Re: Packet radio and foul language
Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> FWIW, there's no such restriction in the Australian regulations,
> as far as I can see.
I concur, that's generally correct. The ACA has relaxed the profane
language requirements somewhat since they were tested in court (by a
commercial broadcast radio operator) some time back.. my recollection is
that a judge declared some of the most profane of words to be in common
use and therefore unreasonable to prohibit.
> I would say that it's up to the packet radio gateway to edit/discard
> posts that don't meet the regulations, since their requirements are
> stricter than the Internet's.
In Australia it has always been the case that the responsibility for
traffic transmitted by an amateur station lies with the operator of the
transmitting station, not with the original source of the content.
I operated an Internet/packet radio gateway in Australia for many years
and we became finely tuned to the sensibilities of the legal
requirements balanced against a sense of the reasonable.
In my opinion given the mixed legal requirements the appropriate action
is people to decide on an individual basis whether to gateway internet
mailing lists over radio or not. I believe that, generally, it is
unreasonable to have a majority constrained by the requirements of a
minority.
regards
Terry
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