The nature and ownership of information

Foundations of Amateur Radio

Have you ever made an international contact using amateur radio and used that towards tracking an award like for example the DXCC? If you're not familiar, it's an award for amateurs who make contact with at least 100 "distinct geographic and political entities".

In 1935 the American Radio Relay League, or ARRL published an article by Clinton B. DeSoto, W1CBD, titled: "How to Count Countries Worked: A New DX Scoring System". In the article he asks: "Are Tasmania and Australia separate countries?"

In case you're wondering, Tasmania has, at least in legal terms, been part of Australia since Federation in 1901. Not to be confused with New Zealand, a separate country over 4,000 kilometres to the east of Australia, Tasmania is the island at the south eastern tip of Australia. It was previously called the Colony of Tasmania, between 1856 and 1901 and before that it was called Van Diemen's Land between 1642 and 1856. Before then it was inhabited by the palawa people who lived there for about 42,000 years. They eventually became isolated after being cut off from the mainland by the Bass Strait when about 10,000 years ago sea levels rose due to the ice age coming to an end. In the last remaining local Aboriginal language 'palawa kani' it appears to have been called 'lutruwita' (/lu-tru-wee-ta/), but no living speakers of any of the original Tasmanian languages exist. As audio evidence, we have a few barely audible sounds spoken by Fanny Cochrane Smith on a wax record from 1899 on which she sang traditional songs.

I'm mentioning this to illustrate that DeSoto asking the question: "Are Tasmania and Australia separate countries?" is, in my opinion, fundamentally misguided. More so because of an island, well, rock, Boundary Islet, that's split by a border, one half belonging to Victoria, the other half to Tasmania. Specifically, since 1825, the state of Victoria and the state of Tasmania share a land border thanks to a survey error made in 1801. If you're into Islands on the Air, or IOTA, it's part of the Hogan Island Group which for activation purposes is part of the Furneaux Group, which has IOTA designation OC-195.

One point to make is that today the DXCC does not mention Tasmania, either as a separate entity, or as a deleted entity. It was removed from the DXCC in 1947.

The DXCC list is pretty famous in amateur radio circles. It's not the only such list. I already mentioned the IOTA list which contains a list of islands and island groups and their IOTA designation. There's also a list of 40 groups of callsign prefixes called CQ zones, published in CQ magazine, and a list of IARU regions maintained by the International Amateur Radio Union. There's also an ITU zone list, maintained by the International Telecommunications Union.

Each of these lists are essentially grouped collections with an attached label.

The list of DXCC entities is copyrighted by the ARRL. If you want to use it for anything other than personal use you need to ask permission. In other words, if you write software that for example tracks amateur radio contacts and you make that software available for others to use, you officially need permission from the ARRL to use it to track a DXCC. If you're an amateur outside of the United States your peak body will need permission from the ARRL to issue any DXCC award.

The ITU, the International Telecommunications Union is a United Nations specialised agency, part of our global community, owned by all humans. It peppers its content with copyright notices. The same is true for the International Amateur Radio Union, the IARU, the global representative body of all radio amateurs. It too peppers its content with copyright notices, even going so far as to add requirements that "(a)ny copy or portion must include a copyright notice" and that "(i)t is used for informational, non-commercial purposes only".

Let me ask you a question.

Can you achieve a DXCC without international cooperation?

Of course not. If you are an American amateur and want to get an award for contacting 100 distinct geographic and political entities, you can only do so by making contacts outside the United States of America.

As an Australian however, I have, according to the February 2022 version of the DXCC list, 340 countries to choose from, only one of which is the United States of America, and Alaska isn't part of the United States, apparently.

It might appear that I'm singling out the ARRL, but that's not true. CQ Communications, Inc. owns the list of CQ Zones, the ITU owns the list of ITU zones, the IARU owns the list of IARU Regions, Islands On The Air Ltd. and the Radio Society of Great Britain own the IOTA list and Clinton B. DeSoto W1CBD became a silent key in 1949, his copyright expired in 1999.

So, is grouping and labelling things sufficient to actually claim copyright? Can I claim copyright for all countries starting with the letter 'A' and calling it the 'Alpha Amateur Award'? My preliminary list for the 'Alpha Amateur Award' includes Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Antigua, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria and Azerbaijan and because it's not part of the United States, Alaska. Which reminds me, to encourage amateur radio activity in continents that need more, I'll add Africa and Antarctica. Consider that the 2023 edition of the triple A.

A bigger question to ask is: "Why should I need permission to use any of these lists?"

Can I create a public repository on GitHub that has all these lists in a single place, so others could use them without needing to hunt? What if I wanted to reformat and reuse these lists to create an online service to show the relationship between each of these lists for use by all radio amateurs? What if I wanted to charge a subscription fee to pay for the service? What if I wanted to roll out a whole company behind it and pay people to maintain it?

I'm all for people creating things and receiving credit, but at some point we start to take away from the community instead of giving back to it. Are these lists really owned by the various organisations claiming copyright and requiring written permission for their use, or do they belong to all radio amateurs?

Oh, the 'Alpha Amateur Award' list is copyleft. Look it up.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB