I work for the CubeSat program at my university, and I emailed him personally asking about why licensing was so strict, and if it would be possible to use the SDRs systemically with some API so I can downlink over other ground stations.
People have tried scraping broadcasts from his service without permission, and most of the places running software don't have the best internet. Scraping data from the station depends on who is running it at that side, although he did tell me he can't imagine why people wouldn't be okay with it (given it's for a university and not a private corporation).
Creating an open sourced API, although would increase popularity and satisfy use cases, would saturate the host internet and tap the physical limits of the hardware. I would really want some SDR network to exist that is open sourced, but physical limits would be reached pretty soon.
People have tried scraping broadcasts from his service without permission, and most of the places running software don't have the best internet. Scraping data from the station depends on who is running it at that side, although he did tell me he can't imagine why people wouldn't be okay with it (given it's for a university and not a private corporation).
Creating an open sourced API, although would increase popularity and satisfy use cases, would saturate the host internet and tap the physical limits of the hardware. I would really want some SDR network to exist that is open sourced, but physical limits would be reached pretty soon.