When you pump out 100 watts but the people talking back only have 4 watts, it's not only illegal, it's annoying to everyone on the road to have some yahoo 10 miles away that can't hear your walking all over everyone's conversation. It's known in the HAM world as "Alligator mouth, hummingbird ears."

It makes sense that smaller boats don't require a marine band radio, I guess it's pretty nice of the coast guard they they monitor CB. I lived in Chicago and we (and our friends) had boats, no one had a CB in them. Of course, now everyone has cell phones.

A lot of FCC laws are overlooked. When the FRS radios came out, all sorts of businesses have adopted them because their cheaper and easier to get than a business class license. The military did for a while as well, but when someone as big as the military starts buying thousands of FRS radios, that was a little too public and the FCC enforced the rule. They don't go after a mom and pop in a small town.

The marines responded by going to Icon and saying, "Give us the same radio, but in our frequency." Rather than expensive brick radios, they now have small, cheap radios that if they break, they simply throw them away.