Amateur radio enjoys the privilege of pretty lax regulation, largely due to the players not making any trouble. Speaking as a fellow radio amateur, we don't want our hobby ruined just because someone wants to be a troublemaker.
What. You literally have to have a license issued to you personally (no anonymity) by the government to even be allowed to do it. And the rules of what can and can’t be sent are, to my Internet-accustomed mind, excruciatingly onerous. No encryption? No foul language?
1. You need a personal license to identify you, as an operator of a radio station. This is similar to how radios on ships and airplanes work - you need to be able to identify every transmission (even cellphones are uniquely identifiable). This is not only part of the entire sport (we're trying to contact and identify each other), but is also used to identify problems.
2. Just like for airplanes and ships, there are some rules to what you can transmit, as your transmissions can be heard (and cause troubles) for tens, hundreds and even thousands of kilometers away.
3. You have countless frequency allocations available, all over the spectrum, despite the scarcity.
4. Unlike everyone else, holding that license permits you to build your own equipment and transmit with kilowatts with no certification needed. It's extremely easy to cause massive issues with this, such as interrupting cellular communication/gps/wifi an a large area, blowing up your neighbors stereos, and fun things like that.
There's a reason that everything else needs to be tested, certified, and require dedicated band allocations - we avoid it by showing that we have the sufficient skills to practice our hobby and not cause trouble.
Unlike everyone else, we can do pretty much whatever we want as long as we keep it around a kilowatt and talk nice. I consider that to be extremely relaxed rules.
- General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) which is limited to a set of frequencies in the UHF band, 50w repeaters, and a few watts handheld, and requires an $80? license.
- Family radio service (FRS) which is limited to store-bought handheld units with 0.5W maximum output
- Citizens Band radio which is limited to 40 channels at 4 watts and is highly abused by its users and relatively unenforced
- Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS), which is limited to a six VHF channels and 2 watts and shared with many users
- Business Band/LMR Part 90, which is licensed and regulated for business/commercial use with many other shared users
- Microwave, which is licensed and heavily regulated
- Broadcast radio, which is licensed and very heavily regulated (and is one-way only)
None of these services allow you free reign over a wide spectrum of radio with home-built equipment for the purposes of experimentation and recreation, except for the experimental license, which only allows you specific frequencies, power limits, and other regulations based on your license application and grant.
I agree that amateur radio regulations are relatively relaxed, if not very generous, liberal compared to the other radio services.
Those rules about absolute identifiability are only “part of the entire sport” because you have defined it to be that way. What if Internet chat had been defined the same?
Also, enumerating what you are allowed to do once you are granted a license does not help the argument that the requirement for a license is oppressive.
> There's a reason that everything else needs to be tested, certified, and require dedicated band allocations
Maybe there were reasonable technical reasons in the 1970’s, but now with modern technology, there should be no problem, or at the very least significant relaxations of what the regular public is allowed to do.
I repeat: Having to get an individual government license to practice your hobby is draconian. But, of course, regulations don’t really ever get less restrictive.
Secondly, the original argument was that, and I quote, “Amateur radio enjoys the privilege of pretty lax regulation”. And a requirement to get a government license, tied to your personal name and identity, gated by a large fee and difficult exam, is not my idea of “lax regulation”.
As to the difficulty, children at about 5 or 6 have passed the Technician class test. It takes some studying, but it is really easy. The most difficult part is in understanding the bands that you're permitted to operate on.
In reality, getting a license is easier than it's ever been. There are no more requirements for Morse Code - though some still use it. There is no longer a requirement to go to an FCC field office for testing - your local Ham Radio club can give you the exam. It used to be that you got your Novice ticket, and had to upgrade to Technician within a fairly short period of time - now you begin with the Technician exam.
As for the regulation, there is a real legit reason for this. As Amateurs, we're permitted to operate on a wide range of frequencies - some of which are close to those used for Radar, Wi-fi, and many other services. Some of the frequencies we can use are very long range. The reason for the regulations that exist are in order to prevent interference to other services, to avoid breaking international treaties, etc.
The technical knowledge is important because you're permitted to build your own equipment. It's important, if you do, to know that your equipment is operating properly, so that you don't disrupt many other services with transmitters that are spewing noise and harmonics on many unintended frequencies.
In short, Amateur Radio is FAR LESS regulated than any other service, because of the technical abilities that we have historically displayed. It's a worthwhile hobby and lots of fun. I don't know of any other hobby that has its own satellites in orbit, that has bounced radio signals off of the planet Venus - and regularly uses the Moon or even ionized meteor trails as a reflector for radio signals...
Seriously, given what we can do with the hobby, passing a relatively simple test and paying $15.00 to get your license - and no recurring annual fee ... I don't consider that restrictive at all.