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Fonera 2 To Launch With Extended Functionality
The next installment in the Fonera router family is set to make its debut in a couple of weeks, and the additions to the hardware are relatively impressive. Promising full support for networked storage, automatic downloads, sharing of a USB 3G connection, and a few other perks in addition to the normal range of functionality found in the Fonera routers this package packs quite a punch. "Like the original Fonera and Fonera+ routers, the principals of this hippie-love-in-styled product still apply. You buy the router and hook it up to your internet connection as normal. The trick is that the router shares a part of your bandwidth on a public-facing connection. Other Fon owners can log in and use this public network for free. In turn, you — as a Fonera owner — can travel the world and use other Fon hotspots. It's a neat idea and everybody wins, except the money-grabbing telcos."
can travel the world and use other Fon hotspots
You're going to have to.
Can anyone tell me how this affects/is affected by the new data retention laws coming out? The "open wi-fi" defense? Stuff like that?
THL phish sticks
Fon is against the TOS of most ISPs.
Fon is illegal in many areas.
Fon isn't as nice as just running a free hotspot.
Most Fon users signed up back in the day just for the free router, which they promptly flashed with DD-WRT.
Most new Fon users will be attracted to the "Make money with Fon!" option, and WiFi WON'T be free to the masses, but only to other Fon users.
There's a reason Fon never got of the ground, and that's the simple fact that truly free WiFi is easy to come by, especially in areas likely to harbor Fon users.
Just wait... pretty soon it'll be illegal to provide an open accesspoint.
Because, you know, terrorists (or even child pornographers!) might use it.
The sad thing is, I'd be actually scared to put one of these up. People wardrive around my neighborhood all the time during the day... what if one of them was transmitting kiddie porn? Would I be legally liable? Even if I wasn't legally liable, would the potenital inconvenience of the legal issues outweigh the benefits of this product?
What if I live in Australia -- would I have to retain logs of all the traffic? And when will Americans be required to do the same?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I can't speak for anyone else, but it's against my ISP's Terms of Service to provide others with access to my internet connection.
Even if I just left my access point open, I'd be in violation.
If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot immediately.
I'm interested in what the legal ramifications of 'sharing' your internet connection is when someone you share with does a questionable activity. I'm talking stuff like child pornography, online fraud, etc.
I'm sure they exists, but why not per-IP password protection, with bandwidth limitations.
Yours / Unlimited / %Password%
Friendly Neighbour / 5mb/512kb / WhozYerNabor
Public / 1mb/256kb / *
Or a limited amount of free/public ones, like 5, that all share the same allotment of 2mb/368kb or something, seems ridiculous to me why anyone would "sign up" for this, when any router can toss out free IP's if you let it, I dont see what good an account will do unless it's only for accountability which can't really exists unless you catch them in the act, or the router can keep a huge log file, then try and prove it wasn't you...
Why not create a router that has a sort of temporary/really limited connection, that allows anyone to post comments to the router or something: "hey can I use this connection?" then the host gets it, %Comment% [Allow][Disallow] from there, any regular/trusted/liked user can be granted their own account on the router. Automated messages/[non]access when your away/asleep/etc...
But Im sort of just rambling...
No, it's 14 year olds sending cellphone pictures unclothed to each other. It's Lolita, and it's a little boy whose mother took a picture of him when he happened to put his penis though a chain link fence and winds up arrested because the photo developer became freaked out. It's Traci Lords, doing adult films when she was 16 and making a bundle at it.
Is there absolutely disgusting porn involving abused children? Absolutely. Is anything classified legally as child porn automatically worth the furor and bother and anathema which the phrase automatically carries? No, not when a postal inspector can send unordered child porn to a porn house, get a warrant for it, and manage to convict them even though they never opened the box. (The charges they got convicted on weren't child porn, but the child porn raid from the entrapping postal inspector was how they gathered evidence.)
Widespread availability of open wi-fi might make everyone a little safer from legal persecution as it provides more anonymity to both users and subscribers of internet services. Witchhunting prosecutors assume that an ip address must be the owner unless clearly proven otherwise; an assumption hard to disprove to those without technical knowledge. It's obviously untrue, as many different people use the connection at different times, even with no wifi connection at all. And wifi can be easily hacked. A closed wifi connection is secure only because there are other easier open wifi networks around to attack.
More widespread user anonymity helps because a prosecutor must have a clearly defined target to proceed with a case. Yes, the owner of an ip address has some responsibility for the usage on the account, but that should be covered under the contract TOS with the provider, but not by some legal fear of prosecution. Unless every device has it's own unique unspoofable ip address (ipv6?), then the link between a user and the ip address is too tenuous for any legal prosecution. Anything that breaks that link should help.
Fonera should be encouraged, even if you don't directly benefit. If more people have fonera or open wifi spots, it can't hurt, and it may indirectly benefit you if the some prosecutor knocks on your door, as it helps break the link between the many users of an ip address and the subscriber. Even people who don't believe in open wifi will benefit, as their closed wifi networks will be more secure by contrast.
For fonera subscribers, the direct benefit is that fonera gives a solid reason to have an open access wifi spot, so in a way, it does give some covering legal protection, despite the higher risk.
I don't really like the fonera scheme. The only reason i even know such thing exists, is because someone brought me a device with the fon sticker on it and i started researching how to remove their customized openwrt with either true openwrt or dd-wrt, which i did successfully, and the device became a regular wifi ap.
Fonera is not even a mesh, its plain regular wifi access, for which you have to have an account with them (centralized), by means of paying a fee, or sharing your wifi. Terrible.
The hardware they use is good, strong and compact, atheros based iirc. These are the same used in the much better open-mesh project, which is what meraki could have been before it corrupted itself into oblivion.
Open-mesh lets you mess with the hardware all you want, does not force you to authenticate to third parties, does not forbid you from modifying/installing your own software. Its the opposite of Fonera and Meraki, in the spirit of the Free Software they run things with; they just provide you the tools (hardware and software) to roll your own wifi mesh and do with it whatever you want, no third parties involved.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
It's been already illegal in Italy for quite a while. Yes, in its most pure form i.e. not if you have an open access point and somebody does something evil, no. You are breaking the law just by having an open access point (with internet access), even if nobody ever connects to it.