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FCC Fines Another Large Firm For Blocking WiFi
AmiMoJo writes: Another company is learning about the fine points of Section 333 of the Communications Act, which prohibits willful interference with any licensed or authorized radio communications. This time, M.C. Dean, who provided the Baltimore Convention Center's in-house WiFi service, were caught by the FCC sending deauthentication frames to prevent hotspot users maintaining a connection. The complainant alleged that M.C. Dean's actions were identical to those that had earned Marriott a $600,000 fine only weeks earlier.
Clunky title!
Thats another fine fine you've fined me in to.
yep.
The fine was fined - by the Department of Redundancy Department.
Fine
FCC Fines Ralph Fiennes, Larry Fine, and Richard Feynman a Mighty Fine Fine for Blocking WiFine
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Would a Faraday Cage also get you fined?
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Fining the fines... News at 11.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
I think the word you're looking for there is "issues". Thanks for playing.
FCC Employee Larry Fine Fines Another Large Fine.
I don't understand what motivates people like that to just fuck with people.
I don't understand why 802.11 has de-auth packets that can be sent from layer2 clients, a simple ap side timeout would work fine.
I realize that, in practice, this would probably be a 'watch the world burn' option; but it would be a glorious thing if people who can't obey the rules of operating a Part15 device on the ISM band lost the right to do so, at least for a time sufficient to induce agonized penitence.
This is shared spectrum, guys, with certain rules to help keep it usable for everyone. If you don't like that; perhaps you'll enjoy only being able to use such dedicated spectrum as you are able to buy or lease for a while. If you want to treat it like you own it; you can. For a price.
n/t
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
USB tethering is great when it works too, but that also seems to be rarely implemented these days.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The FCC dropped the M.C. Hammer on M.C. Dean?
for fining the fine finers have been fined.
We heard you like fines so we fined your fine so you can... oh, never mind.
They blocked wifi from 2012 to 2014, and the estimated sales of this company were over $700 million in 2013. M.C. Dean charged $795 to $1,095 for access to the Wi-Fi it provided depending on whether the services were ordered in advance or on-site..
From the timing implied, it sounds like the Baltimore Convention Center heard of Marriott's case, looked at the relatively minimal fine involved for how widespread the practice was, and thought, "huh, not a bad idea, really. We could do that." Hopefully, the FCC's fine has enough of a sting to it to make it seem less worthwhile to anyone else considering the practice.
We will never be the change to the weather and the sea
The tpp will not let the FCC fine an foreign owned event center / hotel as they can calm that it hurts there profit from there paid internet.
I wonder, could this law protect us against the telco 5G that is going to come and squash our wifi?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
It seems like much of the problem originates from the limited spectrum available to wifi, which makes it hard/expensive to cover large, dense spaces, especially if people are bringing in their own network devices.
This leads to "rogue ap suppression" which I'd wager is motivated as much by network operators tired of getting screamed at because "the conference room wifi sucks" and thinking that suppressing hotspots will improve it as much as it is by greedy operators who believe that crushing hotspots will improve profits.
Good thing we paid: $375,380,313 this year for the FCC, so that they could accomplish this.
A MÃÃse once bit my sister...
the above is reason enough for slashcode to get their unicode shit together.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Compared to what these companies rake in, these fines are meaningless. Either slap them with something that runs in the area of at the very least 5 times what their prospective revenue is (call the IRS and let them "guess" revenues, they're pretty good at it... at least when it comes to guessing high) or simply leave it be.
Fines that are a penny for ever dollar illegally gotten are cost of operation, not fine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When tin-foil hats are prohibited, only .... oh, wait ....
They own Openband. They had a contract with a developer giving them a permanent monopoly on internet and phone service in a neigborhood. Customers didnt like this. The FCC ruled that this contract was null and void. Mc Dean then sued their customers and the county representatives who ruled against them. They lost.
Alot more articles on this.
http://www.leesburgtoday.com/public_safety/courts/lansdowne-hoa-awarded-legal-fees-in-openband-lawsuit/article_ba432bca-050e-11e3-beb6-001a4bcf887a.html
So it's cost of business.
This isn't going to stop until until executives start getting Aaron Swartzed and get hit with hundreds of years of prison time for thousands of counts of interfering with others' private network and conspiracy to interfere with others' private network.
...are the scum of the earth. Talk about extortion and greed at its finest. They'll be more than happy to sell you internet for a few hundred dollars a day. This makes me so happy to see them get slapped.
Why would you buy that version of the phone and go with that vendor?
Because that service provider managed to land an exclusive deal with the smartphone constructor, and is thus the first vendor to sell the lastest "iShiny version {N} GS", several month ahead of the competitor who are stuck with only selling "iShiny version {N-1}".
Note: If this is sold bundled with phone plan, it is considered illegal in most European jurisdiction.
Phone are always available to be purchased with no restriction and no locks.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Good thing we paid: $375,380,313 this year for the FCC, so that they could accomplish this.
If you're not happy with what the FCC does, stop letting industry players sit on the FCC and give them real power. The fine fine they fined here may be enough to hit a hotel, but it's a pittance to the big companies.
I've been to a few hotels where I had trouble getting my personal hotspot feature to work, and ended up having to switch to USB tethering to use it. I never really gave much thought to whether the hotel might be at fault; I just chalked it up to "tech shit sometimes breaks" and used an alternative method to just get it done because I had to get online and didn't have all day.
Of course, this would screw people over who just have a personal hotspot device with no USB capability. Luckily, my phone can do WiFi, USB or Bluetooth and the latter two work well (though bluetooth is a bit slow)
If you want your wifi to be used in-house only, then put up a Faraday Cage around your building (grounded sheet steel behind the drywall). You could even just use 1mm tin from siding and ground it well. Users inside get a strong signal, users outside might occasionally get a signal, but extremely weak and spotty. Keeping routers toward the inside walls would help with this too. And its not illegal. 600,000 can buy a lot of tin.
Compared to what these companies rake in, these fines are meaningless. Either slap them with something that runs in the area of at the very least 5 times what their prospective revenue is (call the IRS and let them "guess" revenues, they're pretty good at it... at least when it comes to guessing high) or simply leave it be.
Fines that are a penny for ever dollar illegally gotten are cost of operation, not fine.
The goal is not to string up a company to be hanged (i.e., goes bankrupt) because of a ruling enforcement change. The goal is to get them to change behavior and use the news cycle to send a signal to others. Increasing fine amounts or increased enforcement is enough to make it understood to others to follow suit quickly.
If you push too hard the industry will put their crosshairs on your agency and spend money to simply sink your efforts (lobbyists, "sympathetic" judge, etc).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Like a SCIF, or, in fact, pretty much everywhere classified information is handled. No cellphones, no thumb drives, no storage media of any kind, no cameras, etc.
Yep, wireline phones to call for help ARE permitted.