Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

fcc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 160 posts

Re: Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

#141

Post by kps »

kazinator wrote: post #136
eli wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> No, you don't own the radio waves that pass through your property on licensed spectrum. 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, logi…

If a microwave, or other device¹, interferes with radio communications, then operating it is illegal and the FCC will get involved to stop it if someone complains².

¹ e.g. http://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/local/2014/06/05/pot-gr... ² http://www.fcc.gov/guides/interference-defining-source

Re: Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

#142

Post by john_b »

kazinator wrote: post #136
eli wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> No, you don't own the radio waves that pass through your property on licensed spectrum. 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, logi…

> "Yes I do"

You most definitely do not. You may own the equipment that emits or attenuates those waves, but the waves themselves are not owned by anybody. They are in the commons and are regulated by the FCC as such.

Re: Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

#143

Post by john_b »

kazinator wrote: post #117

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…

> "This idiocy encroaches on property rights."

Notably, the property rights of the hotel patrons who bring their legally owned property on their person into the hotel and find that the hotel has surrepetitiously disabled it against their wishes for the purpose of creating a local monopoly on a service (internet access) which they have no right whatsoever to regulate or control.

So yes, it does encroach on property rights. Just not in the way you seem to think.

Re: Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

#144

Post by kazinator »

superuser2 wrote: post #140
kazinator wrote: post #117

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…

Every level of this comment is wrong. 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 legit…

> 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.

Your comment is incorrect in two ways.

Firstly, shooting down an aircraft, unless it is an unmanned drone, constitutes murder. So you're equating jamming with murder. By doing that, you're attacking a strawman version of my argument: a weakened version of my point which goes like this: "anything whatsoever can be done by a property owner, on their property".

Secondly, the aircraft is thousands of feet above. So it can be considered not to be on your property on the grounds of being outside of that 3D volume which constitutes your property. You're pretending that I have a strawman definition of "property" which is "the entire shadow volume of a designated patch of land, from the center of the Earth out to infinity". I have not revealed the use of any such definition; nor made any argument about what is the definition of property at all.

Even the air space of a country is not indefinitely high. If you're the government of a country, you can in fact shoot down an invading aircraft, but not some foreign satellite that is passing over, 500 km above.

Re: Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

#145

Post by kazinator »

john_b wrote: post #142
kazinator wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, you don't own the radio waves that pass through your property on licensed spectrum. 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, logi…

> "Yes I do" You most definitely do not. You may own the equipment that emits or attenuates those waves, but the waves themselves are not owned by anybody. They are in the commons and are regulated by the FCC as such.

If I don't own them, that means someone has the right to knock on my door and ask for a return of the energy that I removed by attenuating the waves as they passed through.

Re: Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

#146

Post by kazinator »

malnourish wrote: post #137
kazinator wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They are there because the cafe likely offers free wifi. The cafe wouldn't have to jam wifi there to expel those types, they could just charge or turn off their wifi.

They could also be there even though the cafe doesn't offer free Wi-Fi. Maybe they are getting it from next door. Or maybe they are getting it from a wide-spread commercial Wi-Fi service that they pay for, which has hotspots all around town. Maybe they are on a mobile network.

In other words maybe they are just there for the comfortable seating, and the relaxing smell of vanilla and cinammon, while you, a paying customer, have to have your order "to go" for lack of seating.

If the shop jammed those parasites the heck out of there, I'd consider that an attractive feature of the shop.

Re: Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

#147

Post by logfromblammo »

mc808 wrote: post #86
jsprogrammer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the thread? Someone claimed that net income of an entity causing willful radio interference is irrelevant and that only marginal gains (as opposed to its "core business") made from its willful interference should be considered. I disagreed. I was then told I was "missing the point" and that Marriott does not have evil plans and that they don't/didn't attempt to influence rulemakers to permit their interf…

The point you're still missing is that if an activity is only worth $5 to you, then a $10 penalty will make you stop. It doesn't matter if you're Bill Gates. Also, the penalty should be as small as possible to get the desired outcome. If the penalty is $100,000, you're more likely to put up a fight than if it's $10, regardless of your income or how much you valued the original activity.

It is a bit more complex than that.

Assume that the offending behavior is worth $X to the offender. Also assume that the regulatory fine levied for that behavior is $Y. Further assume that $Z is the cost for the offender to achieve regulatory compliance. For the sake of argument, $W is the cost of resisting the regulator (including fines).

The benefit of passive non-compliance is $X - $Y.

The benefit of compliance is -$Z.

The benefit of active resistance is $X - $W.

A rational actor will choose the option with greatest benefit, so $Y > $X + $Z will encourage compliance over non-compliance. If $W > $X + $Z, that also encourages compliance over resistance. In either case, it is apparent that $Z amount is working against the regulator.

As long as the benefit achieved from continuing the behavior plus the benefit of not having to pay the cost to stop doing it exceeds the external costs of continuing, it will not stop.

But there's more. Assume $V to be the cost of resuming the behavior after it stops. Now, in order to achieve nonzero $X, $V must be paid.

Now the benefit of non-compliance is $X - $V - $Y.

The benefit of compliance is $0.

The benefit of resistance is $X - $V - $W.

That puts a higher cost on the other side of the equation. the ability to rip out, confiscate, and destroy the equipment forces the actor to discount the cost of just unplugging all of its devices, which is what allows the fine to be matched to the benefit from continuing the activity.

Thus, the FCC can look at the mean daily income realized from jamming and set that as the initial guess for a persuasive daily fine. But the FCC also has to make the total cost of fighting them in court higher than just paying the fines, otherwise everybody would fight.

Re: Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

#148

Post by kazinator »

john_b wrote: post #143
kazinator wrote: post #117

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…

> "This idiocy encroaches on property rights." Notably, the property rights of the hotel patrons who bring their legally owned property on their person into the hotel and find that the hotel has surrepetitiously disabled it against their wishes for the purpose of creating a local monopoly on a service (internet access) which they have no right whatsoever to regulate or control. So yes, it does encroach on property ri…

Specious argument. Nobody has touched their equipment, let alone reconfigured any bits not to make it work.

If they actually hacked into the Wi-Fi access points to disable them that way, that would be wrong.

Re: Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

#149

Post by kazinator »

rbc wrote: post #121
kazinator wrote: post #117

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…

Property rights don't apply to radio spectrum. Once that packet leaves the hardware and enters US radio spectrum, it's regulated by the FCC.

"Spectrum" is frequency domain, not time domain or space domain. It is a completely different abstract space. The concept of "US Spectrum" is nonsensical.

A packet does not leave hardware and enter spectrum; that is nonsensical. A packet leaves one space and enters another space.

The spectrum part is already settled in the oscillator inside the hardware.

Control over parts of the spectrum is demarcated by space. For instance, you can transmit in certain bands, but only for a certain range.

Inside an electronic box, all sorts frequencies can occur, as long as they don't escape in excessive amounts.

It's all about space. When two users use the same frequency band in the same space there is a conflict.

Re: Warning: Wi-Fi Blocking Is Prohibited

#150

Post by superuser2 »

kazinator wrote: post #144
superuser2 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every level of this comment is wrong. 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 legit…

> 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. Your comment is incorrect in two ways. Firstly, shooting down an aircraft, unless it is an unmanned drone, constitutes murder. So you're equating jamming with murder. By doing that, you're attacking a strawman version of my argument: a weakened version of my p…

1) So make it an unmanned drone.

2) It remains that only matter, not EM spectrum, within the 3D volume of your property is actually yours.

Post reply on HN