Legal

OnAir is built to receive. What you may receive and do with it depends on where you live.

This page is general information from the project, not legal advice. Laws about radio reception, privacy and patents differ by country and change. You are responsible for following the rules where you live.

Receiving

• OnAir is built to receive. The released versions (0.2.5 and before) only receive. It never decrypts anything: encrypted TV services cannot be decoded, and encrypted radio calls (DMR, P25, TETRA and others) are only reported as encrypted.
• Receiving broadcasts is legal in most places, but laws differ, especially for private two-way radio, pagers, and some aviation and maritime traffic. In many countries it is illegal to intercept or disclose private radio communications, to listen to or use some services, or to pass on what you hear.
• Pager messages can contain private information; some countries restrict listening to them.
• Passive modes. The Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, ANT+, DECT, LoRaWAN and cellular modes only listen to what devices and base stations broadcast openly; they never connect, pair, join a network or decrypt a payload.
• Reports and uploads (the public map, PSK Reporter, WSPR) are opt-in and public: see Privacy.
• Time and safety. OnAir is not an alerting service and not a certified time source. Do not rely on the SAME / EAS decoder, the AIS or ADS-B displays or the clock tools for safety or exact time.

Notes per group of modes

• TV: Receiving free-to-air broadcasts is legal in most countries. OnAir cannot decode encrypted or scrambled services, and does not try to.
• Broadcast radio: Receiving broadcast radio is legal in most countries. OnAir cannot decode encrypted services.
• Aviation: Receiving aircraft broadcasts is legal in many countries, but some restrict listening to or using what you hear. OnAir is a receiver. Check the rules where you live.
• Maritime: Receiving ship and coast-station broadcasts is legal in many countries, with limits on using or passing on private traffic. OnAir is a receiver. Check the rules where you live.
• Satellite & navigation: Receiving satellite downlinks is generally legal. Encrypted or spread content is not decoded, and voice codecs that are patented are not shipped with OnAir.
• Two-way radio: In many countries it is illegal to intercept or disclose private radio communications. OnAir is a receiver: encrypted calls show up only as encrypted and are never decrypted, and voice needs a library you install yourself. Follow the law where you live.
• Cellular & rail: OnAir only reads the public broadcast information of cells and base stations, and does not decrypt or follow any user traffic. Check the rules where you live.
• Pagers: Pager messages can contain private information, and some countries restrict listening to them. Check the rules where you live before you use this mode.
• IoT & sensors: This mode is passive. It only receives, never connects, pairs or joins networks, and never decrypts payloads. Check the rules where you live.
• Weather & science: Receiving these signals is legal in most countries. OnAir is a receiver.
• Amateur: digital: Amateur radio signals are meant to be received. Receiving needs no licence in most countries; OnAir does not transmit.
• Amateur: voice & packet: Amateur radio signals are meant to be received. Receiving needs no licence in most countries; OnAir does not transmit. Voice needs a codec library you install yourself.
• HF utility: Some HF utility traffic belongs to governments or the military. Receiving is legal in many countries, but rules differ. Check them where you live.
• General & tools: These tools only look at the spectrum and listen. Receiving is legal in most countries, but laws differ on what you may use the content for.

Codecs and patents

OnAir does not ship patented voice and audio codecs (AMBE / IMBE, HDC, DRA and others). Whether you may install and use a codec is your own responsibility. See Voice codecs.

Transmitting

OnAir is a receiver first. From 0.2.6 it also has a separate transmit view. Transmitting needs a licence or permission where you are, and you are responsible for what you emit. Read the Transmit page before you use it.

Licence of the software

OnAir is released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. It includes Dear ImGui and miniaudio, each under a permissive licence, ships codec2 (LGPL-2.1) as a separate shared library, and uses FFmpeg, GLFW, libusb and libhackrf. The source is on GitHub.