First, thank you for posting this. I am not criticizing
anyone on this list but this article has a certain familiar smell
to it.

	I call stories like this and others Chicken Little
stories. Remember Chicken Little who got bonked on the noggin with
a falling nut or acorn and ran through the streets screaming that
the sky is falling.

	Remember the modem tax scare of years ago and other
similar conspiracy stories that basically said that the party is
over and now terrible things are about to happen.

	This story sounds like a Chicken Little event for a
couple of reasons. Firstly, the article only says that the FCC is
considering a proposal to lock down all the stuff we use to
communicate with. Probably some yo-yo in an expensive suit
working for a large business interest had a team of lawyers write
up a proposal and submit it to the FCC. When this happens and the
submission passes the physical rules such as number of copies and
the physical format of the document, it has to be heard/read even
if it is a stupid idea. That's how America works.

	If you run a huge company or work for 1 and have deep
pockets, they listen to you longer than they might listen to the
average Joe or Jane but eventually, the FCC must put the proposal
out for public comment.

	They are looking for thoughtful discussion so emails in
all caps with half the words misspelled and maybe a period at the
end of the last sentence are not given much weight.

	So what is a SDR? It's a computer program that runs on a
DSP or Digital Signal Processor. A digital signal processor is
similar to the CPU's in your computer except it is usually built
for speed so that it can process video, audio and images as fast
as possible.

	The CPU in your computer could be a SDR if you fed it the
right program. It might not run as fast as a dedicated DSP chip
set, but it could do all the math and spit out numbers just like
the dedicated DSP's do, just not as efficiently.

	What will probably happen is that after a lot of discussion,
the FCC may decide to do nothing because there is no way to
enforce any kind of lock-down without interfering with
legitimate design interests.

	I doubt that GNU Linux or any other operating system will
be crippled simply because the howl and cries of "foul!" would
be ever present.

	There have been previous odious proposals before the FCC
or other agencies that were backed by business interests with
lots of dough and still fell flat.

	Several years ago, the recording industry spent lots of
money trying to foist some technology on to us that would thwart
copying of audio. It was sophisticated for it's day and placed
notches in the audio spectrum at around 4 KHZ. A
copyright-compliant audio recorder would have detected these
notches and refused to record or maybe would have produced a
mangled recording that was unusable.

	There were double-blind scientific tests in which
subjects listened to music that sometimes had been doctored with
the copy-prevention technology and other times was okay and had
not been de-horned, so to speak.

	The whole plan was scrapped when the test subjects could
hear an audible reduction in sound quality on the doctored
recordings.

	I doubt that much bad is going to happen here but you
never know.

Again, thanks for posting the article and links. Just remember to
make your comments intelligent and not a rant. They really can't
do much with a rant unless you have a good idea, anyway. Nobody
here is ranting except possibly me, but if you do want to
perticipate, be nice and logical.

Martin WB5AGZ

Ron Canazzi <[log in to unmask]> writes:
> Hi Group,
> 
> Here is the link so it works without the equal signs prevalent on this 
> list.
> http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2015/august/fcc_proposes_ban_on_sdr_radios_and_more.htm#.VeN4mJcnqzL
> 
> Here is the text of the full article on it's originating website.
> https://libreplanet.org/