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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.
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".
What happens when your diners start sharing across an ad-hoc wireless network in your shop? Are you obliged to jam signals?
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.
Because we all know that coffee shops hide servers behind the counter.... Most of the time the free wi-fi they provide is simply an extra consumer-level connection that goes to a cheap-as-free router, they change the SSD and let people use it. Its no big deal if someone uses it and doesn't buy a coffee either, they pay the same for it if someone drank 1000000 cups of coffee or if someone drank one. Its a good advertising scheme too, traveler is walking downtown sees an open access point for a coffee shop, goes in has a coffee and uses the wi-fi.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
True. Here in the UK, both British Telecom (BT) and VirginMedia will complain but will be probably be able to shoulder the burden anyway. And, as the Phorm debacle revealed, they are not overly concerned about the privacy of their customers...
-MT.
-MT.
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.
> Maybe the Lib Dems might be the best option but it seems very unlikely that they will win.
So what? The alternatives don't have to win. They just have to start gaining enough share.
Then other voters might go "hey they might have a chance the next round", and if they agree, actually vote for them the next round.
And the winning party might also go "uh oh, they might actually have a chance the next round, maybe we should be slightly more like them".
Otherwise the option is for the stupid sheep to just keep voting for either of the same two wolves to eat them.
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.