"Jose" wrote in message
m...
Call it what you wish; what you call it is more semantics than anything
else.

I'm not the one proposing to call them user fees and I already pointed out
that this is purely a semantic question.

The difference I am bringing up is that when you purchase a chart, you are
not purchasing "the right to use the chart for a specified time".

You are, at least as much as you are purchasing the right to use weather
information for a specified time. That is, while you are permitted to keep
the chart, the chart is not useful for legally required purposes beyond a
certain time. Likewise, as far as I know there are no contractual
prohibitions against retaining the weather information provided by XM
weather...it's just that the data goes out of date, just as a chart goes out
of date.

[...]
Something similar operates here simply due to the timeliness of the data
being used. A radar picture is not very useful a day later, so you really
are essentially paying for the =use= of the image.

The radar and charts are equally time-limited in their usefulness, other
than the exact time period during which they are useful.

And, impractical as it may be, you are probably not allowed to re-transmit
the data to the plane behind you.

First of all, I'm not aware of any such prohibition. If you don't have
specific knowledge of one, I don't see how it's a relevant point.

A similar issue exists with (say) the Jepp subscription. You can hand
your paper approach plates to another pilot, who can use it in another
plane. However, you can't do the same with the subscription data in your
GPS.

Sure you can. You can pass a GPS receiver around just like you could
approach plates.

And you can buy plates a state at a time, but if you want to update your
GPS, it's the whole country or nothing. These are also non-trivial
differences.

They are trivial differences. They pertain only to the specific
subscription model, and have nothing to do with the question of "user fees"
as that phrase has been applied to aviation products.

Pete