wa263@sdccs7.UUCP (bookmark) (08/05/84)
<- bug snack I can remember reading catalogs that offered microwave dishes, amplifiers, and frequency converters for sale, proudly announcing their eminent suitability for intercepting and using signals from local CATV/cable operators' distribution networks. These weren't satellite dishes, just little (1-2 foot) antennae. I thought that was pretty clever at the time, and still do. All of these new (and evil) laws restricting receivers should be abolished. It used to be that one could *receive* any signal that happened by. The law protected the contents of the signal if they were private or personal, but not the signal itself. Narrowcast material, whether private or part of a common carrier's service, was only protected from *re-distribution* -- anybody who heard it (through their receiver) in real time (as it came by over the ether) was not a lawbreaker. (You had to be in the same room as the radio, listening as the message came across.) (This discussion of audio is applicable to television, too.) When radar detectors got popular a few years ago, some States tried to enact laws against their use. They were usually struck down by Federal preemption (Comm. Act of '19, `34, et seq.) because *receivers* couldn't be outlawed. I think these new state laws forbidding the ownership of unauthorized pay-TV decoders *ought* to be struck down too. Any laws that regulate receivers *unavoidably* require the violation of privacy and protections against search and seizure. This is because receivers are *quiet*. They emit nothing, so to find them, you have to go looking, and tear apart peoples' houses to find their illicit circuitry. Or else, maybe, you have to use informers. This stinks. Better to leave recievers unregulated. Nobody used to worry about interception, because the equipment required was beyond most people's means and technical ability. Radio communicators used to pay a lot, by the standards of the time, to purchase the ability (equipment and engineers) to use radio. Now that times have changed, they want to avoid the new investment that technological advance usually demands. Instead of going to encryption for protection, they want laws (and demand their expensive enforcement) to punish people who receive their signals. It's the same as the non-competitive auto industry demanding car embargoes (or high tarriffs) against Japan. The firms that use the airwaves and want privacy should encrypt their signals. If pirates build their own decryption devices, then the transmittors can get better ciphers. The technology already exists to encipher the signal so well that almost no pirate could cryptanalyze it. I do think that a law against re-distribution of intercepted signals should be enforced. No one should be permitted to videotape movies off of satellite signals, duplicate the tapes, and then sell or give them away. But, if people want to invest in the gear necessary to watch or listen to *any* goddam signal while it's passing through, they should be able to do so. bookmark