"Chip Hermes" writes:

I've seen things along those lines, too, and think that any significant
barriers to entry are essentially complete barriers for the
distribution of information freely. The idea of requiring a leased
line circuit for the transmission of data might have been reasonable 10
or 20 years ago, but it's beyond ridiculous now.

It's about as reasonable as the FAA charging a subscription fee to
FedEx ~14MB of ATA-100 data on CD every month. I've been happy to foot
the bill make that data freely available and I'd be happy to do the same
(at least partially) to get the flight tracking data. The usage
agreement stopped me though. It doesn't appear to be possible to
legally distribute the data freely after getting it.

(BTW, note in the information below that more modern data transmission
services such as ISDN and ADSL are specifically disallowed.)

I've already written a letter to AOPA about their support for Flight
Explorer. As an organization that's all about keeping costs down and
making sure that GA pilots don't have to pay more, etc, it's weird that
they support something that takes advantage of all taxpayers, including
pilots.

Be careful about your assumptions. My experience with AOPA (of which
I'm a "valued member since 1989") leads me to believe that they are
primarily interested in being valued by their members. They are
careful to remain in a position of controlling data so that only their
members benefit from it. I wouldn't expect them to advocate for free
availability of data.

Ah ha! Here's some information I received from another person who
researched this. (I don't think he'd be bothered but I'll omit his
name for now.)

http://www.fly.faa.gov/ASDI/asdi.html

[...]

1. The vendor shall install a communication line to Volpe. This must be a
frame relay or a T1 line; ISDN and DSL are not allowed. A connection over
the Internet to Volpe is not allowed.
2. The vendor shall provide a CSU/DSU with an EIA 530 interface. The
dimensions for the CSU/DSU must be no larger than 11 inches deep, 8.5 inches
wide, and 2 inches high, with a 10Base-T port that can be installed in a
nineteen-inch rack.
3. Since Cisco routers are used on the Volpe end, the router on the vendor
end should be Cisco-compatible.

[...]

If you can find a friend at MIT, that might be your best bet to get the
feed.

I'm not finding the message about MIT but my recollection is that they're
getting the data. I didn't pursue it after I realized the data would be
strictly encumbered. Perhaps there's a way to filter the data so that it
can be distributed.

Tell me if I can help.

--kyler