Why is eBay acting as the FCC? I can still buy lasers that will rip through your retina in the blink of a eye from eBay (lol). The equipment is completely legal to own and operate, and transmit with the proper licensing (which is not required to purchase said equipment).
I always found the difference between ham radio operators and computer hacker community interesting.
There is obvious large overlap. Both are nerdy and techy and attract similar base groups. But the ham space is dominated by people who want to be "good citizens" through collective action, while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed".
Perhaps it's the clearest example of "The medium is the message" concept.
The purpose of the restriction is to keep people from using hacked baofengs to chat on bands a) they're not allowed to use unlicensed b) could potentially already be in use by another service eg EMS/fire/police.
There are older UV-5R Baofengs that are in demand because they didn't have the software restriction that newer ones have. It's not that they're hacked, it's that they were not locked from the factory
Are newer baofengs locked down? I thought you can still just hold down 3 buttons while power cycling the radio to unlock TX from 400 to 520 MHz.
Regardless, the Quansheng UV-K5 is largely supplanting the Baofeng as the go-to entry level HT, the 3rd party firmware for that radio is pretty impressive.
Doesn't meshtastic operate in the unlicensed bands? Would that mean they're blocked? The article says they're only blocking devices that need FCC certification and since meshtastic is unlicensed it doesn't need FCC certification as far as I know.
That's the trivially easy part. The hard part is convincing potential buyers and sellers that most participants are legit and not trying to scam people.
RIP all those human person made wideband low noise amplifier boards that cost $5. Now I'll have to buy a $50 minicircuits or whatever alternative with an FCC ID. Despite the fact that I'd only use the LNA for receive, it still could generate and amplifies RF not in the ham bands. So they'll certainly be banned. :\
eBay simply does not have employees with the domain/technical knowledge to decide which things actually require an FCC ID to be displayed. As such they'll just ban anything and everything re: RF, like the example above.
The one possible way out of this mess is that from the FCC https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-rules-strengthen-rul... text it seems like this only applies to incorporated entities with hundreds (for UAVs, etc) or thousands (everything else) of employees. There are probably vanishingly few corporations selling on ebay with more than 1k employees.
eBay makes waaaay too much skimming 10% off every test gear purchase to be closed minded about this, and in any case they have FCC IDs so they aren't under immediate threat.
It might not even be that much depending on what it is. For example, Baofeng radios would have TX in bands they shouldn't have until the FCC cracked down on them coming in.
So they started selling them restricted to ham bands until the user pressed a key combo to factory reset them, which put them back to iirc 136-172.
Ah, yes, that pesky FCC for regulating a public shared frequency spectrum. Im sure everybody will just behave in a vacuum of rules and wouldnt possibly do anything bad.
There is obvious large overlap. Both are nerdy and techy and attract similar base groups. But the ham space is dominated by people who want to be "good citizens" through collective action, while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed".
Perhaps it's the clearest example of "The medium is the message" concept.
Regardless, the Quansheng UV-K5 is largely supplanting the Baofeng as the go-to entry level HT, the 3rd party firmware for that radio is pretty impressive.
Are modern varieties truly locked or just “locked ;)” ?
https://meshtastic.org/docs/legal/
And also for some reason explicitly lists „military aircraft and ships“. Which surely should be allowed just for the comedic value.
> new policy will not apply to gear that operates exclusively on amateur radio frequencies
So almost everything is getting banned, at least the existing hardware.
I believe the FCC ban doesn't apply to used gear but seems like eBay is taking a harder stance.
Edit: as another commenter pointed out devices with an FCC ID will be fine (for now) which I assume covers these. And you can always DIY a frequency converter: https://hackaday.com/2026/10/15/so-you-want-to-make-your-sdr...
eBay simply does not have employees with the domain/technical knowledge to decide which things actually require an FCC ID to be displayed. As such they'll just ban anything and everything re: RF, like the example above.
The one possible way out of this mess is that from the FCC https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-rules-strengthen-rul... text it seems like this only applies to incorporated entities with hundreds (for UAVs, etc) or thousands (everything else) of employees. There are probably vanishingly few corporations selling on ebay with more than 1k employees.
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/amazon-uk-now-requires-p...
Also frankly the effort is kinda wasted, "breaching" on other bands was never hard and with availability of cheap SDRs, easier than ever.
So they started selling them restricted to ham bands until the user pressed a key combo to factory reset them, which put them back to iirc 136-172.