Chat rules

1. What the rooms are for

Every satellite on satellites.ham-amplifiers.com has a room, open around the passes over your station. It is there so that radio amateurs can find each other and arrange a contact on a pass: who is on which frequency, who calls CQ, who hears whom, a grid locator or a quick 73. It is not a general chat. satellites.ham-amplifiers.com is a non-commercial hobby project of the radio amateur Nikolay, LZ1ADJ (Bulgaria, EU), who is the operator of the rooms and their only moderator.

By using a room you agree to these rules. You do not have to sign in, and nobody checks the callsign you type. The rooms are meant for adults; a young operator writes with a parent or an instructor next to them.

2. What is not allowed

• Anything illegal in Bulgaria or the EU: threats, incitement to violence or hatred, child sexual abuse material, terrorist content, fraud and scams, sale of illegal goods, infringement of copyright or trademarks, and personal data of other people published without their consent.
• Harassment and abuse of other operators, including repeated insults and deliberate interference with a contact that is in progress.
• Pretending to be somebody else. Use your own callsign. A callsign of another amateur, or a made-up callsign meant to deceive, is not allowed.
• Spam and advertising: repeated messages, links to commercial offers, chain messages, flooding a room, automated posting.
• Anything that is not about amateur radio contacts and gets in the way of those who use the room for them. Politics and arguments about it stay outside.
• Attacks on the service: attempts to overload it, to read what you are not meant to read or to get around its limits.

Amateur radio itself has its own rules: the rooms must not be used to arrange anything that the licence of the stations does not allow.

3. Messages vanish

A message stays in the room for 10 minutes. It lives in the memory of the server only and is gone after that or when the server restarts. We do not keep a history of the rooms. Everyone with the room open sees your callsign, the first 4 characters of the locator you typed and your message, so write nothing you would not say on the air. The only copy that outlives the 10 minutes is the one made when somebody reports the message (see the next section and the Privacy Policy).

4. Reports and moderation

How to report. In a room, open the menu of a message and choose "Report" with a reason: illegal, harassment, spam or other. You can also choose "Report without a reason"; a reason helps. The report is anonymous: you give nothing about yourself, and you get no answer. It is not for disagreements, only for messages that break section 2. If you want an answer, or a message is gone from the room already, write to us (section 5).

What happens next. The server copies the reported message (callsign, locator, text, time, your reason and a keyed hash of the sender's address) and keeps the copy for 30 days, because the message itself is gone from the room in 10 minutes. The moderator is told that a report is waiting (at most once in 10 minutes, with a count only), reads it, decides whether the message breaks these rules or the law and acts. We do not read the rooms in advance and do not look for anything on our own; we act on reports and on what we happen to see. This is a hobby project: we aim to look at a report within a few days, sooner if it is about something dangerous, but we cannot promise it.

What we may do. Nothing, when the message is fine; remove the message from the room at once (it disappears from the pages of everyone who has the room open); block a callsign (with its portable forms: blocking LZ1ADJ blocks DL/LZ1ADJ and LZ1ADJ/P too), a sender (an address) or both from the rooms for 1 hour, 24 hours, 7 days or for good; and, where a message points to a crime, pass what we have to the authorities. We do not send a warning. A block takes effect at once, also for a page that is open: the blocked visitor can go on reading, but is taken off the list of participants and cannot write, and sees a notice with how long the block lasts and a link to these rules. A block is for abuse and illegal content, not for an opinion we do not like. Callsigns are not verified, so we block the sender (the address) rather than the callsign unless the callsign is the point; if somebody used your callsign and you were blocked for it, write to us (section 5). Decisions are made by a person, the moderator, not by automated means, and nothing is removed or blocked automatically.

The statement of reasons. When we remove a message or block somebody, we tell on request why: which rule or law it broke, what facts we relied on, what we did, and how to appeal (Art. 17 of the Digital Services Act). Nobody signs in and we have no email or other way to reach the senders, so we cannot send it on our own. Write to us (section 5) with the callsign, the satellite and the time of the message, or if you are blocked, say so: a blocked visitor is shown how long the block lasts. A person who reported by email and left an address gets the answer without asking.

How to appeal. If you disagree with what we did, or we did nothing about your report, write to the address in section 5 with the word "Appeal" in the subject and tell us which decision you mean and why it is wrong. This is a one-person project, so the same moderator looks at it again; we answer with the result and the reasons. A block can be lifted at any time. You can also go to a court or to the Digital Services Coordinator of your country at any time (in Bulgaria, the Communications Regulation Commission, CRC).

5. Contact point and notices of illegal content

This is the single point of contact of satellites.ham-amplifiers.com under Art. 11 and 12 of the Digital Services Act, for the authorities of the Member States, the European Commission and the European Board for Digital Services, and for the users of the service:

Email: ham.amplifiers (at) gmail (dot) com (only LZ1ADJ reads this mailbox). Languages: English, Bulgarian. Operator: Nikolay, LZ1ADJ, Bulgaria (EU). Please put "DSA" in the subject of a message from an authority. The contact form on the Privacy Policy page reaches the same person, but email is better for a notice.

A notice of illegal content (Art. 16). If you think something in a room is illegal and you do not want to use the "Report" button, write to the address above. Please include:

• where it is: the satellite, the callsign of the sender, the date and the time in UTC (a message is in the room for 10 minutes only, so write soon), a link to the room if you have one;
• why you think it is illegal, as exactly as you can, with the law you have in mind if you know it;
• your name and email address, so that we can answer you (not needed for a notice about child sexual abuse material or similar crimes of Directive 2011/93/EU);
• a statement that you believe in good faith that what you wrote is accurate and complete.

We confirm that we have received a notice that carries your email address, and tell you what we decided and how to appeal. A notice that gives no name or email gets no answer, because we have no one to answer.

6. Other things

The rooms are provided as they are, free of charge, and may be stopped or changed at any time. The satellite data, the maps and the reports come from third parties, see the Privacy Policy. Where something in these rules is not clear, ask us. We may change the rules; the date at the top is the date of the last change. The law of Bulgaria applies.

What we do with your data is in the Privacy Policy, section 3a for the rooms.