It's illegal to transmit music

True, for obvious reasons

it's illegal to transmit anything encrypted unless you're controlling a satellite

True, it helps to ensure nothing illegal is going on and enforce keeping commercial interests out. It's a self regulating space, one of the only cases I know of that tends to work due to there being no monetary interests allowed. The point is to communicate information, not hide it.

it's illegal to transmit anything for commercial purposes.

True, the whole point is to keep commercial interests out. That's what "amateur" means.

illegal to transmit anything on a regular basis that could reasonably be communicated some other way.

False. This is for something like a non-profit wanting to use radios for their operations, they should be steered toward another service like gmrs, FRS, murs, etc. instead of amateur radio.

I mean, does anyone actually communicate on the ham bands? HF is for contesting and contesting only, 2 meters is for "checking in and out" on ragchew nets, 70cm is 2m again except half the range, 220 is hipster 2 meter, and I've never been given a reason to even think about 33cm and above. You're more likely to find discussion about Icom vs Yaesu's incompatible 2 meter digital things than high UHF.

Most actual communication is illegal on the ham bands one way or another so...I haven't renewed my license.

Do you mean ARRL?

I agree their bandplan is pretty restricty, but it's also not law. It's more for playing nice with each other. Keep high power up here so it doesn't wipe out the people playing with low power, digital here so they don't get overrun by voice, etc. You wouldn't have any idea you're stepping on someone sending Morse if you're on FM. So there's reason for it.

And yeah, with line of sight radios, nobody gives two shits 20 miles from civilization in the woods.

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Well whoever ends up buying that band is in for a load of shit because I and a lot of other people are NOT going to stop using 6GHz WiFi

Same thing with Meshtastic. Go ahead and see just how much you'll waste your money.

What do you mean by same thing with Meshtastic, are they trying to sell spectrum around 900mHz too?

I thought about getting a ham license so are you telling me there is really no need?

I call bs on the encryption part too. You just need to publicly post the key for your encryption and say you're not trying to hide what you're saying.

I haven't seen any regulations saying where you need to publicly post the key.

I say license up now and learn it how the shit works. Never know when some "pirate" stations may be needed.

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I call bs on the encryption part too. You just need to publicly post the key for your encryption and say you're not trying to hide what you're saying.

I haven't seen any regulations saying where you need to publicly post the key.

I say license up now and learn it how the shit works. Never know when some "pirate" stations may be needed.

The cell carriers don't need more bandwith. 5G is already quite fast with the existing allocations. The only times I've used 5G and thought it's too slow has been in rural areas where the issue is a lack of nearby cell towers, not a lack of bandwidth. The cell carriers already have loads of millimeter wave bandwidth available for use in densely packed, urban areas where the lower frequency bands are insufficient.

It's WiFi that should be getting more bandwidth. Home internet connections keep getting faster. Multi gigabit speeds are now common in areas with fiber.

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I mean, does anyone actually communicate on the ham bands? HF is for contesting and contesting only, 2 meters is for "checking in and out" on ragchew nets, 70cm is 2m again except half the range, 220 is hipster 2 meter, and I've never been given a reason to even think about 33cm and above. You're more likely to find discussion about Icom vs Yaesu's incompatible 2 meter digital things than high UHF.

Most actual communication is illegal on the ham bands one way or another so...I haven't renewed my license.

I thought about getting a ham license so are you telling me there is really no need?

There's a difference between encryption and encoding, and that difference is intent.

Encoding is the process of imparting a digital message onto the radio carrier. A simple example is Morse code; transmitted by keying a continuous wave on and off in pre-determined patterns of long and short pulses with long and short gaps between. Frequency shift keying and bodot code are the encoding scheme behind RTTY, etc. Hams are permitted to experiment with novel encoding schemes, and have invented a few, PSK31 comes to mind, a phase shift keying standard designed to use commonly available PC sound cards as a modem.

Encryption is the process of obscuring the message for all but the intended recipient. There is one specific case the law calls out when this is permissible in Amateur radio service, and that's control signals of Amateur radio satellites. A novel encoding scheme, like making up your own alphabet instead of the standard Morse one, or ciphers of any kind that are intended to make the message secret, is illegal.

It's not uncommon to hear encrypted communiques on the ham bands; I've picked them up myself. You want a fun rabbit hole to fall down, look up numbers stations. Some serious cold war james bond bullshit.

I don't believe it is legal to send a PGP encrypted message over the air (on ham radio, go ahead and send it over Wi-Fi, you can encrypt the shit out of that) even if you've posted your private key on your website. What would even be the point of that? tilts head It might be legal to send a PGP signed message over ham radio; if I understand correctly that's basically a checksum that can guarantee the sender's possession of a private key.

difference is intent.

And intent is functionally impossible to prove, but endlessly arguable and a judge can make a finding based on their judgement - something very different from proof.

send a PGP signed message over ham radio; if I understand correctly that’s basically a checksum that can guarantee the sender’s possession of a private key.

Correct.

Most actual communication is illegal on the ham bands one way or another

Except in case of emergency, natural disaster, etc. Before we carried cell phones, I had ham handhelds that we would talk directly to each other on 70cm for the usual "Hi honey, I'm on my way home" or... in the days before cell phone lots existed at airports, I'd call her on the handheld to let her know I was approaching the passenger drop-off/pickup area at the airport after a flight so she could start going there from whatever makeshift staging area she was in.

Anyway, when we would be out in the woods, we could reach each other roughly 1/2 mile like that from handheld to handheld, but if we ever had a serious problem we could switch to 2m and hit the local repeater which would get us more like 12 miles of range and coverage all the way into town where there was usually somebody who could make a 911 call if we needed it.

So, yeah, we have cell phones today, and they work when they work, but I find that when the cell phones don't work (like during / after a hurricane) the ham bands generally are working - or at least are restored quicker, and nobody is going to press charges for emergency communications on the ham bands.

If you want to use the ham band for instacart dispatch coordination, yeah, you're gonna get more than static about that.

Oh the legal system is pretty good at deciding intent, I mean what's the difference between manslaughter and murder?

Thing is, it's not like there's radio police that are going to pull you over for encrypting. Other hams might turn you in if you're being annoying. If you send an encrypted email over Hamlink once, or say something like "Beefy Burrito this is Enchilada, the tamales are in the basket" on 33cm once, probably nobody's gonna notice.

There's only ~3.7MHz worth of bandwith on the HF bands, another 4MHz on 6m. There's a lot of attention on the bands that propagate. If you want to secretly communicate with people, use Reddit, or the Fediverse.

You know r/kitty? One of a trillion cat subreddits that had a gimmick that the only written word allowed was "kitty." All post titles and comments had to consist only of "Kitty." Arrange with the leaders of the other terrorist cells you're working for that if u/chudmuffin posts a picture of an orange cat, we attack at dawn, and if he posts a picture of a grey cat, lay low they're onto us.

Encryption is legal and standard on the internet, where there's many orders of magnitude more traffic than on the ham bands. I can't send an encrypted email over Hamlink with a license, but I can host a Tor site without one.