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Communications Government Networking Your Rights Online

Marriot Back-Pedals On Wireless Blocking 179

Posted by timothy from the customer-is-right-if-we-get-caught dept.
gurps_npc writes "Marriot Hotels had been illegally blocking Wifi hotspots in Nashville. They thought they owned the airwaves inside their hotel and wanted to charge guests for using them. They claimed to be 'surprised' they were breaking the law. Other hotels have complained to the FCC, asking for permission to do it legally. The FCC had fined Marriot $600,000 for their actions, among other things. They have stopped their illegal blockage, in part because of public backlash and in part because the government told them they were criminals.
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Marriot Back-Pedals On Wireless Blocking More

Marriot Back-Pedals On Wireless Blocking

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  • How could they? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @11:56AM (#48820109) Homepage

    They thought they owned the airwaves inside their hotel and wanted to charge guests for using them

    How uneducated do you have to be on the topic to believe this? Me? I'm betting some corporate lawyer said they could probably get away with it.

    If they sincerely believed they owned those airwaves and could do this, they utterly failed to ask anybody who knew anything about it. That level of ignorance is either epic, or willful.

    I think this is more likely a case of them knowing damned well they weren't supposed to, hoping they'd get away with it, and now pretending like it was all an honest mistake. At some point, someone said "ummm, guys, we can't legally do that" and was told to STFU.

    I'm glad this got smacked down. And I wonder if movie theaters and other venues won't get caught doing the same thing.

    It's about time corporations got reminded they aren't the ones defining what's legal and what isn't.

    • "was that wrong? should I not have done that?"

      yes, its now a meme. a lame meme, at that.

      but marriot became 'george' and acted all surprised when they were called out on their shit.

      damned big business. in the US, they think they are god. and we pray to them, LIKE they are gods.

      in a way, its our own fault for giving too much power to big business.

      will we ever learn????

      • Re:the 'costanza defense' (Score:4, Funny)

        by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @12:18PM (#48820421)

        /Oblg. Seinfeld clip

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      • Re:the 'costanza defense' (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @12:31PM (#48820619) Journal

        Dunno if we "pray" to them - it's just that most folks are tech-ignorant and are preyed upon because of that. I noticed crap like TFA first-hand.

        I was at a Marriott in ATL (okay, Alpharetta) in late 2013, discovered crap like this (yet they were more than happy to charge $14.99/day for access to their SSID), and promptly decided to change hotels after the 2nd day (I was too busy to swing it on day one). I spent the rest of the week (and my employer's money) elsewhere. I specifically mentioned the wifi shenanigans as a reason why I changed rooms (especially since the La Quinta down the street was far less expensive, the hotspot worked perfectly, and atop that, their wifi was free of charge.) Reimbursement was not a problem after I explained why, and the company I worked for at the time decided to take their future business elsewhere (as a tech company, network access ranks as pretty damned important...)

        Vote with your dollars, and even if traveling on business, be damned certain that your employer is aware of why you're doing so, which translates into less money for the offenders. It won't be fast, it won't be easy, and inertia allows asshat corporations to continue their asshattery for awhile, but if the issue is important and broadcast widely enough, withholding patronage does indeed work.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sudon't ( 580652 )

          Wow, I'm amazed they would charge their guests for wifi access. Even the cheapest, sleaziest, motels have "free" wifi. Are they the only hotel doing this? Reminds me of the time when some motels made their televisions coin-operated.

          • Wow, I'm amazed they would charge their guests for wifi access. Even the cheapest, sleaziest, motels have "free" wifi. Are they the only hotel doing this? Reminds me of the time when some motels made their televisions coin-operated.

            It varies widely across the levels of hotels, but there are some patterns:

            The really sleazy motels generally charge for Internet (some don't even have it).

            Stepping up to stuff like Comfort Inn, Econolodge, etc., wifi is generally free. Their customers are price-sensitive and are likely to be annoyed at being asked to pay extra for much of anything.

            The next step up is the lower tier of business travel hotels, like Hampton Inn and such. They generally have free wifi, same rationale as the previous. Howe

          • There's one big criterion for piling on the additional charges: are your guests likely to be on a fairly liberal expense account? Try pulling stuff like that on somebody spending their own money and they're going to be out of there, never to return. Nobody with a big expense account stays at the sleazy motel.

        • In the big corp I work for, there are lots of people who travel and we keep an internal review site for the hotels we visit. Free and working internet is the primary bit of information everyone looks for. If you don't have that, you lose business from this particular megacorp.

      • Actually I was quite happy about them doing it (Score:5, Interesting)

        by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @01:29PM (#48821363)

        I know I'll get hammered for saying I was in favor of what marroitt did but here me out. When I travel, I'm terrified of connecting to hotel networks. I don't really know which of the many possible SSIDs that I see are the bonified hotel network. And since it's normal on Hotel networks to do some DNS redirection to hand you off to the authorization site, you really can trust anything that masquerades in that way either.

        Thus I'd gladly forego the trivial inconvenience of them blocking my wifi tether to my phone network (to bypass the hotel network), if they would take charge of their airwaves and block all rogue hotspots in their building. Peace of mind.

        Now the litmus test here would be, are they just doing that to make money by taking away something I have for no extra cost (my cell phone tether) or do they really have my interests at heart in squelching hostile wifi hotspots? And that's really easy to figure out. If they allow short range blue tooth then they haven't taken anything away from me. I can still tether just as well as I could before.

        So I gain peace of mind and lose nothing of value if they do this. Why should I not like this.

        Now I suppose someone could dream up an edge case like say a LAN party or maybe some poor-mans meeting where one fellow is hosting all the others on his little conference room server. But that's so narrow a case ocmapred to the millions of guests all of whom just want a safe casual ad hoc connection to check their e-mail. Lan pary people too cheap to pay for the connection can probably figure a workaround anyhow.

        • Isn't this just the same as bars that jam cell phones. It's a customer service. People go there to escape their own ambient connectivity and the grating rudeness of person at the next table talking on their cell. It seems very logical to me that businesses should be able to control the airwaves in their own spaces.

          • Any bar jamming cell phones in the US is operating illegally. They may be *blocking* cell phones with farady-cage wall panels or similar, but that's a completely different situation. Primarily because, unless you have those signal-blocking walls anyway, active jamming will affect everybody on nearby premises as well.

          • Airwaves are owned by the public (in the U.S.A.)and the public ALONE.

        • Even if they could make the case that all airwaves inside their hotel belonged to them, their blocking could affect people near their hotel as well. How can they tell that SOME_WIRELESS_HOTSPOT is located in one of their rooms as opposed to in another building right next door?

          • Even if they could make the case that all airwaves inside their hotel belonged to them, their blocking could affect people near their hotel as well. How can they tell that SOME_WIRELESS_HOTSPOT is located in one of their rooms as opposed to in another building right next door?

            As a thought experiment, if they could technologically create a reliable perimeter to their blocking would you then be in favor of it?

            Technically it is possible to do such a thing either by clever directional electronics or by simple agreement with the neighbors. They might not go that extra mile of course but they could, and in fact they pretty much would have to if their neighbors complained to the FCC. Furthermore, most of the marriots I have stayed in are isolated buildings so the strawman you describ

            • I don't think this is a strawman because the method of blocking that they used (sending de-auth packets to any network connection they saw that wasn't theirs) could spill over past their boundaries even if it was just someone driving past their building.

              If they somehow managed to contain the blocking to within their walls (a feat that I don't think they'd strive for), I'd still oppose it because they really don't own the airwaves inside their building. If you accepted that they owned them, you'd open the d

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AK Marc ( 707885 )

              As a thought experiment, if they could technologically create a reliable perimeter to their blocking would you then be in favor of it?

              No. They are allowed to create a perimeter. But they don't own the airwaves within their hotel. They can block all signals at the perimeter. But it is (And should be) illegal for then to jam to cell-phone hot spot. If they have an issue with people pluging in routers to their wired connections and offering WiFi over that, it's a commercial, not criminal issue, and they should be required to use civil enforcement (contracts, fees, but not jammers and force).

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          " Why should I not like this."

          Typical American. It's all about what you like, and that's how society should mold itself... based on your likes and dislikes and your need for "peace of mind".

          "Lan pary people too cheap to pay for the connection can probably figure a workaround anyhow."

          Why should I have to figure out a workaround (which, unlike you, I don't blissfully pretend exists) to be allowed to use the airwaves as the FCC has mandated I be allowed to? Why does your need for "peace of mind" trump my leg

          • Smoking in public spaces was as much your "right" not long ago. What the law allows is subject to renegotiation. In this case there is a compelling argument that unrealized value to the public might be had by controlling wifi access. There are also compelling arguments that say this could undermine some other virtues as well. After all this looks a little bit like the encroachments on net neutrality and compelling cases have been made for keeping the net open. But it may be you who is arrogant to asser

        • The easy solution would be simply to put a card on the nightstand giving the name of the safe hotspot you should connect to. And/or name the hotspot "Mariott Internet - all other hotspots should be avoided"

          >So I gain peace of mind and lose nothing of value if they do this. Why should I not like this.
          Well, aside from the $15/day they're charging you to connect, even if you already have your own personal hotspot anyway.

          • The easy solution would be simply to put a card on the nightstand giving the name of the safe hotspot you should connect to. And/or name the hotspot "Mariott Internet - all other hotspots should be avoided"

            Warnings in my hotel room Do me no good in the lobby or bar or front desk when I'm trying to pull up my reservation on the e-mail.

            So I gain peace of mind and lose nothing of value if they do this. Why should I not like this.
            Well, aside from the $15/day they're charging you to connect, even if you already have your own personal hotspot anyway.

            As I noted, blue tooth works fine for tethers. Blue tooth requires pairing so it's not anonymous like Wifi. USB is often convenient as well, especially when I'm charging things. Blocking wifi doesn't inconvenience me at all for tethering.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AK Marc ( 707885 )

          I know I'll get hammered for saying I was in favor of what marroitt did but here me out. When I travel, I'm terrified of connecting to hotel networks.

          Most of the "good" ones will have an Ethernet cable in the rooms. If it scares you, plug in. Or look up the WiFi service in the services directory. Your laziness/apathy doesn't constitute an emergency.

    • Re:How could they? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by houstonbofh ( 602064 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @12:08PM (#48820267)
      The new "anything is legal if no one notices" plan in corporate America.
      • That's new? Where have you been?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by swb ( 14022 )

          Somehow it seems like an even worse version of the Gilded Age's above the law mentality. You might argue that era really was a "wild west" in which there wasn't much in terms of law and regulation and people really kind of did what they wanted. The Federal Government was much weaker than it is now and the concept of regulation was pretty weak at any level.

          These days there's more government and regulation (for good or for ill) and it should come as no surprise to anyone that many things are subject to rule

          • Somehow it seems like an even worse version of the Gilded Age's above the law mentality.

            Only because it is affecting you now, and the stuff in the past is....well, in the past.

            Someone said, "when you have lower back pain, wars in Afghanistan are meaningless." That is the trap you're caught in.

      • ...this is new?

        Look up Standard Oil, Andrew Carnegie, etc etc.

    • Re:How could they? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mrbene ( 1380531 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @12:13PM (#48820353)

      How uneducated do you have to be on the topic to believe this? Me? I'm betting some corporate lawyer said they could probably get away with it.

      I don't think that running a hotel requires any knowledge about spectrum licensing. The move to block was probably motivated on two fronts:

      1. Potential for additional profit
      2. Support requests from guests having problems with their personal hotspots

      Also, when it comes down to it, once they'd made the initial plans to roll out blocking, the best possible path forward (legally, at least) would be to operate as if you fully thought it was legal, and to not document any dissent.

      "Innocent mistake" is a much more defensible position than "informed infringement."

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gameboyhippo ( 827141 )

      I think this could be a legitimate mistake. Who owns the radio waves inside one's property is a bit more abstract than it may seem. For example, if I blocked all radio waves from inside my residence without affecting people outside my residence, am I breaking the law? My gut would tell me no. So it would make sense that one could expand that belief to their privately owned hotel.

      And this isn't the only example of a non-intuitive confusing law. For example, let's say you want to collect rainwater to water yo

      • Re:How could they? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @12:54PM (#48820927) Homepage

        I think this could be a legitimate mistake.

        So, imagine you're a multi-billion dollar corporation with business interests in many countries. Failure to investigate the legality of this is a risk to shareholders.

        If the board of a company with a market cap of over $20 billion dollars is too stupid to find out if this plan is legal ... they're idiots.

        Because those people don't do much without checking with the lawyers to make sure their asses are covered.

        So, no, I'm not willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to them. I believe someone knew this to be illegal, and decided to do it anyway -- possibly with the hope that someone would side with them.

        I'm not prepared to cut them any slack. It's their damned job to understand this stuff if they're going to implement it as policy.

        If ignorance of the law is no defense for me, then I sure as fuck expect a multi-national company to be held to the same, if not higher, standard.

        • I bet you're that cop who gave me my one and only ticket. In case you're not, let me explain. I got pulled over for having expired tags. The conversation with the police officer went like this:
          Cop: I pulled you over for expired tags.
          Me: Really? Can I take a look?
          Cop: Sure.
          Me: Well crud, I guess you're right. I never got the notice that I needed to renew my tags.
          Cop: Well you look at your car every day! I'm not cutting you any slack!

          It turned out that the DMV had my address typed in wrong so I never got the

          • But I'm not one of those people who assume guilt until proven innocent.

            When it comes to corporations, I'm firmly in the "assholes until proven otherwise, and even then only temporarily on this one issue".

            From TFA:

            The company found support for its claims from the American Hotel & Lodging Association lobby group, which accused the FCC of trying to tie Marriott's hands at a time of a growing number of cybersecurity threats.

            So, after they had this pointed out to them, they and a lobby group proceeded to ke

            • I think it was more of a case of, "Hey you're wrong!" "No, we're not!" "Yes you are! Here's a fine!" "Okay, I guess we are."

              In any case maybe someday a great visionary and ethicist like yourself would be able to run all the corporations. You'll show them!

              In the meantime, flawed humans will have to run corporations, make mistakes, and debate on the legality of issues. And your potential will just be wasted typing at a computer. So tragic. Somebody hire this guy today! Let's not waste his potential!

              • If you wish to keep believing large corporations do this shit by accident, you are free to.

                Me, I'm long since past being able to accept this is anything but calculated malfeasance.

                Corporations absolve these people from legal responsibility. Which means it somehow seems to resolve them from any moral responsibility.

                I think your average CEO is a sociopath and a narcissist, who surrounds themselves with similar people, and then hires lawyers to explain all of the angles to them.

                Oddly, I find the same thing tr

                • I think Hanlon's Razor [wikipedia.org] needs an update:

                  Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by greed.

                • Makes sense. Anyone who has the talent to make a lot of money (and not have given any to gstoddart) and has won an election (except for the ones gstoddart was rooting for) is totally evil!

                  Are there other blanket groups of people who are evil that I should know about?

          • Now is there a chance they willfully broke the law? Sure. But I'm not one of those people who assume guilt until proven innocent.

            By definition, you are willfully breaking the law if you intentionally do an action, and that action turns out to be illegal. It doesn't matter whether you knew it was illegal or not.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        The key difference is that the Marriot is open to the public while your home is not.

    • At some point, someone said "ummm, guys, we can't legally do that" and was told to STFU.

      I've been in meetings like that before. I suspect it was more along the lines of this.

      Suit 1: So, we can block all the wifi hot-spots and make everyone pay us $10-$100 a day for access. Any downsides?

      Suit 2: Yeah, it is illegal.

      Suit 1: So, what happens if we are caught?

      Suit 2: A fine, something like a million bucks tops.

      Suit 1: LOL, and this thing could bring in five grand a day in revenue per hotel. No brainer, Approved!

      IMHO, this is why the fine should have been much much bigger. I'd wager serious money

    • How uneducated do you have to be on the topic to believe this? Me? I'm betting some corporate lawyer said they could probably get away with it.

      You're assuming waaaaay too much knowledge on the part of the perps here. It's almost certainly a case of a hotel manager thinking this is just the same as not allowing patrons to bring their own beer to a conference but requiring them to buy from the hotel bar. There's no active malice, just ignorance. Good that they got slapped down and straightened out but assigning active evil intent isn't warranted.

      • Except this wasn't done with them posting some sign and a guy at the door making sure no one brought it beer. This was done with a pretty advanced technological system that you simply can't buy off the shelf. A system that can tell the difference between their own hotspots and "rogue" hotspots. Someone actually had to do research on how to do this and set it up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      They thought they owned the airwaves inside their hotel and wanted to charge guests for using them

      How uneducated do you have to be on the topic to believe this? Me? I'm betting some corporate lawyer said they could probably get away with it.

      Not some lawyer, some MBA in a boardroom.

      And yes, they full well knew it was borderline illegal. They just didn't give a shit.

      Their business is to squeeze people for money until they squeal. They dont care if a few pesky laws get in the way, its not like they can be arrested or anything. At worse they'll have to give out a few free nights to people who complain (which in itself is a good thing as it inevitably leads to people spending money at the hotel).

      This cost the hotel chain nothing, and prob

    • Using similar logic, since they thought they "owned the airwaves" then they could theoretically jam all cellphones in their building. The California State Prison System has found out that this is illegal FWIW.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • They would have been more effective if they had used the "camel's nose" approach.

    For example:

    Marriott executive wants hotels to be able to block Wi-Fi so they can make $$$.

    Marriott executive knows it will be politically stupid for Marriott to boldly ask for a rule change.

    Marriott executive has a friend who runs a business that makes outdoor equipment that runs on or near WiFi frequencies.

    He suggests to his friend that the friend should ask for an exemption to allow businesses that use this "unlicensed spect

  • I’m always amazed and disgusted that higher end hotel chains charge for things like Wi-Fi while cheaper players give it away for free. Similarly it seems only fast food restaurants even offer Wi-Fi and free at that. This has always seemed backwards to me. Why do the people charging more nickel and dime to death for every little extra thing? Evidently since they start with a less cost sensitive clientele so they think (rightly it seems) they can get away with it. I may have answered my own question

    • simple explanation: those that attend more expensive hotels are more WILLING and ABLE to pay 'screw you' wireless fees than us normal working stiffs.

      also, those at big expensive hotels are often corporate fucks and those can just 'expense it', and not care.

      • Hey, us corporate fucks have travel budgets to watch, too!

      • Actually it's more like the old people staying at fancier hotels get this smug feeling of "My hotel has wifi, and it only costs an extra $20. This is awesome." Everyone else, mostly the younger crowd, are at cheaper places and know that wifi should be free so those hotels can't get away with screwing them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jopsen ( 885607 )

        also, those at big expensive hotels are often corporate fucks and those can just 'expense it', and not care.

        Expensing stuff is still work... these days it's just a picture with a smart phone... but having to pay and deal with it as taxing. I tend to always look for places that has free wifi...

  • IT (Score:2)

    by jtara ( 133429 )

    It was probably some IT dude that volunteered that he could buy some cheap equipment off of Alibaba that would block WiFi other than their own and word worked it's way up the clueless chain of command.

    Said IT dude (or dudette... naw, they'd know better - anybody watching IT Gang?) probably got a nice weekend getaway as reward - and then fired after the shit went down.

  • Glad to hear they were punished, but ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @12:30PM (#48820599) Journal

    Just to play devil's advocate here.... The newer wireless access point products on the market like the Cisco Meraki gear encourage this sort of behavior, with their "Air Marshal" capabilities. They're designed so you can actively DoS wi-fi routers that appear on your network, "unauthorized".

    They even have an extra radio integrated in them for this functionality, separate from the ones handling the rest of the wireless traffic.

    So arguably, the I.T. folks who set this whole thing up for the hotels might have done so with intentions of preserving the integrity of the paid hotel wi-fi network, and not because "they mistakenly thought they owned all of the airwaves inside the hotel building". It's still an asshole move to set something like this up, IMO ... but a hotel chain that charges for its wi-fi could reasonably argue that it's in its best interests to ensure its paying customers get a good, reliable signal with it. That could be compromised with hundreds of guests setting up their own APs in their rooms.

    • Thing is that their provided Wifi was complete crap; their system was likely jamming itself. That is in fact how it got discovered. A guy tried to setup his own hotspot because the Marriot provided wifi wasn't working worth a tinkers dam. When he noticed his hotspot jammed he started calling shenanigans. The real lesson here is that if you create a good infrastructure and its not terribly expensive charge for the wifi they would have turned a profit and likely still be able to jam everyone else. But when yo
      • I might for example have my MacBook with me, _and_ have a tiny Apple TV to plug into the hotel TV, and play movies from my computer via an ad-hoc network (nothing going to the outside, just WiFi between Mac and Apple TV). Apparently they would be blocking that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Holi ( 250190 )
      Except that's a completely different tech, Meraki does not block any frequency. The Meraki AP's target the rogue AP's by sending deauth's, not by jamming frequencies. https://kb.meraki.com/knowledg... [meraki.com]

  • Incomplete summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by NoNonAlphaCharsHere ( 2201864 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @12:32PM (#48820635)
    We're not talking about them blocking wireless hotspots in guest's rooms, that's just overlap. The issue is that they were blocking wireless hotspots in convention space they were renting out, so the individual conventioneers and exhibitors HAD to buy the Marriot wi-fi package at exorbitant prices.

    • We're not talking about them blocking wireless hotspots in guest's rooms, that's just overlap. The issue is that they were blocking wireless hotspots in convention space they were renting out, so the individual conventioneers and exhibitors HAD to buy the Marriot wi-fi package at exorbitant prices.

      How could they be sure it wasn't an exhibit attendee. Attendees don't sign agreements before entering that promise not to use personal WiFi, so what if the hotel stomped on them? What about someone physically outside the convention space, but close enough that due to signal reflections the hotel equipment decided was inside the hall? Is stomping on them OK since they seemed to be in the hall? I am sure there are more examples where innocent people could get targetted by such a device.

      • Those people are just collateral damage in the war to maximum revenue. They say you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, and you can't make yacht-buying CxO salaries without breaking a few laws. So a few people get bad wifi. They should just be richer so they can buy better service.

    • Regardless about the specifics of the case, it's illegal to actively block someones wifi, for whatever reason. At least in the US the only people that can do that are the military and FCC. The FCC could authorize someone to do it, but by all appearances they will not ever allow that. The FCC is chartered to protect the airwaves and people actively jamming other people (even if it's targeted jamming) are damaging the airwaves.

      I point you to the ordinary guy driving around with a cell phone jammer that got hi

  • I've stayed there (Score:3)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @12:42PM (#48820785) Journal

    I stayed at that Marriot 6 or 7 years ago. They wanted an exorbitant amount for their wifi (I believe it was $9, and I only needed it for less than an hour). I was able to sit next to a window and access a neighboring hotel's wifi to do my quick email check. Maybe someday they will grasp the concept that by charging a reasonable price they would get more sales, and thus overall make more money off of their wifi.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hodr ( 219920 )

      I once setup a hotspot using my phone for a co-worker to browse on his computer while we waited at the Airport for a flight (I had a no shit real unlimited plan at the time). When he turned his computer on in the hotel room that night he synced right up, assumed I must be in a room close to him, and went ahead and used that connection.

      The next day at the job site I told him that not only was I not in an adjacent room, but that I was in a different hotel a block or two away (I am never quite sure what count

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Polo ( 30659 ) *

      Why does everything have to be an "in-app purchase" type transaction?

    • ... I only needed it for less than an hour. I was able to sit next to a window and access a neighboring hotel's wifi to do my quick email check. Maybe someday they will grasp the concept that by charging a reasonable price they would get more sales, and thus overall make more money off of their wifi.

      Or maybe one day people will be able to go more than a 1/2 day without a "quick email check" (or whatever they "need" to do online - all the time). Seriously people, learn to disconnect.

      • Or maybe one day people will be able to go more than a 1/2 day without a "quick email check" (or whatever they "need" to do online - all the time). Seriously people, learn to disconnect.

        Why? You can only stare at the cheap hotel room art for so long. TV sucks. Books are good, but the net has a lot more. In some locales it's worthwhile to leave the hotel and find other stuff to do, but in a lot of places I travel for business, there really isn't much point in that.

        When evaluating a hotel room, I rate the importance of Internet service just below the importance of having a bed. If your Internet service doesn't work, I'm leaving.

    • They wanted an exorbitant amount for their wifi

      The thing is, Marriott rooms rates is so low they have to compensate with something expensive.

  • It's basically a denial of service attack which is a criminal offense.

  • They have stopped their illegal blockage, in part because of public backlash and in part because the government told them they were criminals.

    (1) The Government telling a large corporation it's behaving badly toward regular people and (2) that corporation caring - that's adorable.

  • The key thing here is that they're not just blocking inside the hotel, they're blocking outside the hotel as well as radio is a broadcast medium.

    Its utterly antisocial of them to do this as it will affect other properties near their hotel and they should be completely ashamed of themselves, along with the hucksters that sold them that shite.

  • I'm pretty glad the FCC is putting the screws to this, jamming any radio signals is not right...

    That said, if anyone ever does encounter this again don't forget there's still a way to tether - just follow the base definition of the word, and use a PHYSICAL tether. On an iPhone at least (and I imagine the same is true for Android) you can tether over USB also if your phone is connected to a computer via a cable.

    That doesn't help tablets of course, but most people tethering would probably be using a laptop.

    B

    • Bluetooth is also a possibility but I think it would be slower than USB.

      I can confirm tha tyou are correct on both points: It works for this purpose, and it is slower than USB. It might solve the tablet problem, though. I say might because i haven't tried it, but I have tried laptop to phone via BT.

  • ...because Marriott owns the air in their hotels. Why should pesky freeloading guests expect to breathe for free? Damn Commie bastards.

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