Alternate proposal for FCC's (indirect) ban on free software : require the release of code
I am a member!
Press release:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151014005564/en#.Vh4ojflViko
Letter to FCC:
http://huchra.bufferbloat.net/~d/fcc_saner_software_practices.pdf
This is part or related to the Save Wifi campaign we initiated (and funded the press release of, which was expensive, it's thousands of $$$ USD).
Twisting this topic into a rapier to use against spam and unwanted calls:
Does this mean that I will/will not be able to identify the IPv6 address of an objectionable caller/domain and block it ?
There's gotta be some practical way of shutting down spam & unwanted phone calls. I hope that IPv6 is it.
Every electronic gadget that I have had for many years has a unique IPv6 address imprinted on it. There should be no Internet or phone traffic allowed without IPv6 identification. And I want a little box into which I can enter that unwanted IPv6 address to achieve peace in my lifetime. Think how effective a thumb drive with an updatable IPv6-blocking address book could be.
How does this topic handle the forging of those IPv6 addresses ?
Shouldn't they be hardwired and immutable on all electronic equipment ?
I am a member!
I think your connecting things that have nothing to do with each other.
I think you make a confusion between the MAC address (layer 2 of the OSI model) and the IP address (level 3 of the OSI model)?
My ThinkPenguin Wi-Fi USB dongle's Information pop-up has no entry for an IPv6 address, but its stated "Hardware Address" has hexadecimal IPv6 notation. That's the identity that I think should be immutably hardwired and blockable.
That's the MAC address. IPv6 addresses aren't the only things indicated by series of hexadecimal integers.
How can I stop this ban on free software? Does this mean that even ubuntu will be affected? So all free software would be illegal?
I am a member!
Yes- pretty much. The problem is that the FCC is mandating manufacturers lock down devices such that only the manufacturer can install an operating system on the device. If the user trys to do it they will fail because they don't have the keys to do so.
ThinkPenguin and myself have been very very active in fighting this. We're funding a campaign against this and we've been advertising the problem to our customers (you can actually go to libre.thinkpenguin.com and see that for yourself). I've also posted the same issue several times on the Trisquel forms. We've gotten a massive amount of publicity for the effort and it's basically taken on a life of its own now. There are *many many many* people participating now.
Quite frankly Josh (FSF), Eric (prplfoundation), one of the people involved with bufferbloat, myself, and a few other people were instrumental in getting this off the ground. Now there are multiple groups and dozens of organizations and people behind the effort to undo the problem. I'm only playing a tiny tiny role in all this right now (fortunately). I spent the past couple months focused on this and now there are a lot of other very active people of which have pretty much taken over.
I'm still working on media a little. Though other people have taken over a lot of this now (in the past couple weeks). I'm (as part of ThinkPenguin) left mostly funding a good part of it now (ie funding the publicity that is). Basically the cost to get the big media's attention runs into the thousands of dollars for just one press release. That is what the current focus has been.
I should also probably mention the names of other participants, but there are actually too many to list and I'm not great with names to begin with... so I won't. But I will say *thank you* to all those who are now participating. Your making a big difference.
Chris
I read their docker document that they submitted to the FCC and the sponsorship they gather is huge!
I am a member!
Yea- Dave was in a much better position to organize the developers to get behind this. I'm glad he took part. He saw others jumping on it and started working on stuff as well. It really took quite a few people to pull all this off and most of it was really even just the dedication of a small handful- maybe half a dozen people or so- and then some participation by a few dozen others. None of it is/was terribly organized. It was just a bunch of people forming basically two or three groups/mailing lists and then everybody going off into there own worlds of existence here or there to further the effort. We're not actually in agreement on everything- but ultimately it's close enough.
For example: We were really not wanting to make any proposals to the FCC and Dave was. The reason being I believe was we can get more people to oppose it if there is solution. That is to say we really just want the FCC to drop it. In a sense Dave is hi-jacking it in an effort to do more. While I don't think anybody objects to the more part it could hurt the end results in getting the FCC to back off.
Anyway- I'm still not convinced the FCC is listening to us. They responded October 8th and basically said we don't want to do X and yet they still have rules and proposed rules that will result in causing the problems.
We'll see what happens. If ThinkPenguin is hit we'll go down screaming and point out every hypocritical thing the FCC has said about not wanting to ban "open source". The problem is probably won't do us any good. The rules/laws matter- not what the FCC says. But even if they don't attack us for not locking devices down the end results are still a problem if upstream uses it as a reason to refuse release of code (they already are using it at as a reason by the way- according to Dave- or I believe it was Dave- who indicated this).
Be careful what you wish for. The Do-Not-Call list and Caller ID are useless because callers can forge the ID's that appear on our Caller-ID enabled phones. That stifles commerce carried out over the telephone. Should the FCC ever figure out a way to require revealing the IPv6 address of phone devices to the recipients of phone calls, then it's imperative that the IPv6 address be immutably associated with the calling device in order for Caller ID and the Do-Not-Call list to become effective.
Hey Amenex, this thread is about the FCC forcing hardware manufacturers to prevent end users from installing their own choice of software on devices they own, if they have wifi capability. The issues you raise about blocking spam and nuisance calls are worthy of consideration, but as Chris has already indicated, they have absolutely nothing to do with the topic of this thread. Perhaps you could start another thread to discuss them?