Comment by throwanem
2 months ago
And we already regulate actual broadcast on this basis.
For example, it violates no rule to include valid Emergency Broadcast System/Emergency Alert System tones (the electronic, machine-interpretable "chirps") in a movie or TV show, or to publish that via streaming, DVD etc. But no one does this, because broadcasting spurious tones (and triggering spurious automated broadcast interruptions) carries serious first-instance fines to which FCC licensees (ie distributors via broadcast) agree as a condition of licensure. They know they aren't allowed to do this and, very occasional and expensive mishaps excepted, they won't take the risk. (1) So program material that wants to include those tones has to make sure they're excluded from the TV edit, or decide whether the verisimilitude is worth the limit on audience access.
While the specifics of course vary among cases, the basic theory of broadcast (ie distribution) as distinct from and less protected than speech, with the consequential distinction drawn specifically along the scale at which speech is distributed, seems clear.
(1) Some may note instances such as one of the Purge films (iirc) that seem to contradict this claim. Compare the tones in those examples with the ones in test samples or generated by a compliant encoder [1] for the "Specific Area Message Encoding" protocol. Even without a decoder, the FSK frequencies and timings have to be resilient to low-bandwidth channels designed to carry human voice, so it's all well within audible ranges and you can hear the difference between real tones and what a movie or show can safely use. Typically either the pitch is dropped below compliant ranges, or the encoding is intentionally corrupted, or both. But almost always, the problem is just sidestepped entirely, since it's the attention tone that everyone really notices anyway.
[1] https://cryptodude3.github.io/same/ is no more certified than mine but has, unlike my own implementation, been tested against a real EAS ENDEC. At some point I want to test mine against that one and find out how badly I screwed up reading the spec ten years ago...
> For example, it violates no rule to include valid Emergency Broadcast System/Emergency Alert System tones (the electronic, machine-interpretable "chirps") in a movie or TV show, or to publish that via streaming, DVD etc. But no one does this, because broadcasting spurious tones (and triggering spurious automated broadcast interruptions) carries serious first-instance fines to which FCC licensees (ie distributors via broadcast) agree as a condition of licensure.
Uh, what? You say there's no rule and then in the next sentence you talk about a rule.
I said that it violates no rule to include in program material valid tones that will spuriously trigger an ENDEC which receives them, and that it does violate a rule (specifically, a subsection of 47 CFR part 11 that I can't be bothered hunting down just now) to broadcast program material including such tones.
The example I like to refer to is my phone's PagerDuty ringtone, which includes a set of SAME headers (syntactically valid but encoding no meaningful alert, not that it matters) followed by the attention tone.
Nothing I personally do with that ringtone can reasonably qualify as a violation of 47 CFR 11, because I don't have a broadcast license and thus am not bound by the provisions of one, to include those related to EAS.
It would be a crime for me to broadcast that ringtone directly - not because of the nature of the transmission, but because operating an unlicensed transmitter in licensed bands is an offense. Depending on the specifics of my putative pirate-radio actions under this scenario, in theory a case might be made under 47 CFR 11.45.1 ("No person may transmit or cause to transmit...") for a fine along with the prison sentence, but I doubt anyone would see much cause to bother.
But, if I were to go to a radio station for a live interview in the course of which my PagerDuty ringtone went off and the edit delay failed, causing the ringtone to go out over the air - in that case the radio station would be considered to have violated the EAS rule.
edit: OK, I nerd-sniped myself and did look it up again; it's 47 CFR 11.45 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/section-11.45 which has been amended since I last reviewed it during the Obama administration to forbid transmission of the Attention Signal (the equal-amplitude 853/960Hz mix that raises the hair on your neck) as well as the encoded headers that will trigger automated EAS equipment. It's not terribly well written in my view, and I'm much more familiar with the technical than the legal aspects, but there's no precedent at least of which I'm aware for anyone not actually an "EAS Participant" as defined in 47 CFR 11.2 to see any kind of enforcement action over an EAS violation.