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Protest against the EU radio lockdown

blog.mehl.mx

11–20 of 79 posts

Re: Protest against the EU radio lockdown

#11

It would be much easier to protest for the creation of a law that punishes the attempt to create or the creation of bad laws. After all when you propose a bad law, you can just propose it again and again and again until it gets implemented, then good luck getting rid of it. As for "how do you define bad laws?". We know it's possible because we have constitutions. We know they can be expanded. We know it's possible to…

the issue is the usual: eu is so far removed from constituents it's pointless to try and save it.

Re: Protest against the EU radio lockdown

#12
post #9

ENJOY the EU reg suffocation.

The EU becomes a worse and worse idea every year. It was good while it lasted. This will be the first year I vote for an anti-EU party locally. It pains me, but it's been enough already :/

Are they cool with you installing whatever you want on whatever you own - or are you in "cutting off the nose to spite the face" mode?

Re: Protest against the EU radio lockdown

#13

What would be the motivator for this kind of clause? I can't imagine radio-device manufacturers would appreciate the additional expense, and at least some of them must benefit from consumers buying those products specifically for customization. Are the national governments pushing for more radio control? Is there some kind of crisis of radio abuse? Or is it an indirect way to give governments more punishment tools, b…

Allowed frequencies and transmit power varies in the world, so the cheapest way sell to all markets is to set a few different bits in firmware to make it fit for those regulations. That could be a factor.

This is what this change is about. It follows similar regulations in the US, btw. Smartphones should be mostly fine if the radios are controlled entirely by the baseband. Then changing the main OS cannot have any effect on the compliance of the device.

Re: Protest against the EU radio lockdown

#14
post #10

What would be the motivator for this kind of clause? I can't imagine radio-device manufacturers would appreciate the additional expense, and at least some of them must benefit from consumers buying those products specifically for customization. Are the national governments pushing for more radio control? Is there some kind of crisis of radio abuse? Or is it an indirect way to give governments more punishment tools, b…

Basically the EU has discovered SDR (Software Defined Radio) and wants to limit its use. The usual excuses are given, electrical safety, emission on protected bands...

Right, but why would they want to regulate SDR?

Re: Protest against the EU radio lockdown

#15
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically the EU has discovered SDR (Software Defined Radio) and wants to limit its use. The usual excuses are given, electrical safety, emission on protected bands...

Right, but why would they want to regulate SDR?

FUD. Fear, uncertainty, doubt

Re: Protest against the EU radio lockdown

#16

What would be the motivator for this kind of clause? I can't imagine radio-device manufacturers would appreciate the additional expense, and at least some of them must benefit from consumers buying those products specifically for customization. Are the national governments pushing for more radio control? Is there some kind of crisis of radio abuse? Or is it an indirect way to give governments more punishment tools, b…

I haven't read the EU proposal, but for the corresponding US rule, the motivation was to reduce interference with other radio users. In many of these products, the radio is capable of frequencies, power levels, and modulation modes that are not legal, and the device relies entirely on the firmware not choosing an illegal combination to stay legal. People have used third party firmware to allow choosing illegal radio settings.

The regulations were written in the US to be compatible with open source and customization, only requiring that outside software not be able to set the radio to transmit outside the legal limits that applied to that type of device.

A router manufacturer does not have to lock down all the firmware to satisfy this. They can make it so that the "set radio parameters" part of the firmware is separate from the rest, with only the former being restricted. This is the approach the FCC encourages, rather than simply locking down the whole thing.

In fact, when TP-Link was making routers that could operate outside legal power levels, and the FCC went after them, the consent decree they agreed to required TP-Link to work with OpenWrt and the radio chipset manufacturers to ensure that they could build compliant routers without locking out third party firmware.

Re: Protest against the EU radio lockdown

#18
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU becomes a worse and worse idea every year. It was good while it lasted. This will be the first year I vote for an anti-EU party locally. It pains me, but it's been enough already :/

Are they cool with you installing whatever you want on whatever you own - or are you in "cutting off the nose to spite the face" mode?

Unless of course it violates the arbitrary, imaginary monopolies on abstract works and ideas.

Re: Protest against the EU radio lockdown

#19

It would be much easier to protest for the creation of a law that punishes the attempt to create or the creation of bad laws. After all when you propose a bad law, you can just propose it again and again and again until it gets implemented, then good luck getting rid of it. As for "how do you define bad laws?". We know it's possible because we have constitutions. We know they can be expanded. We know it's possible to…

But how can groups debate if a law is good or bad, isn't proposing such a law the way the debate is started? Maybe some bad laws have good intentions but some poor wording can have bad consequences. Also why do we think constitutions are perfect, don't countries have to update them periodically to fix them?

Then let courts take stated intent of lawmakers into account and throw out cases where the application of the law is different from the stated intent.

Re: Protest against the EU radio lockdown

#20

What would be the motivator for this kind of clause? I can't imagine radio-device manufacturers would appreciate the additional expense, and at least some of them must benefit from consumers buying those products specifically for customization. Are the national governments pushing for more radio control? Is there some kind of crisis of radio abuse? Or is it an indirect way to give governments more punishment tools, b…

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