who owns the rights to PACTOR?
Ed#
In a message dated 11/29/2013 12:43:41 P.M. US Mountain Standard Tim,
plaws@plaws.net writes:
On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Don Hill AA5AU <aa5au@bellsouth.net>
wrote:
> I guess you could spend over $2000 and buy one of these STS modems off
eBay in order to monitor Pactor 4 traffic (oh, I see a
> stripped down model for only %1500 also on eBay). But who would do that?
Not sure if you have to buy a license to operate Pactor 4
> or not.
>
> So I guess it's not encrypted if you are willing to spend the money.
Call it "de facto encrypted".
In the world above 50 MHz, there are similar issues. The D-STAR
*protocol* is open but the voice is encoded and decoded by a
proprietary algorithm in a DVSI chip. The same is nearly true (down
to the chip in question) for APCO's Project 25 spec and Motorola's
version of the DMR spec, MotoTRBO (That DVSI is willing to provide
D-STAR chips to hams at a reduced price isn't relevant - you are still
licensing a proprietary technology). I don't think that's in the
spirit of amateur radio. You should be able to build your own
equipment, from parts more discrete than the chip level, to be able to
receive or transmit anything on the amateur band. That you or I may
not have the technical knowledge or skills to actually do that isn't
relevant.
You pay no one for the right to build transmitters or receivers for
CW, any kind of analog 'phone, RTTY or any data mode ... except
PacTOR. And that to me is wrong.
At the very least, the owner of the PacTOR protocols should be made to
offer free software to decode their otherwise proprietary protocols so
that we can police ourselves as we have done traditionally.
--
Peter Laws | N5UWY | plaws plaws net | Travel by Train!
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