Re:Ask HN: I’m an FCC Commissioner proposing regulation of I...
by zamadatix on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @11:57PM
(#37401182)
The (particular) law isn't actually aimed at stopping those who just want to go into their garage and produce illegal interference out of malice. E.g. people can create 200 Watt space heaters in their garage easily but it'd be odd to then conclude CPU regulations wouldn't stop people from doing bad things with CPUs.
That is to say, it's infeasible the average someone will make a working Wi-Fi radio which uses the Japanese channel 14 (involves changing what is sent by the radio, not just raising the frequency... unless you want to accurately re-adjust the frequency inside of your smartphone too) but it is reasonable to expect the average someone might just load some open firmware from the internet which allows them to set the channel to 14.
I will say I agree it's different than a lot of regulation. On the other thing I think that has more to do with radio space itself being very different than most things (i.e. a shared public resource) than inconsistency.
That is to say, it's infeasible the average someone will make a working Wi-Fi radio which uses the Japanese channel 14 (involves changing what is sent by the radio, not just raising the frequency... unless you want to accurately re-adjust the frequency inside of your smartphone too) but it is reasonable to expect the average someone might just load some open firmware from the internet which allows them to set the channel to 14.
I will say I agree it's different than a lot of regulation. On the other thing I think that has more to do with radio space itself being very different than most things (i.e. a shared public resource) than inconsistency.