On Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:27:35 -0500 Benjamin Seidenberg wrote: [...] > Remember, the airwaves are a public resource. While I agree with you > that you should have the right to do with your equipment as you see > fit in general, this conflict with my rights to enjoy a public > resource and to use equipment I purchased legally. Since it is illegal > to boost the power on these devices (or even use a higher-gain > antenna), I think it's fully reasonable for the FCC to say something > that is basically "You can't put a switch on there between legal and > illegal". Let me (try to) clarify my take on this issue. I agree that electromagnetic wave frequencies are a public limited resource and that some regulations are needed to prevent people from monopolizing them or interfere in a bad way with other resonably shielded devices (electromagnetic compatibility). That's why the law should say "you must not exceed these limits" and this should hold for end-users and device producers, as well. But the law should *not* say "you must not produce a device that can be modified in order to exceed these limits". Firstoff, any device could be modified (more or less easily) so that it eventually exceed regulatory limits: what the heck! I could always reverse engineer the hardware specs and write a brand-new firmware from scratch! It can be really hard to do, but it's not impossible! Moreover, it's not that there's the "exceed limits button": modifying a DFSG-free firmware qualifies as modifying the device behaviour. It should be seen as something that the user is permitted to do: he/she may fix bugs and improve the firmware without exceeding any regulatory limits. If instead he/she does exceed the limits, well, he/she is breaking the law and should be fined for that; I mean, for exceeding the limits, not for modifying the firmware! -- http://frx.netsons.org/progs/scripts/refresh-pubring.html Need to refresh your keyring in a piecewise fashion? ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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