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Caveats In Reselling DSL Bandwidth To Neighbors?
chrisleetn writes "I'm contemplating getting Slashdot (Speakeasy) 6Mbps broadband or something similar and offering wireless internet access to my neighborhood. Speakeasy even has a plan to allow this. What should I be aware of as far as legal/business/regulatory implications? I know I need to restrict obvious illegal stuff and probably p2p to be safe, but is the local cable modem company going to come after me for competing with them? Has anyone done this who can offer some insight?"
This is one of those cases where some simple common sense comes into play.
Alright, so you not going to be an illicit reseller, but an authorized body capable of forming a legal binding agreements with your customers.
ISP's do this all the time... they simple resell bandwidth they have purchased from their providers.
Basically, write out what services you will provide and clearly define what you won't allow. It needs to be clearly written and agreed upon by your clients.
After that, you simply need to track ip addresses (assumming DHCP will be in iuse), keep mail logs (if you provide smtp/pop service) and generally ensure that you can track illicit activity back to the source if requested to do so by a court order.
It's simply a matter of accountability and this is something you can easily do given it is a service you can provide.
Anything else is just extra, but it would probably be a good idea to track bandwidth usage.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
If you go through Speakeasy, they set it up so that the people you sell it to are their customers, and not yours. The deal is that the more you sell, the less you pay. It's a good deal.
Charging lets you assign value to your service, and assigning value is a key way to keep customers in line while covering your nut.
In terms of the cable modem companies "coming after you," you need only worry about legal competition -- no franchise agreements come to mind that completely lock out all broadband competition. It's worth noting, however, that Verizon has backed legislation in Pennsylvania to prevent municipalities from setting up free broadband services -- a bad step in the direction of market control.
If you *are* going to charge, then you've got some additional costs to consider:
Good luck!
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
- You're now earning income. You at least have to tack this onto your normal income tax to be legal. If you're making enough money, maybe you also have to get a business license. - If you do have to get a business license, you have to deal with zoning laws. If this is a small business being run out of your home, you can't meet with clients at your home, at least in some states. There's a good chance you don't care about either of those, as maybe you're not going to pay taxes or file for a business license, etc, but you asked, so it's something to consider
This should answer your questions. It's all good.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Speakeasy handles the billing and credits your account, you just provide the wireless setup. People need to read about Speakeasy's WiFi Netshare Program before assuming stuff.
At least here in Australia if you provide communication services which cross a property boundary then you have to be a licensed telecommunications carrier.
I believe that in NZ this is not a difficult thing to do (about as hard as applying for a passport) but the Australian Government is not fond of the idea of administring millions of telecommunication carriers, and has made the process much more difficult.
I think if you dig deeper in your juristiction you will find that similar rules apply. Remember all the regulations which apply to carriers: having to provide wiretap facilities, etc. Legally, this could be quite messy
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Speakeasy even has a plan to allow this.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
1. You don't have to worry about the cable company. The cable company will only get pissed if the local government tries to provide broadband, because it would be unfair competition.
2. Triple check that the AUP for your DSL allows you to share and resell the service. Then check again.
3. If you are reselling, you will probably have to charge for sales tax, check your local tax authority.
4. There are probably FCC rules about the equipment that you can use and the maximum power that it can irradiate. Of course, if you are using turnkey COTS equipment, the odds are that it is FCC legit.
5. Check your neighbors and see what is the interest in this kind of service. If there is too little interest then you are setting yourself for failure, since your location is fixed and there is only so far you can reach.
6. Write your own AUP and make sure the CYA provisions are in bold, plain english a second grader can understand. Then take the AUP to a lawyer to read and see if he can poke holes thru it.
7. Be prepared for the technical support burden, even if most of your customers are geeks.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
Or he might want to check out m0n0wall. It not only has the aforementioned feature, but much more. Traffic shaping/prioritizing, wireless support, along with everything you'd expect a router to have, and more. Not only that, the entire operating system fits onto a 16mb compact flash card, runs off a CD using a floppy disk for settings, or simply runs off a standard hard drive. I'd highly recommend it.
everyday is another shooter.
It's absolutely amazing how many people don't RTFA or research anything, making statements like "Check your AUP" and things like that. For those people, I say: he is talking about a specific ISP (Speakeasy) that specifically PERMITS sharing, and even has a program set up (NetShare) to handle billing and such for you. Under this particular program, Speakeasy handles all the billing for you, and even gives you an additional IP address to provide to your "customer".
To answer the question, here are some pointers from somebody who is actually doing Speakeasy NetShare.
You do not need to worry (from a layman's viewpoint, IANAL, so check with your family attorney if you are worried) about filtering access. In fact, if you read the fine print of Speakeasy's documentation, you are not really permitted to do so. I was told specifically by a Speakeasy rep NOT to do this, even though I had the ability to.
Since Speakeasy will provide you with an IP address specifically for that customer, it will be easy (should fit hit the shan) to segregate your traffic from theirs. Speakeasy will be billing them seperately, so they will have their address and contact information should the RIAA/MPAA/LE come around. From a legal perspective (again, IANAL), you are no different than your local phone company.. you are only providing a conduit, passively, between the ISP (Speakeasy) and that ISP's customers (your neighbor using NetShare).
Over here, I have three specific ways of getting access. You can be plugged in to my personal LAN (which, BTW, is hardline). You can be accessing a free and open node (which runs NoCat), which is highly filtered and proxied. Or, you can be on the WPAd side of the house, which is the resale network.
Don't hesitate to participate in NetShare. It's an awesome way of reducing your monthly bill AND helping your less tech-savvy neighbors to get off AOL. Both are very worthy causes.
If you are in the united states, you should be extremely careful not to put yourself in the position of judging the legality of what your neighbors are doing. I have operated several open Internet systems, and the lawyers have specifically instructed me not to filter stuff preemptively, becuase this would vastly increasy my liability for anything I did happen to let through.
It does seem to be okay to do things like rate-limit people, or traffic shape so as to prevent one person from DoSing another, and probably to block forged IP addresses (if your ISP doesn't do that already).
However, I think you're in for a world of pain with the RIAA if you assume responsibility for making sure your neighbors don't violate copyright. Sure, you might be able to block P2P traffic, but who knows what other things they'll go after people for in the future. Maybe your neighbor will put up a web page on how to de-copy-protect CDs, and the RIAA will decide this caused them $500,000,000 of damage. Do you really want to be responsible for that?
Do some google searches for "prodigy case". And definitely don't try to institute any kind of blocking without first consulting a lawyer.
Assuming the poster lives within the United States, there are no special legal requirements in most cases. Simply declare the income on your tax return, and expect to owe the government some money come April (just like you're SUPPOSED to do when you sell stuff on eBay, or hold a yard sale, etc.).
The caveat here is *you* are the business - which means if someone wants to sue "the provider", they would be suing YOU, and anything you own is fair game in said lawsuit.
/~mikeg
It is 100% free, he sets the price, Speakeasy bills the neighbors. Speakeasy gets more subscribers for the same bandwidth, the primary subscriber gets money off his bill. That's all there is to this. The person essentially becomes a PoP for the ISP at this point.
"Perl 6 gives you the big knob" -- Larry Wall