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The question is whether abusing a standard is considered a form of interference, which is covered by the FCC. At this point though, it's just something that has
by Salgat 2y ago
The question is whether abusing a standard is considered a form of interference, which is covered by the FCC. At this point though, it's just something that hasn't been tested in courts yet.
47 CFR § 15.5(b): “Operation of an intentional, unintentional, or incidental radiator is subject to the conditions that no harmful interference is caused and that interference must be accepted that may be caused by the operation of an authorized radio station, by another intentional or unintentional radiator, by industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) equipment, or by an incidental radiator.”
47 CFR § 15.5(c): “The operator of a radio frequency device shall be required to cease operating the device upon notification by a Commission representative that the device is causing harmful interference. Operation shall not resume until the condition causing the harmful interference has been corrected.”
47 CFR § 2.1: Harmful interference: “Interference which endangers the functioning of a radio navigation service or of other safety services or seriously degrades, obstructs, or repeatedly interrupts a radiocommunication service operating in accordance with this Chapter.”
- avidiax 2y agoYour devices going faster than (but not excluding) other devices wouldn't count as "harmful interference". If you somehow adjusted the definition so that this would count as harmful interference, then every competing service would also count (microwaves, bluetooth, baby monitors, 2.4Ghz cordless phones, even other WiFi, etc.).
- lazide 2y agoAnd this is why Apple won’t get in trouble, but someone selling a Wi-Fi jammer on Amazon will.
- Salgat 2y agoYou say that with confidence, but there's no legal precedent for whether that's true since it does degrade other device's performance by violating the standard. That's the question brought up that you can't answer, unless maybe you're a lawyer for the fcc.
- lazide 2y agoThe number of lawyers Apple can muster is an order of magnitude more than the FCC can, and the situation with Apple is worst case borderline. Apple isn’t likely to get in trouble with this unless a lot of things happen related to the situation that haven’t yet - and likely never will. Worst case, someone complains the the FCC asks Apple nicely to be more polite, and they then will be. Intentional interference here doesn’t mean ‘slightly tweak behavior from a given standard’, it means things like ‘intentionally create nasty interference to block other users’ or ‘recklessly spam the band with enough noise no one else can use it’. Notably, most cheap IOT wifi devices already do massive spamming of the band and terrible behavior that makes it nearly impossible for other users of the bands to work well, and they aren’t getting in trouble. See everything from cheap Wifi security cameras to ‘smart’ fridges.