Slashdot Mirror
UK Bill Would Outlaw Open Wi-Fi
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from ZDNet about another troubling aspect of the UK's much-maligned Digital Economy Bill:
"The government will not exempt universities, libraries and small businesses providing open Wi-Fi services from its Digital Economy Bill copyright crackdown, according to official advice released earlier this week. This would leave many organizations open to the same penalties for copyright infringement as individual subscribers, potentially including disconnection from the Internet, leading legal experts to say it will become impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access. 'This is going to be a very unfortunate measure for small businesses, particularly in a recession, many of whom are using open free Wi-Fi very effectively as a way to get the punters in. Even if they password protect, they then have two options — to pay someone like The Cloud to manage it for them, or take responsibility themselves for becoming an ISP effectively, and keep records for everyone they assign connections to, which is an impossible burden for a small cafe,' said Lilian Edwards, professor of Internet law at Sheffield University."
Relatedly, an anonymous reader passes along a post which breaks down the question of whether using unprotected Wi-Fi is stealing.
Film at 11, streamed live via. WiFi!
First post. I've given my credit card details, scan of passport and my fingerprint to the clerk. Can I have WiFi now please?
It really depends upon how it is that they do it, but at the end of the day open access points aren't any more the cause of infringement than ones that one pays for. At any rate people shouldn't have truly open access points to begin with. I know that with PF you can set things up to redirect to a log in page that has them agree to the rules. You could always require they put some form of identification in which should get you off the hook for making it anonymous. Unless the new requirements would require an ID check. Which I'm sure there's some reasonable way of dealing with.
This is mostly just an excuse to shake people down for their change than actually fight any kind of real problem.
Bars were outlawed. The only place that could serve drinks were private clubs.
So I paid a $7 "membership fee" at the door and had a great time. First drink was free!
To paraphrase the philosopher Ian Malcom, "Life finds a way".
Then only outlaws will have open wifi. Lucky bastards.
What happens when your diners start sharing across an ad-hoc wireless network in your shop? Are you obliged to jam signals?
Yet another case where elected officials aren't really thinking, or they don't understand what they're doing.
1) They think everyone can still have free Wi-Fi in public places, but it'll be "protected."
or
2) Someone's paying them off... Maybe the ISPs since they can swoop in and say, "Hey! Even though you can't offer free (beer) wi-fi, we can help you out! We can set it up so any BT subscriber can use your wi-fi, and that's like X% of the population. That'll be almost as good."
Or, it could just be innocent rampant stupidity.
As an owner of a small business I can't imagine leaving our WiFi open. In addition to PCI requirements to protect credit card data it just doesn't make sense to leave your network open. Would a business install a network hub on a wall outside their building? As far as "managing" the wireless network, if the business has nobody that can implement a simple password protection scheme then they probably should not be maintaining their own network in the first place. Odds are they'll wind up with compromised servers spewing spam and malware, and infecting people that hop on to their open wireless network.
Just get out the manual and fix your open access points.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
"shut it down, shut it all down, forever"
In countries where interest access is ridiculously limited such as Australia or in developing countries,
wonder where this guy's from?
> "This seems almost unprecedented to me, for a government document."
This seems quite ordinary to me, for a government document.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
UK outlaws open wifi, mandates WEP for all secure connections!
Open wi-fi should be as legal as me, on my own property giving away things for free. No one would care if I was giving out free water bottles on a hot day, nor would anyone care if I was giving away books for free, but when I'm giving away something in essence unlimited* it becomes bad?
*yes, it does increase bandwidth and would slow down your internet use, but how often is someone going to notice that?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
They can be used for anonymous copyright infringement too. With enough quarters I can read a whole book to my friend who's transcribing on the other end.
Yeah, not only a bad idea, but how the hell are you gonna enforce it? I mean seriously, anybody driven down around a couple of square blocks in Downtown, Anywhere with a sniffer lately? What, at least 40 or 50 APs show up, most of which are unsecure?
Heh, if they do have some sort of WiFi goon squad running around with a scanner, one could keep them busy for a while with FakeAP...
Of course using unprotected WiFi isn't stealing. Public wifi is generally unprotected, and using it isn't stealing.
The point should instead be, perhaps, whether using unprotected WiFi without permission is stealing.
But then, I suppose, that ultimately amounts to whether or not using anybody else's WiFi without permission, whether or not they had it protected, is stealing.
Because the measure of someone's ability to access the facilities should not be an indicator of whether or not they are allowed to use it, the only thing that ought to matter is whether or not they ever had any real permission to access it in the first place.
One could offer the point that an owner's failure to protect their WiFi from public use should be an indicator that it is intended for public use, but officially speaking, no real protocol for such an assumption actually exists.
I personally don't care whether or not it's called stealing or not... using somebody else's things without their actual permission is rude at best and can be illegal at worst (in the case of computer facilities such as WiFi, it actually is illegal in Canada. See sec 342.1 of the Canada Criminal code)... so really, what does it matter if it's actually called stealing or not?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Cafes, libraries, and such would simply have to shut down their access points. Hotels would either have to shut it down, or charge quite a bit more for internet access, this includes both in room wired and wifi access.
Monitoring for illegal file sharing is not a simple task. You can't simply "shut down" bittorrent, or rapidshare, or edonkey, or any of the evolving sharing protocols. You have to do content monitoring. With full encryption (protocol and payload), this becomes even more difficult and very expensive. How about VPN connections? The list goes on and on.
The technology is such that you can't stop it, you can only hinder it. So the only choices are to either shut down the expansion of internet technologies (always on), or offer a viable and attractive alternative to the people doing the sharing.
I'm sure if you paid Peter Mandelson* some brown envelope money then he would amend the law. But as it is, I think he's more interested in the kind of money that media moguls have when he goes mixing with them on yachts in the South of France for a "friendly chat." The man and the current UK government are evil. * the chief architect of this whole bastard Digital Economy law
Take Nobody's Word For It.
What's really needed is a multi-national organization to address what's clearly an all-out assault on internet freedom by a variety of vested interests. Governments, patent trolls, multi-national entertainment corporations...all of them are pushing in the same direction, and there doesn't seem to be any unified push back.
Let's be clear: I'm not alleging a conspiracy. What I'm saying is that these groups all know where their best interests lie (screwing the consumer/citizen/user/whatever) and they sense that if they don't get their boot on our throat, no matter how badly they have to bend the various constitutions of the democracies they use for cover, the opportunity will slip away. They aren't about to let that happen if they can possibly help it.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Making open WiFi itself illegal in what is otherwise a relatively free nation is just so lacking in even the slightest bit of thought into the matter that it defies all attempts to logically rationalize it. I'm speechless at the idea that the concept could even actually make it as far as a bill.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Would you allow us to have open streets, sir, or should we wear tags to identify us while we walk outside?
Complementing the story about Passive-Aggresive wifi Hotspots, the new trend could putting them locked with password, and naming them ThePasswordIsXYZ9923. They are not open, but whoever wants to use them will be able to do it.
I mean seriously, anybody driven down around a couple of square blocks in Downtown, Anywhere with a sniffer lately? What, at least 40 or 50 APs show up, most of which are unsecure?
where do you live?
I'm looking at 41 APs here (fixed location), 34 of which are WPA/WPA2, 7 WEP, 0 open.
This is similar to what I see at other locations in germany.
But, it might be a violation of your TOS.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just create a new government department to do those door to door searches if they triangulate an open wifi to your home.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The government have totally lost the plot. I'll be so glad when BRrown and his morons get voted out in May.
There, its secure :)
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Every call will be logged, every transaction filed, what you do, where you go, who you see and what you think will be traceable. You will be watched, profiled, targeted, and the number plate of your vehicle registered at each motorway intersection.
There will be no cheating and you will do what you are told - though to be fair, for the milch cows amongst us that will not be a problem.
The UK government introduced the quaintly named. "Care in the community" in order to allow them to cut costs by dumping people with serious psychological disorders out of the hospitals and on to the streets.
Now they are taking it a step further. Welcome to, "Imprisonment in the Community". No need for the concentration camps. You are already under control right where you are - going about your daily business.
I don't get why slashdot made this 1.5 articles, as it makes discussion of this other article semi-offtopic, but:
The guy may have some decent points, but other than mentioning a counter-argument in order to then tear it apart, he has zero balance to his post, which makes it not so much a thorough evaluation of the issue as much as a vent for someone with an ax to grind. The part that I really didn't agree with is how he goes on about how people get enough warnings to use password protection and whatnot that making wifi unsecured has to be effectively an active decision to want to allow people to connect. It has been commonly mentioned on slashdot that bad users pay no attention to warnings, so they never read them, therefore they don't actually know what is wrong. While you could say they deserve to have others connect to their network, this guy takes it as implicit authorization to connect- these people are not likely aware enough to consider other people at all. He likes to make lots of assumptions about what the uninformed user would do, despite the fact that it isn't that hard to actually talk to one of these people and no longer have to assume anything. I get the feeling if you asked this guy for tech help, he would patronize you to no end.
My webcomic
* Shut down the last hiding-place. Anonymity be gone.
* Make encryption illegal. No Secrets.
* Make people sign every ip-packet with their government-issued key and make ISPs drop all unsigned packets. Total accountability.
=> Everyone secure beneath watchfull eyes (especially our children)
creepy!
I lived in Berlin for a while and can second that.
I suspect it has something to do with the Fritzbox being near ubiquitous and being secure by default.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Benjamin Franklin
What's to stop coffee shops from setting a password protected wifi spot and then putting a big poster with the password on it?
right...
Businesses will comply or be put out of business. I doubt the government will care that you can leach bandwidth from you neighbour. If someone offers open access and it becomes publicly known, they will be shut down and fined too.
Don't kid yourself that this isn't enforceable. That just allows you to feel all cosy about it and lets the government off the hook. You need to fight it.
It's pretty obvious from this and similar legislation and obviously biased court decisions around the world, that TPTB are scared sh*tless of the enablement of free speech and open thought that the Internet, especially anonomous Internet connections provide. After all, how can they send the Brown Shirts to your home, or other forms of coercion, if they can't tell who you are. The kid glove is beginning to fray and we dumb sheep are beginning to see the mailed fists of our overlords, I mean elected representatives, beneath. If we don't wake up to the dangers soon, it will be too late.
Or, it could just be innocent rampant stupidity.
With politicians, never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by malice.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
This is simply a bald faced abuse of power. The state wants total control. And don't think it is just Gordon Brown doing this - any government wants this kind of power and control.
Which idiots have still not got round to throwing this out? I hope they have a really good excuse.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
A better idea would be a Tor worm (perhaps even based on PortableTor) that simply installed itself to run at startup (defaulted as relay, with upnp enabled, of course). Perhaps modifying existing to load such software from a free file hosting site? This would give plausible deniability to citizens under attack by an authoritarian government (whether it be China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UK, or the United States).
This idea, goddamn stupid as it is, was introduced in India after they found the wifi was used by criminals to send an email INFORMING THE MEDIA WHAT THEY WERE GOING TO DO.
cough. Ok, so this law was passed, cause politicians are stupid and people don't give a damn about wifi when they struggle to earn food.
The effect? Nothing.
Chill, people. But yeah fight the stupid law and the waste of resources it will entail.
Seems like this law could be easily rendered null and void through mass civil disobedience on the part of the small business owners. If one person or a small few break the law, it is a crime whereas if many break the law and do it as part of an organized group, it is a call for change. It will take some bravery for people to thumb their noses at government. Free WiFi is almost everywhere in the states and there is no definitive research to suggest that an open WiFi access point is responsible for more cyber attacks. This is just a UK politco's jump to conclusion in the attempt to gain political influence for himself. The enforceability of the law is virtually impossible and would require people to invariably report on their neighbors.
Ignoring any moral arguments against these laws, did anyone actually do the analysis of the cost vs. benefits? I mean these laws have direct costs for 1) ISPs 2) small businesses/libraries/etc...3) the increased costs to the state for enforcing such laws. There will be indirect costs for 4) all internet users as the cost of connection is raised. Finally, this will mean loss of connectivity, either in certain contexts or simply due to rising costs hence there will be a cost 5) the economy as a whole.
Alright, what about benefits. Did someone do actual accounting how much the entertainment industry will gain from these rules (I am assuming they are the biggest beneficiary). Not how much they are saying they are losing. That's a made up number. But in reality, did anyone analyze how higher the profits will be with these rules in place? What needs to be taken into account is that some people who download illegal content would not buy it legally, and further what needs to be taken into account is that such rules will only reduce the rate of piracy (presumably) and will definitely not eliminate it. People copied content before the internet and they will continue to do so. Perhaps less so, but it will continue to occur.
Finally, did anyone independent really analyze the benefit to society and economy from the increased profit of the entertainment industry? Is there a pressing need? Are there fewer artists that create content? Are movie studios not making new movies? Would really more content be generated with these rules in place? Do make sure to figure into any analysis that decreased connectivity will to some degree stifle content creation, and besides the negative effect on society that this may have, this will also have a negative effect on the very industry which they are trying to "protect."
Another perhaps strange effect is that people ARE willing to pay for things even when it is possible to get them for free. Economists often forget to figure in this effect. If you look at statistics of album sales during the napster days, you will notice that sales were up when napster was around and there was plenty of illegal music sharing, and sales went down around the same time that napster got shut down. Without drawing a conclusion of causality, such correlations should be on better scientific footing that simply the "obvious" conclusion that the music industry could have made even more money if napster wasn't around.
I have not seen any such analysis done anywhere. The only arguments for are the faux-common-sense arguments that espouse the obviousness of the benefits of such rules and therefore there is no need to actually figure out what the benefits are.
Of course I am assuming that internet access does contribute to value creation in an economy and it is not true that internet is used solely for viewing porn and downloading illegal music. If I am wrong in this assumption then of course these rules are a boon to the economy. It will be a double whammy, less illegal downloads AND people will probably do actual work out of boredom from not being able to access porn.
...to move somewhere that isn't England.
so it doesn't even matter
YOUR ALL PWNED if its hackers your worried about
I live in a city of 150,000 in California in an area of medium sized single family tract housing (from 1800 to 2600 square feet or 167 to 251 square meters). Currently I can see two access points - mine and some two wire one a neighbor has. His is WPA-PSK. Mine is WPA2-PSK. On some days from my couch in another room I can see 4 APs. All of them have some form of security - even the one whose SSID is Linksys.
The US law of CALEA is for wiretapping purposes and force EVERY last connection provider to be able to sniff real time. This means that if you have an open wifi, you're the last connection, and you're lliable. 10 grand a day for non compliance. You have to comply, you can't just turn it off. Oh and you can't talk about getting served either, that's illegal too. Wonder how long before CALEA is tweaked to match the UK bill to catch copyright infringers too.
Can't have that.
At least, that's what'll end up on your criminal record.
Deleted
More like "Offtopic".
The parent post has nothing to do with the article. The law being discussed would make owners of open Wi-Fi networks responsible for any copyright infringement done by users of their networks, unless can identify the user responsible. The parent is blathering about whether or not unauthorized access to unsecured Wi-Fi access should be called "stealing". By the way, it's "Unauthorized access", we have different words for different things for a reason. You could also call it "trespassing" or perhaps "theft of service". I'll stop now before I ran too much on this.
I'm also seeing a lot of analogies floating around, such as giving away free food, etc. This seems more analogous to letting people use your phone and they make prank calls to an emergency line or phone in bomb threats. Should you be held responsible for this? I don't believe you should, but it is a lot less cut-and-dry than being persecuted for feeding some folks for free.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
...that the problem is not with the facilities provided (in this case WiFi/Internet) but instead with the people abusing the facilities? If the media companies want these things to be policed they THEY should be paying for it and it should be policed in a way that does not impact services in any way (e.g. slowing things down). Where money is involved, you are guilty until proven innocent, it seems
Microsoft, corporations, and government are colluding to silence the people and control what we hear or read.
When did Microsoft not considered a corporation?
my access point is plain OPEN, all connection must pass trough a vpn.
this is even MORE secure than wpa1, possibly even wpa2, and i'm still outlaw, uh?
The access point name just happens to be "Password = 'screw you Digital Economy Bill'".
In the end, you are going to be held liable for your internet access. If your access point is used to trigger a road-side bomb, spread copies of Hollywood movies, spread embarassing rumors of school kids or launch a DoS attack on some bank, you must be prepared to lead the authorities to the culprit. If you don't maintain the appropriate logs or are careless about trojans or viruses, you might face penalties for negligence. Not there yet, but I believe it's bound to happen.
Selective enforcement is key here. Locking up anyone you don't like is easy when everyone's a criminal.
The UK already has one: they patrol neighborhoods scanning for unlicensed televisions, those on which they haven't paid their "license fee", which anyone else in the world would call a television tax.
Whilst WEP encryption has been shown to be very broken and easily defeated, the flaws found so far in WPA and WPA2 are not nearly as easy to utilise. There was a detailed breakdown of this a few years ago on the 'Security Now' podcast by Steve Gibson of GRC (with a little help from Leo Laporte). Here's the transcript of that episode, along with links to download the audio to listen to.
In short, the combination of AES encryption and a strong password make for a network that is going to require a *lot* of work to break into.
-MT.
-MT.
how about offering (free) transmission only to well known VPN services? In that case the internet access point is the VPN and the VPN provider is the internet provider? That would be reasonable because it also protects the users agains malicious free WIFI APs and other users. It would invoke that the shop does not keep and store data in an undefined way and therefore have no additional costs for the shop. It would require no contracts between the shop and the VPN providers, and therfore the shop could reasily offer as many services as desired.
Moreover it would educate users.
If people who want to provide open access become prohibited from doing so, the workaround will be to sort of standardize on a universally-known password, meaning users would know to try a particular password anywhere, any time when looking for otherwise-open access. I suppose this wink-and-a-nod method might cause problems, since users would then technically be using a network without authorization, but it could work.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
TFA: "Even if they password protect, they then have two options — to pay someone like The Cloud to manage it for them, or take responsibility themselves for becoming an ISP effectively, and keep records for everyone they assign connections to, which is an impossible burden for a small café.
This is a stealth Bill to help the likes of The Cloud (and it's investors), to monopolize WiFi access accross the country. Obviously free WiFi access is hurting there business.
The linked info at the Open Rights group is a Microsoft Word document.
No they don't, it's just a scam to scare you into paying.
Web Design
Whilst the non-RTFAers above have failed to read that no-one is banning open Wifi (instead they're imposing some new responsibilities on ISPs and different responsibilities on subscribers), this is in addition to existing responsibilities that could already be construed as making it "impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access".
ISPs in the UK don't have US-style "common carrier" status. See "Godfrey vs Demon" for one example of this - e.g. read the "analysis" section in here:
http://www.cyber-rights.org/reports/demon.htm
Is anyone really surprised that this is proposed in the UK? If any business or person wants to give away free services or goods (including WiFi/Internet) it should be up to them and legal. It's not any different than a hotel that has free telephone or faxing services for their customers.
Because an upcoming Internet censorship system would be worth shit, when everybody could just route around it via wifi.
You might see this in other countries too, in the future.
Then again, we can route around it, by moving to a still free country. Or founding our own. Or kicking the current government’s ass.
Wouldn’t exactly be the first time, you know. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The idea of a public TV license isn't as unique to the UK as people seem to think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence - It's a lot more normal than you might think and doesn't make the UK unique or special.
It's more the US that's "special" because they don't have one.
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
Making it unfeasible for cafes to provide Wi-Fi because of liability issues is not OUTLAWING anything. It's a bad bill with poorly thought out wording written by stupid legislators, but it's not evil "we hate freedom and all it stands for" law that the OP makes it out to be. Fear mongering is bad whether you use it to deny gay rights or to stamp out stupid bills.
"What's really needed is a multi-national organization to address what's clearly an all-out assault on internet freedom by a variety of vested interests."
Which constitutional amendment governs our "internet freedom"? Double-points if you can point to the British version.
It's not the existence that's so appalling: it's the labeling of it as a "license", reather than a tax, which is what it most clearly _is_. Most "licenses" grant you permission to do something, in a public area or a use that would actually _prevent_ others from using the resource. In this case, it's for merely possessing equipment, in your own home. That makes it pretty clearly a property tax, not a "license" by most legal definitions.
Telcos don't want interconnected community wifi spots all over urban areas, because everyone with a phone or laptop would bypass their precious mobile networks and use VoIP over Wifi instead.
Have you seen the Bill itself? http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldbills/001/10001.i-ii.html
It's some scary reading, like a 1,2,3 of how to spy on you. Why does any of this have to be legislated? It looks like a horrible mess thrown together by a few lobby groups.
The headings say it all really: "Obligation to provide infringements lists to copyright holders" "Obligation to limit internet access". This is all about limiting, secret-policing and draconian snooping. What a horrible law!
Can we get to vote on this now so that I can say no?
I'm sure they (TV Licensing) used to have equipment that could detect what you were watching, however it was only in a few of their vans and most of the vans were just empty, so it was a bit of a scam, but not without an element of truth.