[g__day (Matthew)]

So if someone mounts 100 * 1 mWatt lasers to the outside of their OTA - this is legal so long as (to quote Ghostbusters) the beams don't combine?

If 100 * 1 mW lasers seem to coalesce at a point near infinity - has the law been broken or not? Does the local law specific a height boundary on the 1 mW limit - like 5 km, 10 kms etc? How high above a sovereign country like Australia does local and federal law apply? I presume like international waters - there is a legal limit, beyond which state and federal laws don't apply? Is it the Karman line ~ 100 kms or less? Wiki seems to say its most clearly tied to controlled air space, which varies from 22 to 160 kms with no agreed international limit.

I wonder how thoroughly the law has been tested? If I live just within a state with a 5mW limit and shine a 5mW laser over the boarder at a state with a 1mWatt limit has the law be broken or not - or does it depend on the height of the beam above the boarder?

Seems like a situation that could lead to farce if the definitions don't keep up with technology. With today's fabrication capabilities it would be easy to develop a laser like metal storm, 1,000,000 aligned units in a 1,000 * 1,000 grid - all aligned. How far must each unit be seperated before the beam is considered as one individual beam versus its 1,000,000 component parts? So in that absurd case is the person shining 1,000,000 * 1 mW lasers or a single kiloWatt laser? What standard defines the cut off point between an illegal single beam ersus a legal group beam?