I have a technician's license. My unpopular opinion is that I wish there was something like the HAM bands that requires a license but with less regulation of what you're allowed to do. Sort of a hybrid of part 15 (personal electronics) rules and part 97 (ham) rules: keep the license requirement and (some reasonable fraction of) the permissive transmission power limits of HAM, but with the "use this for whatever you want" permissiveness of wireless ethernet.
For instance, suppose you're allowed to use cryptography, and do commercially useful things, and play music as long as the music is live and you aren't violating anyone's copyright, and use profanity as long as its over an encrypted channel and not in the clear, and so on.
The main rules I'd want enforced are no ads sent in the clear, stations must be identified, and rules around permitted transmit powers and frequencies and not interfering with other users are respected. Maybe also a ban on pre-recorded content sent in the clear.
The usual fear is that the band would be overrun by all kinds of people running their own radio stations or whatever. But if using the band requires a license, then it's not a total free-for-all, and if few people have radios that can even receive in those bands I don't think there's much risk of the band being overrun by radio talk show hosts or something. You can buy a cheap Baofeng radio without a ham license, but the number of people who actually own one in a given town is a very small audience. Why bother when people can access and host content on Youtube for free?
For instance, suppose you're allowed to use cryptography, and do commercially useful things, and play music as long as the music is live and you aren't violating anyone's copyright, and use profanity as long as its over an encrypted channel and not in the clear, and so on.
The main rules I'd want enforced are no ads sent in the clear, stations must be identified, and rules around permitted transmit powers and frequencies and not interfering with other users are respected. Maybe also a ban on pre-recorded content sent in the clear.
The usual fear is that the band would be overrun by all kinds of people running their own radio stations or whatever. But if using the band requires a license, then it's not a total free-for-all, and if few people have radios that can even receive in those bands I don't think there's much risk of the band being overrun by radio talk show hosts or something. You can buy a cheap Baofeng radio without a ham license, but the number of people who actually own one in a given town is a very small audience. Why bother when people can access and host content on Youtube for free?