"I Am Not George" wrote in message
m...
[SNIP]


Although not much happens often, in Australia the relevant
Act not only makes it illegal to operate an unlicensed transceiver,
but also illegal
to possess it AND to sell it to someone not authorised to own it..

Leaves the gate wide open for all those stores that sell gear to
anyone
without a care, and is also a reason why most Australian amateurs
will not sell equipment to an unlicensed person unless they will
soon be licensed...

I know of several cases in Australia where the smart
arse 'freebanders' have
lost their precious amateur equipment, plus been
handed a nice little fine

as well... eventually it hurts the hip pocket I guess. Maybe
they should realise that nobody is anonymous on the
internet to the government anymore.

The first sign of their freebanding causing problems, I'm
sure the FCC/ACA/whoever will find them rather quickly
and their precious equipment
that they have forked out so much hard earned welfare
money for will end up
at a government auction! (although it is still illegal those
that don't draw attention to themselves and operate sensibly,
staying away from other
allocated frequencies, tend to go un-noticed much,
much longer!)

Just because they haven't had the knock on the door yet
doesn't mean they
aren't on tape back at the FCC/ACA/whoever with a nice
little resume
building up!! They don't always jump in and take immediate
action - they may sit back for years and just listen and
take notes - which is probably
worse because when they do decide to jump they probably
have 100 times more
against you than they would've in the first instance!!!

They should also realise that (in Australia anyway) the
MILITARY have allocations in the portions between CB
channel 40 and the 27MHz marine
band - I'm sure in the worlds current state of mind
interference to military communications may invoke
some consequences that we have never seen before
especially for all those USA residents out there that
now have all those
extra wonderful laws to deal with terrorists!!!

freebanders in rec.radio.Cb like twistedhed and mopedholic have lots
of excuses but #1 is they say they just dont care and being free to
bootleg is more important than military needs. Twisty has said several
times the military doesnt use those frequencies even though they are
listed as military.

And I suppose 'Twisty' would know exactly what the Military are up to at any
given point in time!!!

Like any other criminal, they will continue to sprout crap right up until
the day they are caught out, which usually happens to the most moronic and
audible first. There's little point arguing with these type of clowns -
they have very little between the ears and fail to comprehend the most basic
of concepts. They don't use the frequencies because they are serious or
knowledgeable, they do so because it is illegal and they don't have the
balls or brains to do anything else other than hide behind a microphone and
keyboard and sound big and tough.... Shame that it takes all but a few
minutes for law enforcement agencies to trace someone, both on air and via
the internet....

Unfortunately for them (and others), all their excuses will mean sweet stuff
all in the courts - and their obvious lack of intelligence and technical
capabilities means they really wouldn't have the faintest idea who or what
they could be interfering with. Frequency allocations exist for a reason -
to avoid interfering with other users, services or even countries.

I can sympathise with the serious operators that operate out-of-band to
experiment, etc. After all, I don't think there are many amateur operators
that didn't start on CB, and a lot will have operated on those out-of-band
frequencies in their time. The big difference is that they had the common
sense not to announce to the entire world what they were doing, and they
also had the intelligence and motivation to get off their arse and learn
what they needed to know to advance and be able to experiment, legally, with
frequencies and modes that these freebander clowns can only dream about...

Just because a frequency sounds clear, doesn't mean it's not being used.....