So, then who would you go after in the case of a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) alerted “rescue” of an idiot? Would it be ACR, McMurdo, Pains Wessex, or whatever other manufacturer produced the PLB unit that sent the alert? Why, exactly, would that manufacturer be responsible since their device only sent an alert to a system (Cospas-Sarsat) created by the governments of Canada, France, United States, and the former Soviet Union for the express purpose of distress alert and location?

It seems completely counter-intuitive for governing bodies to create an entire satellite communication network for the express purposes of distress alert and location, then to place the cost of the actual rescue services on any manufacturer that markets a device that interfaces with that system. There wouldn’t be a manufacturer in their right mind that would pursue such a market.

In the case of the SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger, the question only gets more confusing since the device now communicates over a corporate satellite network (Globalstar) to a corporate risk mitigation service (GEOS Alliance) instead of directly to a government communication network. Which deep-pocket corporation gets to pay the government for their “rescue” (read, “babysitting,”) efforts here?

Shall Motorola, Nokia, et al. start emptying their pockets when people make pointless distress calls using their cell phones? How about the companies that laid the fiber lines the cell towers use to communicate to the telephone network?

See where this goes?