Please read and reply to the FCC

[Jason Griffey]

Hackaday reports on something that's of VITAL importance to this community...the right to modify the firmware of devices containing radios is under threat from the FCC. Please read this, and if you can, please follow the links and file a comment with the FCC on behalf of the LIbraryBox project.

http://hackaday.com/2015/09/02/save-wifi-act-now-to-save-wifi-from-the-fcc/

Thanks!

Jason Griffey

Creator & Director

The LibraryBox Project

http://librarybox.us

[Guy Grolimond]

Not sure there is reason for the alarmism as the FCC just wants to keep routers legal ie. things like signal strength........
http://betanews.com/2015/11/15/fcc-says-its-legal-to-hack-your-router/

[Jason Griffey]

That was not particularly obvious in the first draft of these regulations, however. :-) 

Also note that it isn't at all clear how they propose to allow for limited hacking of routers...once you can modify firmware, all bets are off, and increasing power or moving transmissions to a non-standard channel are part of the possibilities. I can easily imagine good-faith reasons to do so (a programmer in the US that is testing code that will deployed in other parts of the globe with different channel/power rules, for instance). 

It's all well and good to say this is the purpose of their rules. I don't believe there's a technological way for them to differentiate between modifying the firmware and not modifying radio characteristics...currently that restriction is a norm of the community, and adding a legal layer to the norm strikes me as being ripe for selective enforcement and other badness.

I'm glad they recognize the issue. I hope they realize all of the other ones. 

Jason Griffey

Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Harvard University

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[Matthias Strubel]

Exactly like Jason said.

The proposal by FCC means, that the wifi should be working the legal strength and frequencies. As those values naturally differ between countries, the manufacturer of wifi devices can do 3 things:

1.) prohibit flashing different software- or use software which needs to be hardly reverse engineered (other laws breaks maybe)

2.) Bring hard-wired regulation conform hardware devices for each country

3.) hard wired regulation which needs special drivers to adjust it.

I think it will end up as 3rd or 1st.

So the proposal is still not optimal for us

Matthias

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