08/11/2006
Legal Selling – Illegal Use
I was at an electronics store this morning and a guy walks in and asks for a wireless monitoring/security camera. The salesman happily starts showing him some products. The cameras ranged from 400mW to 1W power operating at 2.4GHz. The salesman told him that the 400mW is for a distance of “2 floors” and the 1W is for a whole building (!?!?!). These cameras are probably using the same frequencies that community wi-fi networks are allowed to use.
Say that you don’t care about community wireless networks and the interference that such a device would cause to them, there still is a HUGE issue behind this sale:
If the guy buys one of them, and operates it he is instantly doing something illegal, since the maximum power of wireless devices at 2.4GHz in Greece is set at 100mW. So the salesman has the right to sell something illegal that the buyer is not supposed to use, or could be imprisoned if he used it. That’s like legalizing the sales of drugs but imprisoning people that use them. This kind of scenario used to happen with the “anti-police-radars”. Lots of electronics shops used to sell them, but if you got caught byt the police owning one of those devices you could go to jail. So the government lets shops make money out of selling something illegal that could cause customers law problems. Shouldn’t shops be also punished for selling these “electronic drugs” ?
Go Greece go! Excellent trade laws.
Filed by kargig at 16:07 under General
3 Comments | 4,047 views
Παραβλέπεις (ή ξεχνάς) το ότι το όριο των 100mW είναι για εξωτερικά links—εντός ιδιωτικής περιουσίας κάνεις ό,τι θέλεις… Οπότε με το που αναφέρει ο πωλητής κτίρια και ορόφους είναι καλυμένος…
There are many controversial situations like the one you describe in Greece and elsewhere.
The people writing laws in greece forget that microwaves don’t really know the difference between indoors and outdoors.