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Title: CQ Magazine: No amateur radio enforcement since Riley retired Post by: k4kyv on November 20, 2008, 04:16:14 PM Quote ...Despite assurances that the Commission’s dedication to enhanced enforcement in the Amateur Service remains strong even after the retirement this past July of Riley Hollingsworth, K4ZDH, as Special Counsel in charge of amateur enforcement, no successor has yet been named and not a single amateur enforcement action has been announced since “Sheriff” Riley packed up his office. This is deeply disturbing and of grave concern...For 15 years from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, the FCC basically told hams to “regulate yourselves” and the bands got progressively worse places to be, mostly due to the actions of a very few who continually got away with bad on-air behavior. When “the new sheriff came to town” about ten years ago, we were promised that the overall attitude of the Commission on enforcement had changed, and that we would never again be left on our own to sort out problems whose solutions really required the authority of the federal government behind them. Indeed, over the past decade, with strong support from the amateur community, “Sheriff” Riley successfully cleaned up our bands. We are grateful for his work, but now worry it may all have been for naught. The ham bands are a much nicer neighborhood now than they were ten years ago, mostly because the biggest bullies on the block have been silenced. But they’ll stay silent only if they know they’ll be accountable for their actions to more than the local Official Observer... self-enforcement is effective only for the 98% or so of us who need only broad guidance and/or peer pressure to follow the rules. It’s the other 2%, though, who can make life in the neighborhood difficult. And it is for them that we continue to need the FCC’s help. It would be a tragedy, and a travesty, if the FCC were to go back on its promise to be there for us and allowed amateur enforcement to once again drop off the radar. We call on Enforcement Bureau Chief Kris Monteith to name a successor to Riley Hollingsworth, to do so promptly, and to put the FCC back in the business of enforcing Amateur Service rules... http://www.cq-amateur-radio.com/Zero%20Bias%20Dec08.pdf |