------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 09:21:23 -0500 From: bigsteve@DORSAI.DORSAI.ORG(Steve Coletti) Subject: File 2--Canadian BBS licensing, Errors in the CRTC/FCC comparison In his response to Lord Qorthon, (CuD 6.15/6.17), John Stephenson made some comparisons, albeit that Qorthon did first, between the CRTC and the FCC and their respective policies. By comparing rumored CRTC regulation of BBS's to the CRTC's mandate over broadcasting, Qorthon made the common mistake of most uninformed people. > > Consider the example of radio in the 40's and 50's. Before the > >CRTC was formed, anyone could broadcast radio signals legally from their > >home on any bandwidth. Fearing obscenity and extreme access to > >information, the CRTC was formed to sell licenses to broadcasters. > >Without such a license, you could be prosecuted for broadcasting. What is unfortunate is that while the "standards" for broadcasting may attempt to regulate morality, the division of the regulatory body that issues those rules is a separate entity from the one that regulates the wire/fiber based telecommunications industry. Each set their own rules and penalties. While it may be illegal to "broadcast" something indecent, there is nothing stopping you from being a foul mouth over a private telephone conversation, analog or data, in either country's regulations. Stephenson's attempt to correct only complicated matters due to some factual errors. > When I see this kind of history thrown out as "reality", it bothers me a > great deal. Government regulation of broadcasting existed from nearly the > beginning of the sector in Canada. The CBC and CRTC were formed not to stop > "obscenity and extreme access to information" but American commercial radio > control of Canadian airwaves. It was not the case that "anyone could > broadcast radio signals legally from their home on any bandwidth (sic)" - > even in the 1920s, the Fisheries Dept. was giving put licences. Not entirely true, the CBC was there long before the CRTC, it was modeled after the BBC. Up until the late 1960's, Canada allowed foreign ownership of it's broadcast stations via Canadian subsidiary companies, something the US did not allow, and still doesn't. If Canada had wanted to stop American ownership, Ottawa could have passed legislation earlier. If anything, the US was fed up with Americans who it deemed unfit to hold broadcast licenses that were going to Mexican border stations and buying large blocks of airtime to transmit their "snake oil" ads. The FCC was also after RKO General, Inc., due to foreign anti-trust violations of it's parent company, then known as General Tire. RKO General owned Canadian border station CKLW in Windsor, Ont. which was heard throughout the Northeastern US. BTW, it took 20 years, but the FCC got RKO and Gencorp out of the broadcasting business. It's more likely that Canada stopped foreign ownership and insisted on mostly Canadian content due to pressure from the US, (or fear of getting the same kind of pressure Mexico was getting), and not the other way around. As for the licensing, that too is in error. As radio's first application was to communicate to ships at sea, it is likely that Fisheries did issue Canada's first radio licenses, as the Department of Commerce did in the US in those early days. However, borrowing the idea again from England, Canadian radio licenses were subsequently issued by the Canadian post office up until the CRTC was formed. > > If licensing comes into affect, we will LOSE this access. Not only > >will the pirate boards be hunted down and exterminated, but all > >currently LEGAL PUBLIC DOMAIN BBS's will also be made illegal unless > >they can afford a license. [stuff deleted] > > We don't yet know what the proposed licensing fee will be, but it > >could anywhere in the area of $300-$5,000. This could also depend on > >the size of the BBS. > > Licence fee for a non-profit radio station is $25 dollars a year. > Commercial stations pay a very small percent of their profit as the fee. > I'm not in favour of licensing, but $25? In the US, all DJs (commercial or > non-commercial, it doesn't matter) need an FCC licence to be on the air. > Now that is restrictive. Two more assumption that are wrong. Qorthon assumes that BBS's licenses will be parallel to commercial broadcast fees, while Stephenson says it's more like public radio license fees. Again I must state, the COMMON CARRIER division and the PRIVATE RADIO division are separate departments. Each one will determine it's own fees. For the most part, Canadian licenses are much cheaper than in the US, but the "restrictive" policy of requiring everyone in US radio to have a license is a crock. Only those persons who have to monitor or control the transmitter needs some sort of certification. You no longer need a license to read the meters or turn the transmitter off in an emergency, or on if the Chief Engineer tells you to. This is done by a permit. You fill out the form, the C.E. signs it, you mail it to the FCC with a processing fee, ($5.00?), and you are a flunky. You can bet most of your famous on air personalities and not allowed near a transmitter and therefore don't need a license or operator permit. > > Before I go into my plan of action, I want to tell you that if > >licensing comes into effect, if will be basically impossible to beat the > >system. All pirate radio stations in North America have been crushed by > >the government in a matter of months. Imagine how easy it will be to > >crush pirate bulletin board systems (and by that I simply mean BBS's > >without a license) with traceable phone numbers. Oh, don't make me gag with that Pirate Radio comparison schlock! As a former pirate I'll tell you that the stations that get busted do it too often, too long at any one stint, run too much power, or act like idiots on the air and ask for it. I know pirates who have been on the air for years without any problem, and others who over did it that got creamed in a few weeks. There was a pirate who lasted 5 days on the air, he made the mistake of setting up a few blocks from the FCC's local field office. I even know a former pirate who also was once a hacker, he's now working for a real radio station and is setting up their computer system in addition to his management duties. > It's hard for me to argue that folks running pirate boards shouldn't get > busted. While I don't agree with many aspects of our wonderful econimic > system, I don't think the way to reform it is through establishing pirate > bulliten boards. The software business is tough enough. I'm in total agreement with that, however this was in reply to Qorthon's statement that all unlicensed BBS's would be considered pirates. IMHO, I don't want to see any regulation of BBS's, but if it were to come about, it should be done in two ways. Commercial tech support BBS's and information providers would pay some sort of fee, they are using the BBS to make money. However private, hobby and non profit operations should be allowed to exist with a no, or minimal fee structure. I would hope that because of the waver of a fee, a reciprocity of free, or strictly voluntary payment, service would be required, at least for the basic service. Restrictions based on costs would be placed on the SYSOP's ability to charge for value added services. I would like to see the majority of any commercial fees be used to fund some sort of "Information Superhighway" provider that would exclusively serve the "little guy" and keep his costs down. Also some sort of national database of copyrighted software would be nice so System Administrators and SYSOP's can keep their BBS's clean. While I would not like to see it, some form of reporting that a user uploaded copyrighted material might also get put through by the lawmakers, (can you say George Orwell?), and that is something we should make sure doesn't come up. Ok, I wont be naive and say that all the collected fees are going to be channeled back in, after all how much of road, bridge and tunnel tolls are diverted to mass transit, some help to equalize access is going to be needed once the telco's and cableco's take control of the Internet's successor. Instead of having anxiety attacks the next time a BBS's regulation fee is proposed or rumored, we should all begin to think that it will be inevitable and how we would like the money to be spent. Before the commercial users try to legislate the local BBS out of business, just like the cell phone industry made it illegal for radio scanners to tune in the cellular band, we might want to beat them to the punch and have some sort of self perpetuating small BBS support system in place they can't stop. Maybe regulation is a good thing, if we can do it right. =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ + END THIS FILE + +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+===+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=