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From: ron@brl-vgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.legal
Subject: Re: Use of broadcast material
Message-ID: <2825@brl-vgr.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 24-Mar-84 13:15:53 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-vgr.2825
Posted: Sat Mar 24 13:15:53 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Mar-84 13:24:11 EST
References: <2628@azure.UUCP>
Organization: Ballistics Research Lab
Lines: 41

OK, it's time for my freedom of the airwaves soapbox.  Your rights
as laid forth in the Communications Act of 1934 and have been upheld
(with minor exceptions) ever since is that you may listen (view) any
radio broadcast as long as you do not relay what you heard to a third
party.  This means you can sit with your shortwave and listen to the
world, eavesdrop on mobile telephones, pull in the emissions of a
satelite.  I further extrapolate that I can record these and make
as many copies as I want, as long as I don't give/play them to someone
else.  This is the limit of the clear cut guidelines.  As soon as you
take the music you heard on the air, and play it for someone else you
become subject to the copyright, licensing, and marketing laws because
you are no longer listening to radio broadcasts.

I feel that we must fight to prevent this "freedom of listening" from
being legislated away from us.  There have been several major attempts
that threaten this freedom.

1.  The record/video industry has been trying all kinds of methods to
prevent people from making use of recordings of broadcasts, even when
they conform to the restrictions of my first paragraph.

2.  The video organizations have been using some threatening and possibly
illegal tactics to keep people from making personal use of satellite and
microwave pay-tv transmissions.  In Denver a few years back, a firm was
selling HBO receivers (much of Denver did not yet have cable so if you
bought the service you were loaned a little microwave antenna and frequency
mixer to shift the signal down to an unused VHF channel).  They were shutdown
(this I have less problem with because licensing of the production and sale
of radio equipment is regulated and they probably were operating illegally).
The irritating part is that the company was required to give as part of the
settlement a list of the people who they had sold them to.  The HBO affiliate
them went around telling people that they had illegal HBO hookups (partly
true, illegal to buy-maybe, illegal to use-NO!) and harassing them into paying
for HBO service (they graciously volunteered to wave the installation charge).
My advice was to say, get lost to them, and it worked fairly well.

Conclusion:  We need some large court decision or perhaps congressional
action to reaffirm that it is the right of a citizen to receive whatever
radio signals he may choose.

=Ron