131–140 of 160 posts
Curious - how will conventions handle this? Isn't it common for a convention to block out other wi-fi signals and offer a free one of their own so that channels aren't overloaded and people can actually get on?
Makes it hard to do a sales pitch :-)
This idiocy encroaches on property rights. You should have a right to generate jamming radio waves, if their intensity attenuates to a negligibly low level beyond the perimiter of your private property so that no neighboring property suffers any ill effect. Note that I'm not in support of hotels doing this to their guests. It is a customer relations issue that can be resolved by the free market. Let's make an analogy…
"If you have reason to believe your personal Wi-Fi hot spot has been blocked, ... you can visit www.fcc.gov/complaints" Right, so if my wifi is blocked, I should go online to report it! Great plan :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That hit likely made that hotel run at a loss that year, which when you're a massive corporation it might not look like much, but Marriott uses a franchise model. The corporation can't risk a franchisee revolt, and you'll get that if the franchisees think there's a corporate policy out there that could potentially wipe out their profits for a year.
Surely Corporate would pay for it, unless it was the franchise's idea.
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It's clear from the memo that the FCC considers security risks to be exempt from this requirement. It sounds like the AP being on your network is what constitutes the security risk. I doubt the FCC would have a problem with a network administrator taking action like that. Unrelated APs are different.
It's also arguably not "harmful interference"... it's a legitimate operation within your network.
This idiocy encroaches on property rights. You should have a right to generate jamming radio waves, if their intensity attenuates to a negligibly low level beyond the perimiter of your private property so that no neighboring property suffers any ill effect. Note that I'm not in support of hotels doing this to their guests. It is a customer relations issue that can be resolved by the free market. Let's make an analogy…
No, you don't own the radio waves that pass through your property on licensed spectrum. And microwave ovens need to be FCC approved precisely to ensure they don't cause undue interference.
Yes I do, and I can put shielding on all the walls to attenuate them. Nobody can do a damn thing about that, other than relocate their transmitter or receiver so that the line of sight doesn't pass through those walls.
> And microwave ovens need to be FCC approved precisely to ensure they don't cause undue interference.
So, logically, since major name brand microwave ovens can completely jam Wi-Fi, doing so must not be considered undue interference.
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> It is a customer relations issue that can be resolved by the free market. How is that working out? I know the argument is that it's working out perfectly because the free market would curb the behavior if it weren't tolerable, but that can be said about literally every other issue that the free market supposedly "solves". > If you go to a club on a Friday night, the music is so loud that your conversation with the…
You are simply wrong. Loud music is a feature to some . People who don't like noise don't go to clubs. Jamming is also a feature. Perhaps not of hotels , but think about places where wi-fi jamming provides a benefit to people. Have you ever gone into a cafe (to actually buy something) and found you can't sit anywhere because the place is full of people with laptops and other mobile devices? Some haven't even bought a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you call "idiocy" I call "the government is getting it right for once". Just because you own a piece of land or a building doesn't mean you get to set your own rules that supersede the FCC's rules. By your logic one could commit theft or assault, and as long as they are in their own home while they do it, it's okay. Sorry, the law doesn't work that way. Basically, the hotel owners wanted to make a chunk of money…
Never mind the FCC; your local fire marshall might be interested in that giant strawman you're building there. How did we go from jamming to assault?
This stuff has teeth. If you get identified by the FCC, they send you a cease and desist order. If you ignore that, they follow it up with a fine, $10,000 being common in some radio services. Marriott had to pay $600,000.
The teeth it actually has is up to $16,000 a day per violation when you fail to comply with a warning. That is at least one violation per property, perhaps several. When you don't comply they can remove your equipment with force if necessary. And boy, do they do a lot. http://transition.fcc.gov/eb/rfo/ActAct.html
I'm also unclear as to what differentiates a fine from a monetary forfeiture.
This idiocy encroaches on property rights. You should have a right to generate jamming radio waves, if their intensity attenuates to a negligibly low level beyond the perimiter of your private property so that no neighboring property suffers any ill effect. Note that I'm not in support of hotels doing this to their guests. It is a customer relations issue that can be resolved by the free market. Let's make an analogy…
1) You do not own RF spectrum on your property, just like you do not own the mineral rights or the airspace above it. Claiming that you ought to be able to jam RF on your property is equivalent to claiming you ought to be able to shoot down aircraft overflying your property.
2) Jamming is a B2B issue. The customer loses, but the person whose rights have been violated is the legitimate licensee of the spectrum. It's one business violating the property rights of another. Owning a piece of land does not mean you own the spectrum on it; the licensee (effectively) does, regardless of whose land it's on. In this case, the licensee is "everyone who is not deliberately causing harmful interference." Mariott fell out of that definition when they started sending deauth packets. The manufacturer and operator of a cellular jamming device are violating the property rights of Verizon/Sprint/ATT. Just like local police would go after you for breaking and entering at their offices, the FCC will go after you for transmitting on their spectrum.
3) No, the acoustics analogy doesn't work, because what's happening here isn't some kind of "right to communicate." It's an unauthorized use of a communications medium that it doesn't own. You do actually own the physical medium of the air in your building; regulations are focused on what happens at the edge of your property (air quality, sound pressure level, etc.) Still, because the club is a public place with a food-service and liquor license, as well as a workplace, there are almost certainly relevant local ordinances and OSHA regulations that cap the maximum allowable SPL.
4) This isn't a proclamation; it's pretty uncreative application of law that's existed for nearly a century. '
>Any time you heat a frozen dinner such that Wi-Fi is cut out, you're potentially violating. (Panasonic, are you getting this?)
5) Go look closely at your microwave. There's an FCC certification etched onto it somewhere (near the Underwriters Laboratories certification, usually.) The FCC evaluates every RF-capable device sold in the U.S. for precisely that concern, and has determined that the level of EMI from your microwave is acceptable.
It still knocks out WiFi, yes, but that's acceptable because of the way the FCC classifies 2.4GHz. It would deny certification to a device that interfered with spectrum considered more important, like something reserved for military/emergency communication.