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I'm not a lawyer but I do read FCC regs for fun... A passive faraday cage on your own property that's not open to the public probably isn't an issue. As far a

I'm not a lawyer but I do read FCC regs for fun... A passive faraday cage on your own property that's not open to the public probably isn't an issue. As far as size goes you would be subject to local building codes of course. Once you get into active jamming however that requires you to transmit and to transmit you need a license from the FCC. The right to transmit anywhere in the US is under the FCC's jurisdiction and doesn't have anything to do with the landowner. It may seem strange to divorce airwave rights from property rights but it's not that different from water rights or mineral rights or airspace rights, which have a long legal history of being divorced from landowner rights. When you open your faraday cage to the public it gets a little tricky too, because if a "licensee" has the legal right to be somewhere according to you and the legal right to transmit or receive according to the FCC then you can't really legally prevent them from doing both at the same time. This idea, which is called the "OTARD rule" in some situations, is interpreted to force landlords to allow tenants to install WiFi and satellite equipment on rented property for example. There probably is an FCC rule that would prevent stores or movie theaters or similar public places from jamming via a Faraday cage, but since actively jamming is cheaper I am not aware of any actual instances of this type. So in that sense it's a test case, but I'm reasonably certain which way it would go.

baddox 12y ago
> It may seem strange to divorce airwave rights from property rights but it's not that different from water rights or mineral rights or airspace rights It seems very much different to me, because all of those things have very obvious externalities for your neighbors. My example, where you build a faraday cage and test a signal jammer inside that cage, has no externalities (assuming a hypothetical perfect faraday cage). There would be no measurable signal an inch outside the faraday cage, and certainly none at your neighbor's property.
- drewcrawford 12y ago
  Well like I said, I don't think anybody's coming after you for building a faraday cage for yourself. If you do it in a movie theater though, it presents a safety issue, and that's a negative externality.

baddox 12y ago

> It may seem strange to divorce airwave rights from property rights but it's not that different from water rights or mineral rights or airspace rights It seems very much different to me, because all of those things have very obvious externalities for your neighbors. My example, where you build a faraday cage and test a signal jammer inside that cage, has no externalities (assuming a hypothetical perfect faraday cage). There would be no measurable signal an inch outside the faraday cage, and certainly none at your neighbor's property.

drewcrawford 12y ago
Well like I said, I don't think anybody's coming after you for building a faraday cage for yourself. If you do it in a movie theater though, it presents a safety issue, and that's a negative externality.