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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?"
Right running a true isp isnt simple. Im pretty sure even in the US you need keep access logs for all inward and outward connections. Copies of all emails entering/leaving your network, both of these need to be yearly logs. Also you either need to make sure that you are a least trying to stop all forms of illegal activities, or at least making it to its not your fault if you clients do do something illegal.Now you could block all the ports where illegal things go on, but that would mean you needing to block HTTP, which would make you the crappies isp ever. Also this would make you liable, as you would block legal forms of access, like say FTP into a website, or a bittorrent linux download. A better idea is a network traffic disclaimer, inside your TOS, saying that you are not responsable for any data moving accross your network, the user themselves are, you provide the network under the aggreement that they dont do anything illegal on it, and if they do be it on there heads. Running an ISP is alot of bother, and dosnt really make that much money, and with the required expenditure vs your profits in this situation would be a bad idea! When i ran on in the UK, i didnt make any profit for a year, and eventually i sold the company for a marginal profit.
Have you read the contract he signed? Thought not.
So shut the fuck up already, asshat.
If i'm not mistaken, the barter system is now illegal in USA, and all trades must be done with 'money.'