Like copyright, wireless regulation does not need to be enforced through DRM. People misusing wireless devices are much easy to find and stop, and prosecute where there is evidence of malicious intent, than unauthorized copiers (via triangulation). More to the point, most wifi is limited by its hardware, and cannot broadcast much beyond the boundaries of a residential property, so it has no chance of interfering with anything mission critical. Surely wifi devices capable of stronger signals than that could be constrained by the design of the hardware to prevent them being used maliciously, rather than with the "security by obscurity" of proprietary drivers/firmware? The technical limitations the FCC is proposing would also prevent a plethora of legitimate uses of wifi, including running wifi devices with free code drivers and firmware, and are unreasonably and unnecessarily restrictive.
I haven't read deeply into this yet, but I do understand the FCC's concerns.
The wireless spectrum has been carefully divided into different segments for
different uses, some of which are mission critical to people's physical
safety (emergency services comms, maritime comms, mountain radio etc). There
does need to be regulation of the way any wireless device is used to ensure
it doesn't clash with other users. However, it sounds like what the FCC is
proposing is regard to wifi devices is incredibly heavy-handed, and seem
motivated by others agendas (eg telecoms corporations concerned about the
potential of projects like the Free Network Foundation to reduce their
market).
- [Trisquel-users] Wired & Ars Technica (2nd one) write articles... chris
- Re: [Trisquel-users] Wired & Ars Technica (2nd one) write... strypey
- Re: [Trisquel-users] Wired & Ars Technica (2nd one) write... chris