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- ZCZC AG73
- QST de W1AW
- ARRL Bulletin 32 ARLB032
- From ARRL Headquarters
- Newington CT March 23, 1993
- To all radio amateurs
-
- SB QST ARL ARLB032
- ARLB032 ARLB030 revision/update
-
- Message content proposal
-
- The FCC has proposed to change the responsibility for the content of
- amateur messages relayed by high-speed networks.
-
- On March 22, 1993, the Commission announced action in Docket 93-85,
- in Notice of Proposed Rule Making 93-154, proposing to establish ''a
- compliance policy for amateur stations participating in automatic
- message forwarding systems, to hold the licensee of the station
- originating a message and the licensee of the first forwarding
- station primarily accountable for violative communications.
-
- ''Under this approach,'' the FCC said, ''licensees of stations that
- only retransmit messages within a high speed message forwarding
- system would not be held accountable for communications they forward
- or their stations retransmit unwittingly.
-
- ''Under the current rules,'' the FCC said, ''each amateur licensee is
- fully responsible for assuring that the contents of every
- transmission from his or her station complies with the rules. This
- requirement was not a burden when licensees sent each message
- manually. With the availablilty of digital technology, however,
- some licensees have tied their stations together into high volume,
- high speed message forwarding systems. The stations are configured
- so that each message is instantly retransmitted to its destination
- through a series of stations.
-
- ''Because message screening is difficult with these automatic systems
- and because screening at each station in these systems diminishes
- the advantage of high speed, the Commission proposed holding
- accountable only the licensee of the originating station and the
- licensee of the first station in a high speed message forwarding
- system.''
- NNNN
- /EX