[Battlemesh] TP-Link FCC deal

[Elektra]

Hi all!

Very well said, Daniel. I'm new looking for the "like" and "retweet" button in my email client.

One point: I don't tend to assume conspiracy if stupidity is the most likely motivation ;)

Elektra

Am 2. August 2016 11:49:03 MESZ, schrieb Daniel Golle <daniel at makrotopia.org>:
>On Tue, Aug 02, 2016 at 07:14:15AM +0300, Jonathan Morton wrote:
>> 
>> > On 2 Aug, 2016, at 01:05, David Lang <david at lang.hm> wrote:
>> > 
>> > If the post later in the thread is correct, the fact that they got
>in trouble for their stock firmware allowing too much power when they
>were trying the claim that they were preventing that by blocking open
>firmware is very interesting to see.
>> 
>> It’s even possible that this practical demonstration that closed
>firmware was no more trustworthy than open was a final deciding factor
>for the FCC.
>
>... because people were able to change the country code and thus use
>channel 12 and 13 which aren't part of the FCC's ISM band.
>If they expect this type of deliberate transgression to be prevented
>by $vendor while still allowing the user to use 3rd-party firmware,
>that would really force device-makers to use DRM-techniques (like an
>efuse to only allow setting the country code *once* at the time of
>import...?) *and* isolate the whole wifi subsystem either in hardware
>(Marvell, Intel, ...) or by introducing a $vendor-controlled hypervisor
>(like imgtec/MIPS suggested). Both is very, very ugly from a FOSS point
>of view, devices which were running (almost) 100% free software (and
>thus allowing for indepenent review) will end-up to be as 'free' as
>in Android or other Open Source jails surrounded by proprietary walls.
>
>I'm disgusted by how this debate is being used by certain players to
>get rid of competitors, pretending this could be solved by being 'well
>prepared' or by making 'better products' or any other random claim a
>marketing fart could smell like. Ok, I'm less disgusted by marketing
>departments of $vendor to try that, because that's their job and more
>disgusted by tech media outlets to buy that (I hope they were at least
>well paid for being part of that campain).
>
>I reckon this whole mess could have been prevented if vendors would
>have populated the calibration partition as intended by the chip
>vendors instead of ignoring it in order to not produce for a specific
>target market and have the user set the regulatory domain herself.
>
>In the end, the whole story is quite detached from reality, because
>deliberate transgressions will always be possible by modifying the
>hardware (think: crazy antennas) and cannot be prevented in software
>only.
>
>It's like asking car-makers to build cars which automatically respect
>the speed-limits -- and oops, in order to do that they'll have to
>track and transmit everybody's location, make it impossible to access
>the engine and other critical parts and give an excuse for a lot of
>uglyness to the dominating players. Half-dying dinosaurs like Ford and
>GM could bash on Hyundai for not being prepared for the legal
>requirements early enough and lobby to have their products banned.
>
>Actually, the car-industry recently provided a very good exmaple of
>what happends if you trust legal compliance to $vendor and allow them
>to obfuscate the code...
>
>
>Cheers
>
>
>Daniel
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