It is very strange that when you come across anything radio related, people seemingly come out of the woodwork to tell you not that you are necessarily, actively doing something against regulation, but that there is always potential to be breaking the law.

Take this Hackaday article from the other day:

https://hackaday.com/2026/10/15/so-you-want-to-make-your-sdr...

The subject is mostly academic, but in 18 comments no less than 3 different people are warning about doing something against the rules. It's weird. I don't know of any other subject that provokes responses about "the rules" like this. I could understand if the article title was "How to Aim Laser Pointers at Airplanes", but attach a long enough wire to an oscillator and people start to get uppity.

On the other side of things, I don't know if you've turned on a shortwave radio recently, but the only thing I hear on mine is switch-mode power supply noise.

I think it might be because ham radio is still barely legal and the community wants to keep the few freedoms they have so they try not to piss off any groups of interest. Whereas pretty much everything hacking-related is already a felony thanks to DMCA and other similar laws, so they don't have much to lose.

Sort of.

When I first came into the tech space, I found myself with quad copters buzzing around my workspace. I had the intention of hacking the signals around me to dissuade folks from flying around my head while sitting at my desk. After walking into a radio shop, looking for a few key items, I chatted for a few minutes with the clerk. He immediately put me into his “you’re a jammer” box and was uninterested in any further conversation. He wasn’t wrong, but it’s ironic given that I was effectively counter-jamming to get work done… and maybe have a little fun hacking at the same time. Point being: some communities have such rigid rules around what a “good citizen” encompasses that they get lost in their own world.

I find myself more on the altruistic side, despite being far closer to a “computer hacker” than a ham.

NOC / BOFH is a good analogy. These people are highly technical guardians of their commons, who see each others as peers, and pull the plug / Halon drench anyone caught mucking up those commons. Hackers might build a spark gap to send Morse across campus just they might fire up nmap for a laugh to scan their buddy’s dorm connection, or run a fork bomb on the central Unix service. The Network Operstions / Operators / HAMs are the ones that find these hackers and drop one ton(ne) of bricks upon them.

The golden, underlying rule of Amateur Radio is to respect and protect the bands with which we have been trusted.

A lot of that is because airwaves are a finite and shared resource. Me abusing them means that you can’t legitimately use them.

It's also a generational thing. There's a lot of geriatric sad hams who's only enjoyment in life is playing radio police.

RF usage is governed by the FCC. Amateur Radio exists at the mercy of the government, and if there is widespread abuse or careless operation by amateur radio operators then that will likely jeopardize the continued existence of amateur radio.

The thing is, ham and hacker are defined in entirely different ways. Hackers can refer to people doing good, ill, or morally grey things. Think of how the term applies to certain software developers, people who breach networks to steal data, or circumvent security out of technical curiosity. In contrast, a ham is a licensed radio operator. While you certainly have lids, the vast majority have some sense of being a "good citizen" by the simple merit of being licensed. Unlicensed operators fit under other terms, like pirate.

Even the scope of the terms differ. Hackers have to make or break something. Hams may do anything from rag chew to build orbital satellites. If you're more inclined to do legal stuff and aren't inclined to build something, things involving community service are going to be more appealing.

Also I doubt computer hackers would want to publicly post their name and address before being licensed to use a compiler

Just look at the community around https://2600.com vs that of https://gbppr.net the contrast is stark.

One community operates in a heavily regulated space while the other doesn't.

I've been to several DefCon events over the years. Ham radio is essentially ubiquitous there, even with a dedicated frequency for the event for hams (and lots of 'look-the-other-way' use during the weekend).

almost, but not quite ... the difference between those is that the stereotypical ham radio enthusiast is obsessed with following regulations and laws to the T. while the stereotypical hacker is all about gray zones, loop holes and questioning rules.

> "if I could do it, then it's allowed".

This is in my back yard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZjInmHsWdM

The thing is hams shenanigans tend to impact other hams and not the general public. Every dive bar, and friend group has one asshole, but typically not two.

I want to note that "pirate radios" have and do still exist

> There is obvious large overlap. Both are nerdy and techy and attract similar base groups. But the ham space is dominated by people who want to be "good citizens" through collective action, while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed".

I work professionally in point to point licensed microwave radio and there is very little overlap in our community of ISP/telco/network engineering people with analog ham radio enthusiasts. I don't know a single person who submits FCC coordinations and does high capacity PTP microwave who is also a "licensed" ham.

There is a bit of a disdain in serious radio work for things that operate in purely analog methods (we really only care about things that have native gigabit ethernet or better interfaces on them and can carry IP data), and the concept of not being able to use basic crypto either at the radio level or as a data payload is also anathema to professional use.

There are slightly more professional nerds doing things with meshtastic/meshcore and similar as a hobby, because messing about with small esp32 based things and similar (and specifically in the 900 MHz USA/Canada bands) in purely digital modes is closer to what we do for work. And has practical uses for low data rate SCADA/monitoring and text messaging uses.

There is also a perception that many ham radio enthusiasts who try to position themselves as some special and ultimate resource in disaster response scenarios are not really doing much useful. At a small local scale, maybe? But the people who operate county sized professional emergency communication radio networks (with real budgets from government money) serving sheriff/police/fire/ambulance response and similar also do not overlap a lot with ham radio enthusiasts. If you have the budget to build a $400,000 project of a hilltop radio tower site serving mission critical communications in your county and your main interactions are with the local sheriff's office and the local 911 PSAP, your perspective is going to be very different than the people who want to do all-analog in the clear ham radio for "disaster response".

In many modern emergency scenarios people expect to be able to communicate and share data using whatever they have on their phone or laptop as a wifi client, which means implementing portable two way satellite IP data over something like traditional VSAT, starlink, o3b, Oneweb, soon Amazon LEO, etc. It's also standard for serious disaster response vehicles operated by well funded government agencies to have something like a docked handheld Iridium phone.

Radio is heavily regulated and policed.

If you do something naughty on the internet, there's a reasonable chance you won't get caught.

If you do something naughty on the radio, you will get a large fine if not prison time.

Because these companies have large legal departments essentially in charge of minimizing regulatory and reputational risk. It's the same reason they've been progressively cracking down on firearm accessories, BB guns, knives, fireworks, laboratory chemicals, erotica, pill presses, and a bunch of other things over the past 20 years. All of that is generally legal in the US but makes lawyers and PR people queasy. It's not just marketplaces, Paypal has asinine rules on what you can and cannot pay for. So does Google Pay, Zelle, Venmo, and so on.

I don't think it's useful to point out inconsistencies; the bottom line is that lasers will be on the chopping block within our lifetime too.

The FCC made up rules for marketplaces and now ebay is forced to follow it.

Because the FCC is puppeting Ebay through regulation, the author is deliberately painting this as evil large corporation because I assume that gets more clicks, the real title would be "FCC Enacts Rule Restricting Sale of Radio Equipment, Marketplaces Like Ebay Forced to Pull Listings."

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-rules-strengthen-rul...

> Protecting Against National Security Threats to the Communications Supply Chain…

Yeah… a foreign adversary is totally going to be thwarted by FCC certification. The Russian's are probably just kicking themselves for buying at Walmart.

Because the FDA doesn't give a shit about regulating lasers. Yes, The Food and Drug Administration.

The big problem used to be that people would buy unlocked Baofengs and accidentally use them on licensed services thinking there were generic walkie talkies. The current locked down rules prevent that. They can still get amateur handhelds and use without ham license, but hams police that. It is also easier to get FRS/GMRS handhelds for pubic use, many the same models reprogrammed.

Unlocking handhelds is less of a problem because it requires deliberate action to break the rules. There are fewer people willing and able to do that.

There are older UV-5R Baofengs that are in demand because they didn't have the software restriction that newer ones have. It's not that they're hacked, it's that they were not locked from the factory

I know nothing about this stuff. Is it only chatting on bands that is considered problematic? Are you allowed to listen on any frequency?

And it's only for new items.

Doesn't meshtastic operate in the unlicensed bands? Would that mean they're blocked? The article says they're only blocking devices that need FCC certification and since meshtastic is unlicensed it doesn't need FCC certification as far as I know.

Don't a lot of these integrate off-the-shelf pre-certified LoRa modules?

Pepsi at one point had one of the worlds largest navy's so it's not actually that surprising. People buy and sell used military equipment all the time.

I kind of remember MiG’s on Ebay was part of the news cycle after the Soviet collapse.

But my memory is hazy from time and limited direct interest.

Aliexpress / Temu most likely. People already buy cheap Chinese radios from those places now, since they can be cheaper than ebay.

If I read this right, it's only banning stuff without an FCC ID stamped on it. If you want to list, you have to provide the FCC ID.

I believe the FCC ban doesn't apply to used gear but seems like eBay is taking a harder stance.

What are the similar arguments?

Firearms are capable of being used for legal purposes, as they are in the overwhelming number of cases. A radio that transmits on a restricted frequency is illegal. The ruling doesn't say legal frequency transmitters can't be sold, just that the broker (ebay) is responsible for ensuring it's not facilitating the sale of illegal radio equipment. Ebay is the one choosing not to sell most radio equipment (even if legal), because they don't want to deal with it.

Firearms used to be widely available at big-box stores, as they were legal (and still are), provided the store prevented illegal purchases. Most box stores/locations no longer sell firearms, because they don't want to deal with it.

Radio didn't make the date cutoff to be a right in the US.

When the US constitution was written guns were a thing, but communication was done in person or on paper. The idea of radio waves didn't even exist therefore we did not get any protections on it.

unfortunately the US decided a century ago that electronics should be regulated federally

So we have decided as a society, it seems. No one ever said policy had to be coherent.

That's already how it works today. A lot of Chinese radios can either be switched by a key press combo or flashed with alternative firmware.

It might not even be that much depending on what it is. For example, Baofeng radios would have TX in bands they shouldn't have until the FCC cracked down on them coming in.

So they started selling them restricted to ham bands until the user pressed a key combo to factory reset them, which put them back to iirc 136-172.

According to the title summary, but seemingly not the full details right?

It sounds like there's an exemption for used equipment which is what you would find on eBay.

They demanded my fate of birth to hand over a bladed article my wife bought. It was a plastic Halloween prop of a bloody axe

UK laws are like one big comedy skit to us in rest of the world.

No need. Hams haven't been using eBay for quite some time. We have other gear-for-sale boards that provide at least some modicum of assurance of who you're dealing with (via callsigns and semi-reliable ways to confirm someone's email). The feeling is, if you get scammed by someone and you have their callsign, you can call them out for it on some of these ham-public forums and put them on blast. Others will be less likely to deal with the ne'er-do-well.

The sites are not at all "cutting edge" or even aesthetically pleasing. Like most of ham radio, it's functional and that's about it. Aesthetics are almost non-existent in the hobby.

eBay serves (served?) a wide, public audience. Hams don't need that wide of an audience, just a targeted audience. I'd venture to guess QRZ.com probably has the most buy/sell traffic, then older, has-been sites like eham.net and swap.qth.com catering to the old timers that don't want to follow the traffic trends that left for other sites.

The thing with ham radio is the population is quite small to begin with. The sheer number of hams is like 1% of any population no matter how you slice it. Country, state, city... and that's just those that are licensed. How many of THOSE are interested in buying gear online or shipping gear when selling online? Not really even the majority of the small community. THEN you further cut that down because hams are a stodgy crowd that resist change. So anything new often has a long run up for adoption. Even longer to become a known entity in the community.

Surely something else could replace QRZ.com eventually, but no time soon that I can imagine.

That's the trivially easy part. The hard part is convincing potential buyers and sellers that most participants are legit and not trying to scam people.

Software is worth nothing anymore in many cases.

This sounds bad for me, a person who just purchased their first SDR yesterday. What unfortunate timing.

Are you sure LNAs will be an issue? Cause then they'd better ban transistors too, because they can actually be used as a power amplifier for transmitting!

Ah, yes, that pesky FCC for regulating a public shared frequency spectrum. Im sure everybody will just behave in a vacuum of rules and wouldnt possibly do anything bad.