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On Sunday 20 June 2004 07:22 am, Kurt B. Kaiser wrote:
becomes illegal for ISPs of any stripe to pass uncertified packets,
then the only solution is an entirely separate wireless net, or go
back to dailup BB :-(
And there is something wrong with this? Aside from speed issues, there
was a distinctly higher sense of community back in the BBS days. The
wild success of things like Yahoo! Groups and competitors clearly
suggests the need for BBSes aren't over. They merely became somewhat
easier to access.
a real problem. The spectrum will continue to be used, but illegally,
and with today's surveillance capabilities you could expect continuous
enforcement and strife. The RF spectrum has been locked up since the
20's and it's only recently that shared, unlicensed spectrum has been
permitted.
As an amateur radio licensee, I am closely involved with FCC
happenings.
The FCC has supported "part 15" devices since at least before I was
born. It had to, in fact, because all electronic gear produces some
form of radio wave emissions. Part 15 "devices" are merely pieces of
equipment that exploit part 15 power level limitations to achieve
"space
division multiplexing", which permits more units to be sold and not
interfere with each other. It also completely circumvents expensive
FCC
type approval processes (they get it approved for part 15 only, instead
of part 15 + whatever other FCC parts they normally would require).
It will be nearly impossible to regulate the illegal use of 802.11b
however. The frequencies are so high that point-to-point antennae with
high gain characteristics can fit in a briefcase. The point-to-point
nature of such a link makes RFDF (Radio Frequency Direction Finding)
incredibly difficult, if even possible. Multipath may result in
multiple dead-ends.
If usage becomes problematic in the eyes of government,
you can expect additional regulation. Look at the situation with
satellite tv reception, or micropower FM stations.
There are no laws preventing satellite TV reception. Where did you get
this idea from? What happened was that the TV broadcasters started
encoding their video streams using more and more complex scrambling
methods. When TV stations went digital, that's when the hobby fell out
of common practice, since digital modes permits ghastly scrambling
methods to be used without sacrificing video quality. Heck, just
encrypt a simple text file with GPG with a moderate key length, and
just
think of how long it'd take to crack it. While certainly possible to
do, at least with video, the program you're trying to watch would be
over long before the proper decryption key was found.
Also, the FCC has fairly recently opened up for comments a notice for
proposed rulemaking that would re-enable "community FM" stations. I
don't know what happened since, as I'm not really a participant in that
community.
It could happen. Judging from recent events related to SW patents in
Europe, even massive and apparently successful citizen resistance
against the bureau-industrial(C) establishment is futile, so far.
Yup, which is why flagrant disregard for authority is the only concrete
expression of protest we can use now. The days of civilized means of
issue resolution, voting, are over. This is war.
- --
Samuel A. Falvo II
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