed. Unlicensed operators fit under other terms, like pirate.
Even the scope of the terms differ. Hackers have to make or break something. Hams may do anything from rag chew to build orbital satellites. If you're more inclined to do legal stuff and aren't inclined to build something, things involving community service are going to be more appealing.
I don't see it that way. HAM is not always about being "good citizens". Just listen to the grey beards and their war stories and you will have no doubts about that.
When it comes to hacker culture it has to face different problems. I think a lot of its bad ral comes from psychological reactance and that people just hate unsolicited advice, even if it's excellent and free.
I've been to several DefCon events over the years. Ham radio is essentially ubiquitous there, even with a dedicated frequency for the event for hams (and lots of 'look-the-other-way' use during the weekend).
A lot of computer hacker types get a ham license because it’s relatively easy to do with a bit of studying. Then you have more flexibility around working with radios and also learn how to stay out of trouble. Like there’s a lot of interesting digital signal projects you can do with a raspberry pi and an sdr.
almost, but not quite ... the difference between those is that the stereotypical ham radio enthusiast is obsessed with following regulations and laws to the T. while the stereotypical hacker is all about gray zones, loop holes and questioning rules.
> There is obvious large overlap. Both are nerdy and techy and attract similar base groups. But the ham space is dominated by people who want to be "good citizens" through collective action, while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed".
I work professionally in point to point licensed microwave radio and there is very little overlap in our community of ISP/telco/network engineering people with analog ham radio enthusiasts. I don't know a single person who submits FCC coordinations and does high capacity PTP microwave who is also a "licensed" ham.
There is a bit of a disdain in serious radio work for things that operate in purely analog methods (we really only care about things that have native gigabit ethernet or better interfaces on them and can carry IP data), and the concept of not being able to use basic crypto either at the radio level or as a data payload is also anathema to professional use.
There are slightly more professional nerds doing things with meshtastic/meshcore and similar as a hobby, because messing about with small esp32 based things and similar (and specifically in the 900 MHz USA/Canada bands) in purely digital modes is closer to what we do for work. And has practical uses for low data rate SCADA/monitoring and text messaging uses.
There is also a perception that many ham radio enthusiasts who try to position themselves as some special and ultimate resource in disaster response scenarios are not really doing much useful. At a small local scale, maybe? But the people who operate county sized professional emergency communication radio networks (with real budgets from government money) serving sheriff/police/fire/ambulance response and similar also do not overlap a lot with ham radio enthusiasts. If you have the budget to build a $400,000 project of a hilltop radio tower site serving mission critical communications in your county and your main interactions are with the local sheriff's office and the local 911 PSAP, your perspective is going to be very different than the people who want to do all-analog in the clear ham radio for "disaster response".
In many modern emergency scenarios people expect to be able to communicate and share data using whatever they have on their phone or laptop as a wifi client, which means implementing portable two way satellite IP data over something like traditional VSAT, starlink, o3b, Oneweb, soon Amazon LEO, etc. It's also standard for serious disaster response vehicles operated by well funded government agencies to have something like a docked handheld Iridium phone.
The one that failed massively in performance against the local docsis3.1 and xgspon incumbent cableco and telcos in every MDU where the incumbents actually cared? Yeah, I'm very well aware of who they are.
How did they fail ? I've gotten very good performance. And they provide much better upload speeds. Maybe I just got lucky and I'm a single hop to a good underground connection. Only other option is pretty limited docsis
It honestly feels like ham radio is dying in part because of all the restrictions, like not being allowed to use encryption. Most hams don't seem to want to push back on it though.
The thing is hams shenanigans tend to impact other hams and not the general public. Every dive bar, and friend group has one asshole, but typically not two.
>while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed".
This was always a media caricature. If you go back to some of the cultural cornerstones especially when you're talking about technical work it's not that different, see Eric S. Raymond's What is a Hacker?http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
"If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are"
I blame Mitnick or random script kiddies for this image, when in fact your average hacker is a guy named Bob with an .edu address submitting kernel patches and emacs fixes
Why is eBay acting as the FCC? I can still buy lasers that will rip through your retina in the blink of a eye from eBay (lol). The equipment is completely legal to own and operate, and transmit with the proper licensing (which is not required to purchase said equipment).
I was using eBay back when you could buy/sell blackpowder rifles. A lawyer must have told them to shut that down even though it was (still is) 100% legal.
(Blackpowder rifles, etc. are not considered firearms believe it or not.)
Because these companies have large legal departments essentially in charge of minimizing regulatory and reputational risk. It's the same reason they've been progressively cracking down on firearm accessories, BB guns, knives, fireworks, laboratory chemicals, erotica, pill presses, and a bunch of other things over the past 20 years. All of that is generally legal in the US but makes lawyers and PR people queasy. It's not just marketplaces, Paypal has asinine rules on what you can and cannot pay for. So does Google Pay, Zelle, Venmo, and so on.
I don't think it's useful to point out inconsistencies; the bottom line is that lasers will be on the chopping block within our lifetime too.
You can't buy firearms parts or tooling on eBay in the UK because quite frankly if you're a gunsmith you're probably not buying stuff on eBay, and it's unlikely that anyone who isn't a qualified gunsmith is buying them for anything legit. Similarly, there are age restrictions on buying bladed items, just as there are on buying bladed items in shops. Turns out that all those 13-year-olds buying 14" butcher knives weren't actually filleting venison with them, who would have thought it?
Yer cheapy Chinese radios though? Baofengs are currently about £19 each on eBay, with a discount for quantity.
The amateur gunsmith scene in the UK is pretty small and if you're buying and selling parts and tools, you probably already know who you're buying from or selling to.
It's easier just to speak to someone, bank transfer some money over, and they'll stick it in the post.
Yeah, but you can't in the UK, because the laws are different.
You can, however, buy cheap Chinese HTs (Baofengs are less than 20 quid these days) which are illegal in the US, test equipment that's illegal in the US, and even Tonka beans which are illegal in the US (although honestly if you're buying a poisonous bean to add flavour to a dish you're better buying it from a reputable supplier - a bit like yer gun parts).
Interesting thing about gun laws in the UK vs the US too - apparently if you buy something like a tank with a really massive gun, in the UK "deactivating" it is really just a case of cutting one part off the mechanism. But if you try to ship that to the UK, you've got to basically gas axe off the entire breech and plate up both ends of the barrel, or fill it with concrete or something similar. A "deactivated" weapon in the UK is nowhere near deactivated enough for the US.
Over here, you can actually have a tank with a fully-functioning gun in private ownership. It's expensive to get the right paperwork for it, but it can be done.
I want to say something mean and sarcastic, but I will tell you that for gunsmithing eBay was (is?) very useful, at least for the gunsmiths I know. It was the best place to find a replacement 92S slide and a lot of second hand Tony Kidd parts before a rimfire carnival, but we live in the land of the free, and I don't need to get on my knees and beg for a loiscene like some people.
If someone wants a 14" blade, one can fetch some steel from a junkyard and apply an angle grinder to it. Best results with leaf springs. Then wrap one end with electrical tape and it'll chop an arm or a head off no problem. A bit more effort with the grinder and you get yourself something like a gladius.
Now, what is the point of those bans? So people feel safer while not being safer?
The specific use of the bans is to provide a law that allows the questioning of people carrying knives and the seizing of those knives from those that appear to have no legitimate reason to be waving them about in public.
Like seatbelts they're not foolproof in making people safer, but they do act as a damper on knife crime.
Eh. I don't like these bans, but I think there are at least two good-faith arguments you can make:
1. People who decide to go on murder sprees are usually not high-functioning individuals, so even modest barriers can improve outcomes.
2. Fewer weapons in homes means fewer heat-of-the-moment acts involving these weapons. For example, there are very few firearm suicides in the EU, compared to the US.
Naturally there are less suicides via firearms when firearms are verboten. Firearms may be more fatal than hanging (the most popular method in the EU), but we’re comparing a death rate of 14/100,000 to 10/100,000 which really isn’t that different (and in fact some EU countries like Hungary and Belgium outpace the US avg dramatically, Idk what is happening in Hungary but it’s comparable to our ‘Suicide Belt’). From what I read, hanging has a 70% mortality rate while firearms have a 90% rate, so when adjusted for failed attempts (since I cannot find the actual numbers of attempted suicides) we get 15.5 in USA vs 14.3 in EU per capita. As for other acts such as domestic disputes, fists are far more prevalent because the intent is rarely to kill, and all households have knives if the intent is to kill, so I’m not sure if firearms are a major factor in the actual rate of disputes.
As such, we see little raw change in human behavior. Firearms do not increase suicidal ideation nor intention, they merely provide a more fatal means to do so (although, given the health complications of a failed hanging I question whether the ethics of this outcome are truly superior). So I really don’t consider the argument that restricting a population from firearms is good just due to that, when the method of suicide is independent of the reasons for suicide.
As for #1, cars are still widely accessible, and those who go on murder sprees would have far worse chances if more people carried weapons for self-defense.
As parent stated, these bans do not meaningfully change human nature, they simply give an air of safety. In fact, I would further say they create bad habits within society that criminals can and do exploit. Do you have a meaningful way to protect yourself if you were attacked? You should, your safety is a God-given right that only you can properly defend in the heat of the moment. Does your place of residence not allow for self-defense? Then that is a flaw in governance that must be addressed.
> but we’re comparing a death rate of 14/100,000 to 10/100,000 which really isn’t that different
Its 40% more.
> As for other acts such as domestic disputes, fists are far more prevalent because the intent is rarely to kill, and all households have knives if the intent is to kill, so I’m not sure if firearms are a major factor in the actual rate of disputes.
It wouldn't be a factor in the rate of disputes, it would be a factor in a dispute that turned into deadly one as opposed to not.
> Firearms do not increase suicidal ideation nor intention, they merely provide a more fatal means to do so
They are also extremely convenient and instant.
> So I really don’t consider the argument that restricting a population from firearms is good just due to that
I don't think people are making that argument.
> As for #1, cars are still widely accessible,
Cars are only practical for killing more than a few people when there are large, condensed crowds with road access into them.
> and those who go on murder sprees would have far worse chances if more people carried weapons for self-defense.
"But armed bystanders shooting attackers was not common in the data — 22 cases out of 433. In 10 of those, the “good guy” was a security guard or an off-duty police officer."
"It was twice as common for bystanders to physically subdue the attackers, often by tackling or striking them."
> Do you have a meaningful way to protect yourself if you were attacked? You should, your safety is a God-given right that only you can properly defend in the heat of the moment.
That is not a strong argument for anyone who doesn't feel that they will be likely in a situation which requires them to kill someone for their own safety.
> If someone wants a 14" blade, one can fetch some steel from a junkyard and apply an angle grinder to it.
I'm sure that's what the average 13-year-old wannabe gangster is absolutely going to do, spend 50 quid on a budget angle grinder and traipse around scrapyards for a lorry spring.
Yeah, that makes total sense.
Is there any *legitimate* reason why a child needs to be able to buy chef's knives?
Maybe wind the misplaced sarcasm down several notches please, it's unseemly particularly as knife making is easily one of the more popular goto shop projects in high school (outside the STEM nerd and theatre kids circle, I know) and that "wannabe gangsters" even in their teens have easy access to stolen goods at a discount or often five finger their own.
UK (and Canadian, Australian, etc) weapon disposal schemes frequently land home made weapons eg: https://kk.org/streetuse/english-ownerbuilt-weapons/ from 2006 is barely a trickle of the flood that gets swept up by amnesty programs.
Why isn't a child allowed to practice cheffing on their own? Say kid in a halfway or foster facility where the place doesn't have the knives and no one will buy them for them.
What are you going to tell them? That they're allowed a boning knife that'll easily cut every artery in a human but not a chopper because ooooh those are super duper scary? That they're not allowed any "chef's knife" but the steak knives for dinner are fine?
You know the average 13-year-old wannabe gangster can shave a shank on the sidewalk just as well, right? That a perfectly-capable-of-murder-and-menace device can be manufactured from just about anything? That a common 2x4 or bat or shoestring will do? And that preventing their committing crime with a larger knife is easier to police than a smaller concealable, right?
> Why isn't a child allowed to practice cheffing on their own?
They are, they're just not allowed to go and buy chef's knives. My son is 6 and is actually pretty good at cooking - he can make pizza from scratch, but does still need his old dad to knead the dough, for now I guess, don't know how long that will last.
Can you think of anything you *wouldn't* want your teenager to just be able to go and buy without your permission? USians are pretty weird about alcohol and pornography but equally weirdly permissive about weapons, and I've never heard of anyone stabbing someone to death with a jazz mag or stabbing them with a double vodka.
What statute gives authority to the FCC to "make up rules for marketplaces"? My understanding is that they only have authority over actual broadcasting.
the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 (47 USC 154 1601 ff) is one place, among others, that Congress gave the FCC the authority to make rules about importing and selling electronics
>Such regulations shall be applicable to the manufacture, import, sale, *offer for sale*, or shipment of such devices and home electronic equipment and systems, and to the use of such devices.
If you believe the FCC or Congress misapplied the interstate commerce authority in the constitution or prior case law, then you can take this up in Federal Court after you synthesize standing by trying to list a radio for sell on ebay
this SCOTUS has expressed interest in reverting the interstate commerce authority to its pre-New Deal interpretations, which would disintegrate the administrative state of the last 100 years, so they’re just waiting for a case, if you’d like to see what small government looks like again
Because the FCC is puppeting Ebay through regulation, the author is deliberately painting this as evil large corporation because I assume
that gets more clicks, the real title would be "FCC Enacts Rule Restricting Sale of Radio Equipment, Marketplaces Like Ebay Forced to Pull Listings."
> Protecting Against National Security Threats to the Communications Supply Chain…
Yeah… a foreign adversary is totally going to be thwarted by FCC certification. The Russian's are probably just kicking themselves for buying at Walmart.
The purpose of the restriction is to keep people from using hacked baofengs to chat on bands a) they're not allowed to use unlicensed b) could potentially already be in use by another service eg EMS/fire/police.
The big problem used to be that people would buy unlocked Baofengs and accidentally use them on licensed services thinking there were generic walkie talkies. The current locked down rules prevent that. They can still get amateur handhelds and use without ham license, but hams police that. It is also easier to get FRS/GMRS handhelds for pubic use, many the same models reprogrammed.
Unlocking handhelds is less of a problem because it requires deliberate action to break the rules. There are fewer people willing and able to do that.
“buy unlocked Baofengs and accidentally use them on licensed services thinking there were generic walkie talkies” - this has never happened. Also they are not exactly easy to operate (i have one)
There are older UV-5R Baofengs that are in demand because they didn't have the software restriction that newer ones have. It's not that they're hacked, it's that they were not locked from the factory
Are newer baofengs locked down? I thought you can still just hold down 3 buttons while power cycling the radio to unlock TX from 400 to 520 MHz.
Regardless, the Quansheng UV-K5 is largely supplanting the Baofeng as the go-to entry level HT, the 3rd party firmware for that radio is pretty impressive.
Licensed US amateur operator here. In general the FCC regulations allow you to listen on whatever frequencies you like, EXCEPT the cellular frequencies (This dates back to the analog era, before cellular traffic was encrypted).
Some jurisdictions may also have restrictions on, for example, using a police scanner in a vehicle, that would restrict listening (even though most of that traffic is now also encrypted).
Don't quote me on this, but I believe there's some more nuance to the cellular band issue. What's restricted, AFAIK, isn't simply receiving traffic on those frequencies in and of itself, but:
1. Decrypting those communications if they are encrypted
and
2. Selling equipment designed to receive on those bands.
Of course there's not much purpose in sitting around listening to the digital chirping noises of encrypted traffic, but as I understand it, if that's your hobby, that part is actually legal.
(Also a licensed US ham, not not an expert in anything in particular and definitely not a lawyer)
Get ready to be surprised, because the 800Mhz band used for AMPS (1G / analog cellular) was explicitly carved off as a no-receive zone by Congress because AT&T was pissed[0] anyone could just listen in on any cellphone conversation. I'm told the law actually makes it really difficult to legally sell fully open software-defined radios (SDR), even though nobody uses analog cellular anymore, because you still have to design the SDR to be tamper-proof against attempts to receive 800Mhz.
[0] Wikipedia also mentions the existence of cloning tools that would let you copy any AMPS subscriber ID and program another phone with the same number, stealing the subscriber's account. I suspect AT&T was more angry about that.
I can't find anything supporting the notion that it's illegal to receive those frequencies IF you own hardware for doing so. What I can find, is where they made it illegal to sell such equipment[1]. But it doesn't say pre-existing equipment is banned so presumably a pre-ban scanner or radio would still be legal. But again, that's only with regards to actually receiving the signal. Listening to it, if it's a cellular call, or decrypting it if it's encrypted, would presumably be illegal under other statutes.
(d) Cellular telecommunications receivers
(1) Within 180 days after October 28, 1992, the
Commission shall prescribe and make effective
regulations denying equipment authorization
(under part 15 of title 47, Code of Federal Regulations, or any other part of that title) for any
scanning receiver that is capable of—
(A) receiving transmissions in the frequencies allocated to the domestic cellular
radio telecommunications service,
(B) readily being altered by the user to receive transmissions in such frequencies, or
(C) being equipped with decoders that convert digital cellular transmissions to analog
voice audio.
(2) Beginning 1 year after the effective date of
the regulations adopted pursuant to paragraph
(1), no receiver having the capabilities described
in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) of paragraph (1),
as such capabilities are defined in such regulations, shall be manufactured in the United States or imported for use in the United States.
That said, the law is complicated and there could be some other pertinent statute that I'm not aware of.
EDIT: OK, this gets even weirder. I haven't followed every line of this through in detail, so take this with the amount of salt you consider appropriate. But according to ChatGPT, the FCC, in this order:
effectively repealed this restriction. What makes it weird is that the statute itself is apparently still on the books, but the FCC seems to have exercised their rule-making authority to say "this no longer applies". Here's what appears to be the relevant sections:
We have identified 36 rule provisions, totaling 12,008 words and covering more than 25
pages in the Code of Federal Regulations, that no longer serve the public interest because they regulate
obsolete technology,4 are no longer used in practice by the FCC, industry, or the public,5 or are otherwise outdated or unnecessary.6 Applying the “good cause” standard discussed above, we conclude that prior notice and comment are unnecessary before repealing the rules identified in the Appendix.
and contained within one of those footnotes:
15.121 (contains provisions to protect consumers’ privacy from technology that is now obsolete);
A functioning Congress would find it absolutely laughable that you could be disallowed from receiving/listening to certain bands of electromagnetic waves, drawing an analogy to being forced to look away every time someone shines a spotlight of a particular color frequency in public. Absolutely ridiculous. Radio is not a wire and should never be treated as such. Unfortunately, we do not and may never have had a functioning Congress.
Doesn't meshtastic operate in the unlicensed bands? Would that mean they're blocked? The article says they're only blocking devices that need FCC certification and since meshtastic is unlicensed it doesn't need FCC certification as far as I know.
The band it's operating in doesn't change whether or not it needs FCC certification. wifi operating on 2.4ghz is an unlicensed band, but it still needs certification for instance.
IIRC, Meshtastic has an is_licensed / “Ham Mode” setting that changes the software's regulatory assumptions and power limits so it can be used.
Pepsi at one point had one of the worlds largest navy's so it's not actually that surprising. People buy and sell used military equipment all the time.
Lots of interesting discussion here, but let's cut to the real question:
1. Since people are still going to find a way to buy items the FCC doesn't want them to have, what's that new outlet going to be? I saw somebody mention TikTok. OK... what else? Facebook groups? Craigslist? Private old-skool phpbb forums? Usenet? Mastodon? AliExpress? Something that hasn't been invented yet?
not trying to be controversial here; but isn't it weird that you can buy semi automatic guns and there's restrictions on radio equipments bc these equipments can mess with the bandwidth used by public services - but similar arguments hold for guns as well.
Firearms are capable of being used for legal purposes, as they are in the overwhelming number of cases. A radio that transmits on a restricted frequency is illegal. The ruling doesn't say legal frequency transmitters can't be sold, just that the broker (ebay) is responsible for ensuring it's not facilitating the sale of illegal radio equipment. Ebay is the one choosing not to sell most radio equipment (even if legal), because they don't want to deal with it.
Firearms used to be widely available at big-box stores, as they were legal (and still are), provided the store prevented illegal purchases. Most box stores/locations no longer sell firearms, because they don't want to deal with it.
Short answer is that guns are in the constitution, but radios are not.
Longer answer would be that there are already systems in place to prevent transfers of firearms to and from parties that should not possess them in the US. Purchasing a gun at a sporting goods store involves filling out paperwork that can take a long time.
Buying a ham radio is as simple as going to a store that sells them and giving your call sign.
You could (depending on where you live) shoot off a gun in your backyard as long as it doesn't disrupt your neighbors. You can't key up a radio in your backyard on an band you don't have a license for without potentially disrupting someone in some other part of the world.
tangential but "military firearms" type of classification makes little sense from technical standpoints. WWI and WWII were fought with what are now considered "classical hunting style" guns, which simply was the military style at that time. The distinction came to existence in the late 40s to 60s when military rifles had their own iMac or iPhone moment and completely switched to the style of StG44 overnight.
When the US constitution was written guns were a thing, but communication was done in person or on paper. The idea of radio waves didn't even exist therefore we did not get any protections on it.
Right to bear arms wasn't in the day1 US Constitution. Got added later as an amendment. Other amendments have happened since the idea of radio waves existed but nobody has bothered with it for radio.
I see a lot of arguing over principles here in the comments, but few specifics. What kinds of items have actually disappeared from eBay since this went through? Baofengs? Meshtastic equipment? 10 meter "freeband" radios?
It might not even be that much depending on what it is. For example, Baofeng radios would have TX in bands they shouldn't have until the FCC cracked down on them coming in.
So they started selling them restricted to ham bands until the user pressed a key combo to factory reset them, which put them back to iirc 136-172.
the FCC is controlled by trump, and this is his and his co-conspiritors attempt to control the public. If you look at who sits on the board, and where they came from, it's hard to argue this is done in any kind of good faith. This is corruption in action.
What a load of bullshit. I guess you can't even buy something like a HackRF on here now? What really even qualifies as "transmit radio equipment?" Is a short wave antenna and balun going to be banned? Is a broadband amplifier going to be banned too?
There's a smell about this so close to the US election.
It sounds like someone is worried about people buying personal radios for Meshtastic or LoRa to use in case cell phone service doesn't work at protests, or there is unrest if the election results are called into question by the current political establishment that doesn't want to cede power. So they got eBay to roll over and more companies could follow.
Ordinarily I wouldn't take a conspiracy theory like this seriously. But in these times, corruption is so rampant that the most convoluted answer tends to be the right one.
The upshot is there's been an incredible reduction in the amount of utter crap listed when searching for ham radio gear. Instead of countless pages of Baofengs and all manner of accessories, I can actually find some gear.
When I first saw this shared on the ham radio email reflectors, I went to eBay to have a look. I was actually enticed to buy a radio I hadn't seen or considered prior. That posting is only visible now that the noise floor has dropped dramatically.
RIP all those human person made wideband low noise amplifier boards that cost $5. Now I'll have to buy a $50 minicircuits or whatever alternative with an FCC ID. Despite the fact that I'd only use the LNA for receive, it still could generate and amplifies RF not in the ham bands. So they'll certainly be banned. :\
eBay simply does not have employees with the domain/technical knowledge to decide which things actually require an FCC ID to be displayed. As such they'll just ban anything and everything re: RF, like the example above.
The FCC document from page 97 on has these tables full of extremely inaccurate ass-covering data pretending that >80% of all electronics sellers that might be effected by these new FCC rules are large firms (>1000 people) and that's simply not true. If they counted ebay sellers there'd be more human sellers than firms by far.
Are you sure LNAs will be an issue? Cause then they'd better ban transistors too, because they can actually be used as a power amplifier for transmitting!
The problem is that eBay employees are the judge here. Do you think they are going to have enough expert domain knowledge to know the difference? Do you think they will error on the side of banning anything RF or allow things and expose themselves to financial and legal liability?
The end result will be a ban in practice even if the meaning and spirit of the FCC regs would not. Because now eBay is the judge.
Would include mobile phones and watches - they both transmit "... RF Energy ....."
In fact lots circuits transmit RF energy - computers do it un intentionally ... just saying
That's the trivially easy part. The hard part is convincing potential buyers and sellers that most participants are legit and not trying to scam people.
No need. Hams haven't been using eBay for quite some time. We have other gear-for-sale boards that provide at least some modicum of assurance of who you're dealing with (via callsigns and semi-reliable ways to confirm someone's email).
The feeling is, if you get scammed by someone and you have their callsign, you can call them out for it on some of these ham-public forums and put them on blast. Others will be less likely to deal with the ne'er-do-well.
The sites are not at all "cutting edge" or even aesthetically pleasing. Like most of ham radio, it's functional and that's about it. Aesthetics are almost non-existent in the hobby.
eBay serves (served?) a wide, public audience. Hams don't need that wide of an audience, just a targeted audience. I'd venture to guess QRZ.com probably has the most buy/sell traffic, then older, has-been sites like eham.net and swap.qth.com catering to the old timers that don't want to follow the traffic trends that left for other sites.
The thing with ham radio is the population is quite small to begin with. The sheer number of hams is like 1% of any population no matter how you slice it. Country, state, city... and that's just those that are licensed.
How many of THOSE are interested in buying gear online or shipping gear when selling online? Not really even the majority of the small community.
THEN you further cut that down because hams are a stodgy crowd that resist change. So anything new often has a long run up for adoption. Even longer to become a known entity in the community.
Surely something else could replace QRZ.com eventually, but no time soon that I can imagine.
I'm glad to see amateur radio get a carve out at ebay, but I think this restriction on transmitting equipment is pretty pointless in the days of software defined radio.
Given that the underlying motivation here isn't merely bigcorp aggressively following regulation (in which alternative marketplaces can spring up), but rather some arbitrary diktat from the regime for which enforcement will be gradually cranked up (physical reality, logic, and Constitutional rights be damned), the real question is what the overall eventual scope is here, in other words what it makes sense for hobbyists/DIYers to stock up on before the destructionists are able to fully strangle it.
Definitely - LoRA/Meshtastic, SDR transmitters, cheap prepper radios that technically require a license to use, maybe even just cheap antennas that you could make yourself but would rather not have to?
Maybe - ESP32, nRF and other competitively-priced wifi/2.4Ghz microcontrollers/devboards if the China Bad marketing chant really ramps up here? Especially with the recent AI-facilitated reverse engineering to gain SDR-ish functionality. Might have to worry about receive-only SDRs too, since it's not like these people really know the difference.
That's what I can think of off the top of my head, but I've never been heavily into RF. Anything else?
Ah, yes, that pesky FCC for regulating a public shared frequency spectrum. Im sure everybody will just behave in a vacuum of rules and wouldnt possibly do anything bad.
It is sad how much power these market-dominating players
have, be it ebay, Apple store, Google and so forth.
You'd think that the USA would be worshipping capitalism,
but capitalism also has as one intrinsic aspect free
competition, in order to drive down prices. This is VERY
clearly broken here, by ALL these corporations. Why do
politicians ignore this? I am aware of the corruption with
the orange clown in charge, but prior politicians here also
did nothing or barely anything at all. There must be a ton
of financial kickback to these folks. They thus leech from
the common man and common woman.
There is free competition. You can put up a website advertising your items for sale for near zero cost and anyone in the world has the ability to see it. You can also list it for sale for free on Facebook marketplace, or Craigslist, or staple a paper to a utility pole near your house.
It’s much free-r than it used to be, when the paper on a pole and paying for a newspaper ad was the only option.
There is obvious large overlap. Both are nerdy and techy and attract similar base groups. But the ham space is dominated by people who want to be "good citizens" through collective action, while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed".
Perhaps it's the clearest example of "The medium is the message" concept.
Take this Hackaday article from the other day:
https://hackaday.com/2026/10/15/so-you-want-to-make-your-sdr...
The subject is mostly academic, but in 18 comments no less than 3 different people are warning about doing something against the rules. It's weird. I don't know of any other subject that provokes responses about "the rules" like this. I could understand if the article title was "How to Aim Laser Pointers at Airplanes", but attach a long enough wire to an oscillator and people start to get uppity.
On the other side of things, I don't know if you've turned on a shortwave radio recently, but the only thing I hear on mine is switch-mode power supply noise.
Also, I love hackaday for their articles but the comment section there is among the worst on the Internet. You'll find more enlightening discussions on the wall of a truckstop bathroom stall.
Some would argue it's right up there with HN ;)
Not in the budget yet for HF gear, though I do have an RTL-SDR Blog (Rx only) I need to figure out.
As a former trucker; the form of enlightenment one acquires between those walls is limited, and mostly, a dissertation on the virtues of breatharianism and kumbhaka.
One bad transmitter in your neighborhood can cut you off from the hobby. Someone who's into linux and computers can follow an online tutorial to rig together an SDR. Look at a bunch of numbers or static, shrug and move on to a different project without disconnecting that anttena breaking an entire band for all of his neighbors. Then it's on those neighbors to go build a directional antenna and buy portable radio gear and then do their own "in the field investigation" to isolate which house is doing that, then go try to explain to the random person they are polluting a band and hope the person is friendly and cooperative.
In a perfect world the FCC would do that, but getting the FCC to act on small infractions like that is a slow and long process and often goes unanswered. Especially if you're not near a marina or a federal building or an airport. So one hackaday reader can take down ham operation in an entire area because they were just interested in a weekend DIY project.
People throw that "against the law" to limit the damage. But actually getting the FCC to prosecute these issues is a challenge in itself.
Why would someone leave an SDR actively transmitting with no purpose?
The FCC's enforcement bureau is not very large or well resourced and is primarily concerned with issuing enforcement actions on licensed broadcasters. You can look at their public documents/listings of "Notes of Appparent Liability" for examples. Everyone who gets fined by the FCC is public recod.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=FCC+enfor...
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=FCC+NAL+n...
The FCC used to be a lot more active in the 40s and 50s. Especially when there was a general hysteria and fear of soviet spies. The FCC still has various monitoring station everywhere, but they only use them for huge operations rather than policing hobby bands.
Edit: ok, a reddit user said that was the reason.
Why can't those neighbors just broadcast on top of it? I'm sure an LLM could figure out a protocol that could survive.
Why are you rationalizing / defending categorically anti-social behavior?
For the younger readers: this used to be a not uncommon thing in the POTS era, "lines crossed". And it was indeed annoying, especially if it persisted after hanging up and calling again.
Why would there be? Do you get random voices on a VoIP call done over wifi (radio) or there is interference? It sounds like your protocol needs more work.
Plus keep in mind you're just broadcasting everywhere. It's like a giant lightbulb on top of your house that's super bright in all directions.
WiFi interference also totally is a thing in apartment buildings and overcrowding of the spectrum really can make your latency and throughout lower
Then make it one.
>encryption is illegal
It's not illegal and is a core part of modern radio protocols.
LOL, yes it's for most practical purposes on hobby ham bands.
If you wanna be pedantic about it, the FCC rules for ham operations doesn't mention encryption, it mentions encoding instead [0]. So yes, if you encrypt or encode without obscuring the meaning (by publishing your encoding spec or encryption keys) then yes you can "encrypt". digital mode radio works that way.
[0] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D...
Plus, the hypothetical we're discussing here is that some non-ham asshole left a spurious transmitter running. Do you think that a trunked magically protects people from interference? No.
Finally, yes, encryption is illegal to use on ham radio.
And you cannot simply switch bands, because amateur bands are very specific.
You're left with attempting some form of recoverable signal modulation which can propagate through the problem area, but it becomes akin to making ripples in a turbulent river. The ripples simply do not contain the energy to resist diffusion of the surrounding heat in the environment for any considerable length of time. We definitely have techniques for propagating multiple signals across the same frequency band, it's fundamental to modern communication, but it still comes with physical limitations.
Add to that the hall room monitor effect and also the fact that the stakes are rather high for hams (look at what happened to CB radio)
I don't know how it is in your country but where I grew up it's well-known that the cops will come knock at your door fast if you transmit at power or frequency bands you shouldn't be transmitting.
don't forget that they just banned 'content' by disallowing foreign flir on drones, which is the modern equivalent to a periscope.
they are putting enough satellites in orbit to track everyone all at once roughly.
this is over reach.
this is why i am nervous about 'small government', they're not going to give up ground and will remain 'big data'. it is a tax and a restriction on freedoms of press, of arms, of speech, of movement, of assembly, of association.
where's the redress and representation?
it is a human right to build an emergency transmitter out of barbed wire, not a data center right of way to filter process and categorize.
The spectrum is fragile. A few people being assholes can mess it up for thousands or millions of people with a few hundred bucks of equipment.
While you or me may not cause a mess, there are millions and millions of people around and eventually you hit the random number generator where people fuck things up.
I mean everything kinda is, but with RF it is very evident.
Maybe the world would be better off if we realized that most commons are like that and should be treated with more common sense
Unfortunately, it is at the same time very easy to make innocent mistakes that lead to such kinds of emissions. Say, forget (or mess up) the input filter of a PA, and at the same time mess up the output filter... and whoops, now you're blasting harmonics all over the place.
Also, when you break little rules early (like low power transmission out of band) it makes you desensitized to breaking dangerous rules later (like keeping people away from antennas being driven with high power).
Hackers were much more rebellious in former days before such laws were past. My opinion the reason why hackers got more "civilized" is that you could earn quite a lot of money by getting (and staying in) a job in big tech.
The chain of resource acquisition and information gathering necessary to arrive at a point where you need to make a long-distance phone call you could never afford was impressive in itself. Calling card fraud by a bright minor for educational purposes against a corporate entity absolutely loathed by every adult at the time just wasn't that big of a deal.
From my perspective the point of being a hacker is individual but follows observable desire paths. A lot of those have been filled in now.
For example if you started broadcasting high powered signals it wouldn't be surprising if you got checked into for being a communist/soviet.
And are you really surprised the hacker community is less preoccupied with rules? :)
I don't think this is about the medium at all. One is all about rules (due to the license conditions), with the other breaking the rules is the very point.
Don't forget the radio community has this darker side too: the radio pirates. They just don't tend to be licensed because you lose it when you get caught. Though many hams started pirating in their younger years and obtained a licence later.
> HAMs are typically empowered [in their rule-following] by actual telecommunications agencies [who have] legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues
That is, hams (not "HAMs") feel empowered to advise others to obey the law, because they have to work with government agencies who can make life unpleasant for those who don't. It's not "hams [have] legislative authority".
Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I read it.
This was something that was highlighted during my amateur radio course almost 20 years ago.
(1) https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/r-2/page-3.html#doc...
> telecommunications agencies with legislative authority to enter premises
This is real garbled. I don't know what "legislative authority" even is. The entering of premises involves an "enforcement authority", really.
Perhaps you meant that legislators have granted them the authority to do enforcement activities. That isn't "legislative authority".
Citation, please?
I'd really like to see a documented example of some HAM entering somebody else's premises on, what, a self-appointed search warrant to hunt down a transmitter they deem illegitimate? In the USA that seems like a good way to get shot by a homeowner.
'[the] actual telecommunications agencies [under defined circumstances have] .. legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues'
No, OFCOM in the UK or Traficom in Finland (the two I'm familiar with) don't have armed units going door to door but if circumstances & the law deem it so then they can show up with the police and the necessary warrants/orders and do so.
It would be hard for me to physically interfere with an airport without having armed guards descend upon me. It would not be hard for me to build a radio that could strongly interfere with airplanes on final approach. The FCC rules that make it illegal and also bring the wrath of the feds down upon you are the sorts of regulations I actually support, along with air and water pollution controls, weight limits on trucks using taxpayer-owned highways, banning of mining in public parks, and other things that keep our shared spaces safe and usable.
The golden, underlying rule of Amateur Radio is to respect and protect the bands with which we have been trusted.
Most people want their phone to work and other assorted things that use wireless signals. If amateur radio people piss off the general public these things will be stripped away rather quickly.
There is absolutely zero freedom of speech on using radio signals.
By the early 1900s, governments, militaries, and large business were using it for serious purposes. You can't have randos transmitting fake orders to a Naval base or fake distress calls to the Coast Guard. Imagine if some asshole in New York was screwing around on the airwaves in his shed and the land based telegraph stations couldn't hear the chatter from the Titanic and the relay stations sending the messages on. It was always going to end up regulated.
And at the end of the day people still buy baofengs and operate them at 5 watts on FRS and GMRS channels unlicensed all the time, I'm not set of any enforcement.
When I first came into the tech space, I found myself with quad copters buzzing around my workspace. I had the intention of hacking the signals around me to dissuade folks from flying around my head while sitting at my desk. After walking into a radio shop, looking for a few key items, I chatted for a few minutes with the clerk. He immediately put me into his “you’re a jammer” box and was uninterested in any further conversation. He wasn’t wrong, but it’s ironic given that I was effectively counter-jamming to get work done… and maybe have a little fun hacking at the same time. Point being: some communities have such rigid rules around what a “good citizen” encompasses that they get lost in their own world.
I find myself more on the altruistic side, despite being far closer to a “computer hacker” than a ham.
Had you done that, you likely would have shut down most wifi in the nearby vacinity, including office networks, credit card machines, wifi cameras, implanted bluetooth heart monitors, baby monitors, and many other devices.
It could have been an Actual Problem.
AFAICT, my larger point still stands.
RF spectrum is like a shared water supply.
Sounds like it's the same amount of spectrum consumption as the quad copter users, but for a better purpose. Are you calling them pool shitters too?
Even the scope of the terms differ. Hackers have to make or break something. Hams may do anything from rag chew to build orbital satellites. If you're more inclined to do legal stuff and aren't inclined to build something, things involving community service are going to be more appealing.
When it comes to hacker culture it has to face different problems. I think a lot of its bad ral comes from psychological reactance and that people just hate unsolicited advice, even if it's excellent and free.
2600.com took a whhile to load and gbppr does not have a valid certificate or whatever.
2600.com uses a payment processor that requires emails for crypto donations.
I work professionally in point to point licensed microwave radio and there is very little overlap in our community of ISP/telco/network engineering people with analog ham radio enthusiasts. I don't know a single person who submits FCC coordinations and does high capacity PTP microwave who is also a "licensed" ham.
There is a bit of a disdain in serious radio work for things that operate in purely analog methods (we really only care about things that have native gigabit ethernet or better interfaces on them and can carry IP data), and the concept of not being able to use basic crypto either at the radio level or as a data payload is also anathema to professional use.
There are slightly more professional nerds doing things with meshtastic/meshcore and similar as a hobby, because messing about with small esp32 based things and similar (and specifically in the 900 MHz USA/Canada bands) in purely digital modes is closer to what we do for work. And has practical uses for low data rate SCADA/monitoring and text messaging uses.
There is also a perception that many ham radio enthusiasts who try to position themselves as some special and ultimate resource in disaster response scenarios are not really doing much useful. At a small local scale, maybe? But the people who operate county sized professional emergency communication radio networks (with real budgets from government money) serving sheriff/police/fire/ambulance response and similar also do not overlap a lot with ham radio enthusiasts. If you have the budget to build a $400,000 project of a hilltop radio tower site serving mission critical communications in your county and your main interactions are with the local sheriff's office and the local 911 PSAP, your perspective is going to be very different than the people who want to do all-analog in the clear ham radio for "disaster response".
In many modern emergency scenarios people expect to be able to communicate and share data using whatever they have on their phone or laptop as a wifi client, which means implementing portable two way satellite IP data over something like traditional VSAT, starlink, o3b, Oneweb, soon Amazon LEO, etc. It's also standard for serious disaster response vehicles operated by well funded government agencies to have something like a docked handheld Iridium phone.
This is in my back yard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZjInmHsWdM
The thing is hams shenanigans tend to impact other hams and not the general public. Every dive bar, and friend group has one asshole, but typically not two.
This was always a media caricature. If you go back to some of the cultural cornerstones especially when you're talking about technical work it's not that different, see Eric S. Raymond's What is a Hacker? http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
"If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are"
I blame Mitnick or random script kiddies for this image, when in fact your average hacker is a guy named Bob with an .edu address submitting kernel patches and emacs fixes
If you do something naughty on the internet, there's a reasonable chance you won't get caught.
If you do something naughty on the radio, you will get a large fine if not prison time.
(Blackpowder rifles, etc. are not considered firearms believe it or not.)
I don't think it's useful to point out inconsistencies; the bottom line is that lasers will be on the chopping block within our lifetime too.
Yer cheapy Chinese radios though? Baofengs are currently about £19 each on eBay, with a discount for quantity.
We buy lots of stuff for our dairy/cheese plant business from eBay.
When I worked in a mechanic shop there were always parts on the way from eBay too.
It's easier just to speak to someone, bank transfer some money over, and they'll stick it in the post.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/287616828521
$30.00
You can, however, buy cheap Chinese HTs (Baofengs are less than 20 quid these days) which are illegal in the US, test equipment that's illegal in the US, and even Tonka beans which are illegal in the US (although honestly if you're buying a poisonous bean to add flavour to a dish you're better buying it from a reputable supplier - a bit like yer gun parts).
Interesting thing about gun laws in the UK vs the US too - apparently if you buy something like a tank with a really massive gun, in the UK "deactivating" it is really just a case of cutting one part off the mechanism. But if you try to ship that to the UK, you've got to basically gas axe off the entire breech and plate up both ends of the barrel, or fill it with concrete or something similar. A "deactivated" weapon in the UK is nowhere near deactivated enough for the US.
Over here, you can actually have a tank with a fully-functioning gun in private ownership. It's expensive to get the right paperwork for it, but it can be done.
I want to say something mean and sarcastic, but I will tell you that for gunsmithing eBay was (is?) very useful, at least for the gunsmiths I know. It was the best place to find a replacement 92S slide and a lot of second hand Tony Kidd parts before a rimfire carnival, but we live in the land of the free, and I don't need to get on my knees and beg for a loiscene like some people.
Now, what is the point of those bans? So people feel safer while not being safer?
Like seatbelts they're not foolproof in making people safer, but they do act as a damper on knife crime.
1. People who decide to go on murder sprees are usually not high-functioning individuals, so even modest barriers can improve outcomes.
2. Fewer weapons in homes means fewer heat-of-the-moment acts involving these weapons. For example, there are very few firearm suicides in the EU, compared to the US.
As such, we see little raw change in human behavior. Firearms do not increase suicidal ideation nor intention, they merely provide a more fatal means to do so (although, given the health complications of a failed hanging I question whether the ethics of this outcome are truly superior). So I really don’t consider the argument that restricting a population from firearms is good just due to that, when the method of suicide is independent of the reasons for suicide.
As for #1, cars are still widely accessible, and those who go on murder sprees would have far worse chances if more people carried weapons for self-defense.
As parent stated, these bans do not meaningfully change human nature, they simply give an air of safety. In fact, I would further say they create bad habits within society that criminals can and do exploit. Do you have a meaningful way to protect yourself if you were attacked? You should, your safety is a God-given right that only you can properly defend in the heat of the moment. Does your place of residence not allow for self-defense? Then that is a flaw in governance that must be addressed.
Its 40% more.
> As for other acts such as domestic disputes, fists are far more prevalent because the intent is rarely to kill, and all households have knives if the intent is to kill, so I’m not sure if firearms are a major factor in the actual rate of disputes.
It wouldn't be a factor in the rate of disputes, it would be a factor in a dispute that turned into deadly one as opposed to not.
> Firearms do not increase suicidal ideation nor intention, they merely provide a more fatal means to do so
They are also extremely convenient and instant.
> So I really don’t consider the argument that restricting a population from firearms is good just due to that
I don't think people are making that argument.
> As for #1, cars are still widely accessible,
Cars are only practical for killing more than a few people when there are large, condensed crowds with road access into them.
> and those who go on murder sprees would have far worse chances if more people carried weapons for self-defense.
"But armed bystanders shooting attackers was not common in the data — 22 cases out of 433. In 10 of those, the “good guy” was a security guard or an off-duty police officer."
"It was twice as common for bystanders to physically subdue the attackers, often by tackling or striking them."
- https://portside.org/node/28842/printable/print
> Do you have a meaningful way to protect yourself if you were attacked? You should, your safety is a God-given right that only you can properly defend in the heat of the moment.
That is not a strong argument for anyone who doesn't feel that they will be likely in a situation which requires them to kill someone for their own safety.
I'm sure that's what the average 13-year-old wannabe gangster is absolutely going to do, spend 50 quid on a budget angle grinder and traipse around scrapyards for a lorry spring.
Yeah, that makes total sense.
Is there any *legitimate* reason why a child needs to be able to buy chef's knives?
UK (and Canadian, Australian, etc) weapon disposal schemes frequently land home made weapons eg: https://kk.org/streetuse/english-ownerbuilt-weapons/ from 2006 is barely a trickle of the flood that gets swept up by amnesty programs.
What are you going to tell them? That they're allowed a boning knife that'll easily cut every artery in a human but not a chopper because ooooh those are super duper scary? That they're not allowed any "chef's knife" but the steak knives for dinner are fine?
You know the average 13-year-old wannabe gangster can shave a shank on the sidewalk just as well, right? That a perfectly-capable-of-murder-and-menace device can be manufactured from just about anything? That a common 2x4 or bat or shoestring will do? And that preventing their committing crime with a larger knife is easier to police than a smaller concealable, right?
They are, they're just not allowed to go and buy chef's knives. My son is 6 and is actually pretty good at cooking - he can make pizza from scratch, but does still need his old dad to knead the dough, for now I guess, don't know how long that will last.
Can you think of anything you *wouldn't* want your teenager to just be able to go and buy without your permission? USians are pretty weird about alcohol and pornography but equally weirdly permissive about weapons, and I've never heard of anyone stabbing someone to death with a jazz mag or stabbing them with a double vodka.
I can think of plenty, but I don't understand how "big knife" is worse than "medium size knife".
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/302a
https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-rules-strengthen-rul...
If you believe the FCC or Congress misapplied the interstate commerce authority in the constitution or prior case law, then you can take this up in Federal Court after you synthesize standing by trying to list a radio for sell on ebay
this SCOTUS has expressed interest in reverting the interstate commerce authority to its pre-New Deal interpretations, which would disintegrate the administrative state of the last 100 years, so they’re just waiting for a case, if you’d like to see what small government looks like again
https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-rules-strengthen-rul...
> Protecting Against National Security Threats to the Communications Supply Chain…
Yeah… a foreign adversary is totally going to be thwarted by FCC certification. The Russian's are probably just kicking themselves for buying at Walmart.
If they’re pushing eBay not to allow the sale of devices which allow transmitting on illegal bands, is that really puppeting?
Or is that just saying “stop helping people do illegal shit or we’re going to have to start investigating you”?
Unlocking handhelds is less of a problem because it requires deliberate action to break the rules. There are fewer people willing and able to do that.
Regardless, the Quansheng UV-K5 is largely supplanting the Baofeng as the go-to entry level HT, the 3rd party firmware for that radio is pretty impressive.
Are modern varieties truly locked or just “locked ;)” ?
1. Decrypting those communications if they are encrypted
and
2. Selling equipment designed to receive on those bands.
Of course there's not much purpose in sitting around listening to the digital chirping noises of encrypted traffic, but as I understand it, if that's your hobby, that part is actually legal.
(Also a licensed US ham, not not an expert in anything in particular and definitely not a lawyer)
[0] Wikipedia also mentions the existence of cloning tools that would let you copy any AMPS subscriber ID and program another phone with the same number, stealing the subscriber's account. I suspect AT&T was more angry about that.
(d) Cellular telecommunications receivers (1) Within 180 days after October 28, 1992, the Commission shall prescribe and make effective regulations denying equipment authorization (under part 15 of title 47, Code of Federal Regulations, or any other part of that title) for any scanning receiver that is capable of— (A) receiving transmissions in the frequencies allocated to the domestic cellular radio telecommunications service, (B) readily being altered by the user to receive transmissions in such frequencies, or (C) being equipped with decoders that convert digital cellular transmissions to analog voice audio. (2) Beginning 1 year after the effective date of the regulations adopted pursuant to paragraph (1), no receiver having the capabilities described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) of paragraph (1), as such capabilities are defined in such regulations, shall be manufactured in the United States or imported for use in the United States.
That said, the law is complicated and there could be some other pertinent statute that I'm not aware of.
EDIT: OK, this gets even weirder. I haven't followed every line of this through in detail, so take this with the amount of salt you consider appropriate. But according to ChatGPT, the FCC, in this order:
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-85A1.pdf?utm_...
effectively repealed this restriction. What makes it weird is that the statute itself is apparently still on the books, but the FCC seems to have exercised their rule-making authority to say "this no longer applies". Here's what appears to be the relevant sections:
We have identified 36 rule provisions, totaling 12,008 words and covering more than 25 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations, that no longer serve the public interest because they regulate obsolete technology,4 are no longer used in practice by the FCC, industry, or the public,5 or are otherwise outdated or unnecessary.6 Applying the “good cause” standard discussed above, we conclude that prior notice and comment are unnecessary before repealing the rules identified in the Appendix.
and contained within one of those footnotes:
15.121 (contains provisions to protect consumers’ privacy from technology that is now obsolete);
[1]: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2004-title47/pdf/...
https://meshtastic.org/docs/legal/
IIRC, Meshtastic has an is_licensed / “Ham Mode” setting that changes the software's regulatory assumptions and power limits so it can be used.
And also for some reason explicitly lists „military aircraft and ships“. Which surely should be allowed just for the comedic value.
https://tankandafvnews.com/tag/sherman-tank-for-sale/
But my memory is hazy from time and limited direct interest.
1. Since people are still going to find a way to buy items the FCC doesn't want them to have, what's that new outlet going to be? I saw somebody mention TikTok. OK... what else? Facebook groups? Craigslist? Private old-skool phpbb forums? Usenet? Mastodon? AliExpress? Something that hasn't been invented yet?
Deplorable for consumers, but why have circular economies when you can increase your foreign dependencies?
Firearms are capable of being used for legal purposes, as they are in the overwhelming number of cases. A radio that transmits on a restricted frequency is illegal. The ruling doesn't say legal frequency transmitters can't be sold, just that the broker (ebay) is responsible for ensuring it's not facilitating the sale of illegal radio equipment. Ebay is the one choosing not to sell most radio equipment (even if legal), because they don't want to deal with it.
Firearms used to be widely available at big-box stores, as they were legal (and still are), provided the store prevented illegal purchases. Most box stores/locations no longer sell firearms, because they don't want to deal with it.
Longer answer would be that there are already systems in place to prevent transfers of firearms to and from parties that should not possess them in the US. Purchasing a gun at a sporting goods store involves filling out paperwork that can take a long time.
Buying a ham radio is as simple as going to a store that sells them and giving your call sign.
You could (depending on where you live) shoot off a gun in your backyard as long as it doesn't disrupt your neighbors. You can't key up a radio in your backyard on an band you don't have a license for without potentially disrupting someone in some other part of the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Cons...
> new policy will not apply to gear that operates exclusively on amateur radio frequencies
So almost everything is getting banned, at least the existing hardware.
I believe the FCC ban doesn't apply to used gear but seems like eBay is taking a harder stance.
Thanks!
(English is not my first language)
73
Also frankly the effort is kinda wasted, "breaching" on other bands was never hard and with availability of cheap SDRs, easier than ever.
So they started selling them restricted to ham bands until the user pressed a key combo to factory reset them, which put them back to iirc 136-172.
Edit: as another commenter pointed out devices with an FCC ID will be fine (for now) which I assume covers these. And you can always DIY a frequency converter: https://hackaday.com/2026/10/15/so-you-want-to-make-your-sdr...
It sounds like someone is worried about people buying personal radios for Meshtastic or LoRa to use in case cell phone service doesn't work at protests, or there is unrest if the election results are called into question by the current political establishment that doesn't want to cede power. So they got eBay to roll over and more companies could follow.
Ordinarily I wouldn't take a conspiracy theory like this seriously. But in these times, corruption is so rampant that the most convoluted answer tends to be the right one.
When I first saw this shared on the ham radio email reflectors, I went to eBay to have a look. I was actually enticed to buy a radio I hadn't seen or considered prior. That posting is only visible now that the noise floor has dropped dramatically.
eBay simply does not have employees with the domain/technical knowledge to decide which things actually require an FCC ID to be displayed. As such they'll just ban anything and everything re: RF, like the example above.
The FCC document from page 97 on has these tables full of extremely inaccurate ass-covering data pretending that >80% of all electronics sellers that might be effected by these new FCC rules are large firms (>1000 people) and that's simply not true. If they counted ebay sellers there'd be more human sellers than firms by far.
The end result will be a ban in practice even if the meaning and spirit of the FCC regs would not. Because now eBay is the judge.
The sites are not at all "cutting edge" or even aesthetically pleasing. Like most of ham radio, it's functional and that's about it. Aesthetics are almost non-existent in the hobby.
eBay serves (served?) a wide, public audience. Hams don't need that wide of an audience, just a targeted audience. I'd venture to guess QRZ.com probably has the most buy/sell traffic, then older, has-been sites like eham.net and swap.qth.com catering to the old timers that don't want to follow the traffic trends that left for other sites.
The thing with ham radio is the population is quite small to begin with. The sheer number of hams is like 1% of any population no matter how you slice it. Country, state, city... and that's just those that are licensed. How many of THOSE are interested in buying gear online or shipping gear when selling online? Not really even the majority of the small community. THEN you further cut that down because hams are a stodgy crowd that resist change. So anything new often has a long run up for adoption. Even longer to become a known entity in the community.
Surely something else could replace QRZ.com eventually, but no time soon that I can imagine.
Definitely - LoRA/Meshtastic, SDR transmitters, cheap prepper radios that technically require a license to use, maybe even just cheap antennas that you could make yourself but would rather not have to?
Maybe - ESP32, nRF and other competitively-priced wifi/2.4Ghz microcontrollers/devboards if the China Bad marketing chant really ramps up here? Especially with the recent AI-facilitated reverse engineering to gain SDR-ish functionality. Might have to worry about receive-only SDRs too, since it's not like these people really know the difference.
That's what I can think of off the top of my head, but I've never been heavily into RF. Anything else?
It seems to work okay over here in the UK.
*Maaaaybe* if you start keying up and talking over VHF channel 16, you'd get someone from Ofcom out.
Someone buying a couple of cheap Baofengs and accidentally stepping all over the local shopping centre's security guard radios? Not a chance.
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/amazon-uk-now-requires-p...
You'd think that the USA would be worshipping capitalism, but capitalism also has as one intrinsic aspect free competition, in order to drive down prices. This is VERY clearly broken here, by ALL these corporations. Why do politicians ignore this? I am aware of the corruption with the orange clown in charge, but prior politicians here also did nothing or barely anything at all. There must be a ton of financial kickback to these folks. They thus leech from the common man and common woman.
It’s much free-r than it used to be, when the paper on a pole and paying for a newspaper ad was the only option.