[Battlemesh] EU law question

Joseph Bonicioli nettraptor at awmn.net
Tue Apr 17 11:08:32 UTC 2012


We used to have this for license free frequencies but it was a mere declaration form. 

2006 EU harmonised Greek Law states that using those frequencies requires no license and does not state any declaration procedure. This is for 5GHz and 2.4GHz. We have not looked up other frequencies.

On the practical side, also talked about this with our  regulator, It sounds crazy to declare a few hundred thousand of links. 

For me personally it would be easy to declare my 20 something directional links from all my wifi nodes. 

What I would very much like to see is the documents pile in the Regulators office!

The best way to fight this stupid measures is to grow your communities and follow those procedures! :)

Now about the data retention and user id bit there is a grey area in the process. Now roughly according to what applies here, you need to be an ISP or a WISP with a General ISP License before you are required to get involved into this data retention rules. In rough terms you need to get a General License when you get involved commercially and you start selling services and access. For CWNs that offer access to a "closed" group of members the picture is still very grey and maybe it should stay that way. 

Further to the above I will express some personal thoughts about a lot of those interpretations and claims that i have talked about with people (including some people from here) and read about in the past. 
Extracts from laws with no references to amendments or previews laws, personal interpretation of Law and comments on EU law without verifying with regulators, lawyers and experts is something that does no favors for all of us.

I would rather see collective action in interpreting, collecting and exposing issues in groups with experts rather than spreading "rumors". Not to say that any of you don't have a point or that your comments are not true. I do not know that. I speak in general. I also know of stories about fines being imposed on individuals for free net access and of people being involved in crazy disputes around EU. All those need to be tackled responsibly.

Those matters many times are delicate enough so to handle responsibly or they can easily backfire. I would love to see people interested in those sort of matters, do hacking sessions on policies and law. We would at least have definitive answers as to where we stand with a lot of those issues. I am not an expert myself nor a lawyer, but I have been involved in many legal fights in our network directly or indirectly. Not a wise man yet but you do not need to be wise or an expert to see that there is a good reason why we should focus on doing a good job in clarifying all those issues. 

There is no harm in asking directly your regulator, lawyers and have extensive discussions with people that do influence the law making process. I am sure you will have better results and get things clear for you. Do keep us posted though because we are all in a continual learning process and it is a very interesting subject  .... al least for some :)  

And yes... if you have to fill a lot of forms, request a thousand of authorizations etc, please do so and share the fun part of the results :) 

Regards,
JB

On Apr 9, 2012, at 5:55 PM, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:

>> In Italy is necessary to request an authorization for doing links at
>> 2.4, 5 and 17 ghz unlicensed frequencies.
> 
> Yeah.  That's sucks.
> 
>> It's probably a mere formal thing
> 
> It's a purely formal thing until somebody decides they want to shut you
> down.
> 
>> I was wondering how does this work in the other european countries.
> 
>> Do you have to do this in your country?
> 
> AFAIK, the unlicensed bands are unlicensed in France, i.e. you're free
> to use them without authorisation.  (Some of the 5GHz bands carry more
> restrictive conditions, if memory serves.)
> 
> Howerver, there is still legislation that should make it fairly easy to
> shutdown a typical community network.  For example, Article 6 of the
> LCEN law of 2004 [1] might or might not forbid anonymous access to a network:
> 
>  II.-Les personnes mentionnées aux 1 et 2 du I détiennent et conservent
>  les données de nature à permettre l'identification de quiconque
>  a contribué à la création du contenu ou de l'un des contenus des
>  services dont elles sont prestataires.
> 
> (I haven't looked at the LOPPSI law yet, I'm sure there's plenty more in
> there.)
> 
> Looking forward to seeing you in court, together with any café owner who
> didn't check your id before giving you Internet access,
> 
> -- Juliusz
> 
> [1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCEN
>    http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000005789847&dateTexte=vig
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