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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.
First post. I've given my credit card details, scan of passport and my fingerprint to the clerk. Can I have WiFi now please?
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.
Not really anologous to what TFA is dealing with - at least with booze, you've already paid for it once you're in the club. And there's not much prospect of the Government requiring the club to keep records of all the drinks that punters bought, mainly due to the fact that drinks manufacturers and pub / club chains would a) balk at such regulation of their trade, and b) lobby the Government to water down or drop any such proposal.
-MT.
-MT.
> "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.
I 100% agree with you, but I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here.
Once you start handing out child pornography it's bad.
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.
It doesn't happen. In fact, one of my neighbors runs a open wi-fi network, I've noticed absolutely no more traffic near their house or in the neighborhood since they started doing it.
As for any interference, it doesn't happen there are a multitude of channels and a nearly infinite amount of SSDs you can use for your own access points.
But sometimes across a whole country it helps to have some laws.
Not when it leads to a loss of liberty.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Would you allow us to have open streets, sir, or should we wear tags to identify us while we walk outside?
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.
Sure. And that's probably how the lobbyists sold it. The problem, at least in the States, is that we no longer seem capable of electing politicians who _think_. The good ones just _deal_ and justify it as the way pragmatic realpolitik works. The bad ones purposefully deal for dollars.
* 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!
>>>people shouldn't have truly open access points to begin with.
Why not? If I want to open my kitchen and give away free food, I can. If I want to buy a bunch of blank CDs and hand-out copies of Ubuntu Linux, I can. Why can't I give-away free access to Wi-Fi in my home or restaurant?
No reason I can think of, except to limit free speech/protest and give the government even more control over public policy (i.e. push their one true agenda).
Alex Jones the Nutter was just discussing this on his radio show: http://yp.shoutcast.com/sbin/tunein-station.pls?id=175591 - about how Microsoft, corporations, and government are colluding to silence the people and control what we hear or read.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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...
I pirate stuff myself. I just don't try to fool myself that it's morally inert. I guess you *could* argue that I wouldn't watch movies if they weren't free (which is probably true in the vast majority of cases).
In any case, we're talking about WiFi. If you use your neighbor's wifi, you deprive him the use of the quota that you used, however little it may be. You're also using a certain percentage of his quota, which you did not pay for.
Don't try to fool yourself with flimsy technicalities in a childish attempt to screw with your moral compass. No amount of post-hoc justification can make a wrong right, it'll just fuck up your moral compass.
I hate printers.
No, they aren't say they won't pay for access to the service. They are saying they shouldn't be held responsible for HOW it's used.
A more correct example would be:
Say you got a land line, and ran an extension phone out to the sidewalk in front of your house for anyone to use. Somebody calls in a bomb threat using the extension. Should you be responsible for the bomb threat? If you should be responsible, how is it different than from calling using a public telephone?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
>>>You would be perfectly free to give away Wi-Fi but if someone downloaded a movie and you were sued you couldn't use the defense "oh well I have an open wifi connection so it must have been someone else.
So?
People come-and-go from public buildings all the time. If a product goes missing, do they hold the owner of the building responsible? No. They figure it must be one of the anonymous persons. - What they are doing here is the equivalent of demanding you show an ID every time you come-and-go from a store, mall, restaurant, et cetera. It's an excessive imposition.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Since when do you need the health department's approval to offer a visitor tea and biscuits?
I'd like to step back a bit and say that if you need the law to intervene in a petty minor dispute with your neighbour over usage of what is essentially a glorified newspaper, then you probably have bigger problems... like an insufferably regulated and micro-managed society, for one thing...