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Dutch Hotels Must Register As ISPs
hankwang writes "The Dutch telecommunications authority OPTA has announced that Dutch hotels must register as internet providers (original version, in Dutch) because that is what they formally are, according to Dutch laws. It is well possible that once hotels are officially internet providers, they will also have to abide by the European regulations on data retention and make efforts to link email headers and other data traffic to individual hotel guests. Could this also happen in other European countries? This is probably not likely to lead to a more widespread adoption of free WiFi services in hotels."
The OPTA has said that they are not sure yet if the hotels are ISP's. They are still investigating this and I think that is the reason they have send some letters out. In order to get a trial so it will become clear what an ISP is. In the Netherlands everyone who offers public access to internet or other telecomservices has to deal with the OPTA. It's also the organisation that puts fines on spamming etc. Our telecom watchhound in short.
Now, after so many years, I can finally register as an ISP just because I provide a free access point. I already have a data retention scheme in place, only for statistical purposes of course.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I have had such an easy ride and I knew it would some day end.
No doubt the US State Dept and DoD Agencies and CIA will be going through BUT CHECKS on the next round of ops.
Aaarrrrgggghhhh .... that hurts! Could you use a little vassiline!
--Toodles
I remember things like this whenever someone criticizes the US and suggests that I move to a free country. Netherlands has often been on that supposed list of "free countries."
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
After all, isn't it trendy to hate on libertarians these days?
I wonder if this will lead to more broader implications once the Mafiaa can't DMCA ISPs into compliance.
I read this yesterday on nu.nl and I think it's completely ridiculous. The hotels (and my hospital I found out yesterday, and McDonalds and many many other places) can offer WiFi because they have a deal with a provider. Isn't that enough? I thought the Opta was there for the consumer but now I am not so sure anymore.
-- Cheers!
some hotels use cable likey the same one that tv comes from.
Hotels were also found to be cable TV providers, telephone service providers, cell phone service providers, water and electric utility providers, furnishing distributors, and food and beverage distributors and must meet all the requirements and responsibilities of each of those industries.
Of course this makes sense. Didn't you realize that this is the same logic used to justify the long standing practice of classifying hotels as power, water, and sewage utilities, as well as TV broadcasters, farmers, ranchers, etc. What is the difference?
Hmm, the Netherlands, UK, Denmark, North Korea, Swaziland, Lesotho and a few other coconut states are dictorships with medieval style kings/queens. There may be elections once in a while, but that is just for show...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The hotels can say it's not free but part of the room rate / hotel resort fee.
Libertarians stand for privatized oppression. Most other parties stand for government-supplied oppression. Does anyone actually stand for freedom nowadays?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It isn't our fault they are fucking retarded.
I'm amazed how little your comment resembles reality. Libertarians, and also the TEA party crowd (though they are not exactly the same) favor a smaller government all the way around. Sure, there are some who, for instance, hate recreational drug use. However, as they favor less government, they don't want the government to restrict it. On the other hand, on the left leaning side, some might not like people to have firearms, and yet they also don't want government regulation there.
The Libertairians and the TEA party voters don't agree on how to wield the mighty arm of the law, they agree that it should be weakened. They believe that instead these things should be decided on a state, or community level, but not on the national level. They certainly wouldn't push for the regulations you speak of, and controling communications is right out.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
The majority of the guests are not going to use the borrow the SMTP server that the hotel uses.
They are typically going to HTTPS to some webmail account.
Good luck getting the headers out of that.
If the hotel has a NAT-ted network, what are they supposed to log? Which 192.168.x.y address had a particular evil-doing port number at a particular time, and match that t a guest?
Europeans are going daft.
I'm amazed how little your comment resembles reality. Libertarians, and also the TEA party crowd (though they are not exactly the same) favor a smaller government all the way around. Sure, there are some who, for instance, hate recreational drug use. However, as they favor less government, they don't want the government to restrict it. On the other hand, on the left leaning side, some might not like people to have firearms, and yet they also don't want government regulation there.
The Libertairians and the TEA party voters don't agree on how to wield the mighty arm of the law, they agree that it should be weakened. They believe that instead these things should be decided on a state, or community level, but not on the national level. They certainly wouldn't push for the regulations you speak of, and controling communications is right out.
Just looking at your comment history. Quite a few gems in there.
This one about you wanting hollywood movies to have no immorality and have biblically themed messages is hilarious.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1806598&cid=33775058
Now i'm not saying you in particular feel the need to push your viewpoint on others but there are plenty of Libertarians who do. They want to control the internet so that it fits their idea of morality. This has become the new meaning of Libertarianism. It's the opposite of what it should mean and it's unfortunate but the fact is Libertarianism, thanks to the religious right, is now an ideology that wants to control the lives of others. Your typical religious censorship nuts are quite representative of the Libertarian movement.
Anarchists. Unfortunately, starting a political party tends to go against their beliefs.
Unfortunately, while he was probably just trolling, a lot of people genuinely believe that the TEAbaggers are either small-l or big-L libertarians. It's hard to say who has the worst marketing department between the Libertarian Party, the North Koreans, and NAMBLA.
For the record, here's how you tell the difference: the L/libertarians were the ones bitching about government overreach during the last administration. The Tea Partiers are the ones who were perfectly content until a President of the Wrong Color was elected.
Unfortunately, while he was probably just trolling, a lot of people genuinely believe that the TEAbaggers are either small-l or big-L libertarians. It's hard to say who has the worst marketing department between the Libertarian Party, the North Koreans, and NAMBLA.
For the record, here's how you tell the difference: the L/libertarians were the ones bitching about government overreach during the last administration. The Tea Partiers are the ones who were perfectly content until a President of the Wrong Color was elected.
The former head of the Libertarian party is behind the Tea Party.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/reinventing-the-revolution/?pagemode=print
It isn't bad marketing. It's brilliant marketing. There are people who think the Libertarian movement actually means freedom when in fact it's simply another word to refer to the Tea Party. You know, the same people who love religious censorship and control over what you can and can't do in your personal life.
That's the crux of the thing, isn't it? People shout at the top of their voice how they are in favor of freedom, but when quizzed it turns it they want freedom so they can do whatever they damn well please, and the filthy gays/gun-nuts/pornographers/fundies/whatever can rot in hell.
And to get back to the article, we're talking the Netherlands, where the Freedom Party wants to ensure freedom by changing the first article of our constitution to explicitly state we're a Judeo-Christian nation and kicking all the muslims out of the country. Freedom...to be a good god-fearing christian, that is.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
How about anything that can route?
Linux?
At what point is this absurdity going to end?
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Seeing as how I've actually been to TEA party rallies and support Libertarian ideas, and have not come across a single example of a libertarian push for government control of anything, I must ask you to cite your sources. Ron Paul is a great example (though technically, he is a Republican). He is opposed to abortion, etc., but instead of making a law to ban them, he simply proposed one that would cause the Supreme Court to be unable to hear such cases one way or the other.
There are nut jobs on all sides. I tend to tune out anything that Jesse Ventura has to say though he appears at some rallies. Also, there are some laws that even Libertarians support, such as laws against murder, and perhaps laws to enforce voluntary contracts. Keep in mind that many people are quite against things which they support being legal. There are many who would allow flag burning to be legal, yet never tolerate it on their own lawn.
Now i'm not saying you in particular feel the need to push your viewpoint on others but there are plenty of Libertarians who do. They want to control the internet so that it fits their idea of morality.
So, please cite your sources, particularly on the matter of Libertarian support for control of the internet. If you speak the truth, perhaps there are "plenty of Libertarians" that I need to not support.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
In short. Fuck you, sir.
I tend not to think of the Netherlands as one of the ridiculous countries, extending power and surveillence capabilities by any means possible, and this is probably just a case of some bureaucrat getting ahead of himself.
Regardless, the worst thing that could happen would be that hotels would have to, on paper, outsource the Internet supply to a real ISP, maybe to an existing hotspot provider. Many hotels have some kind of custom WiFi setup to cover the whole hotel, and may require a login or a token to make use of it already. If they wanted to push the obligations to the ISP, the ISP could terminate the private IPs and either authenticate themselves or receive some AAA logs. This is supposing that the Netherlands has a requirement to be able to track down an individual IP/traffic stream to a user (maybe not even in real time, although tapping a particular users and/or household's Internet is a common enough request in terrorism cases).
What this could mean for hotels is an extra cost as they are required to use more than the basic services of an upstream ISP rather than just plugging in a consumer cable or ADSL service.
Of course, if registering as an ISP is a single-form-and-€100 job in the Netherlands (it sure as hell isn't in Australia), then they could continue to use their black box solutions modified to have some additional data retention if required (maybe uploading to a central server). It would do away with the currently-rare practice of unauthenticated Internet access, unfortunately.
This is the Netherlands, not the US, so I kind of assume that sanity will prevail and it will either fall flat on its face, or a suitable compromise will be found.
I happen to be typing this from a Dutch Hotel.
This particular one has free wireless, and there is no way to identify a particular system accessing the net to a room. In fact, without staying here I could still probably sit in the car park or hotel lobby and access the internet from there. There's even a PC in the lobby with anonymous access from it.
Granted it does use a "Hotspot" login page (just need to check a checkbox and click login), so I suppose that could be modified to have someone provide a room number or PIN etc...
Changing the way things work though will invariably be a pain though, especially if you need to access the Internet over the weekends and the authentication system breaks down or something else goes wrong... (as seems to be quite common with the systems in many hotels). Reception tend to look at you with rather blank faces when this happens, and it usually isn't fixed until a weekday.
"The Tea Partiers are the ones who were perfectly content until a President of the Wrong Party/Religion/Political Assosiations was elected."
Fixed that for you. You are correct. Real Libertarians were complaining when George W. Bush was in office enacting the "Patriot Act". I don't really know of any Tea Partiers who dislike Obama because he's black, though.
The data retention system is never ever going to prevent any terrorism. Real dangerous terrorists would never communicate over the open Internet, and amateurs that might are not really dangerous; they are more likely to either blow themselves up by accident or be unable to manufacture even the simplest explosive that works.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Seeing as how I've actually been to TEA party rallies and support Libertarian ideas, and have not come across a single example of a libertarian push for government control of anything, I must ask you to cite your sources.
Tea Party protests FOR government intervention to stop the rebulding of a mosque at ground zero.
Brooklyn Tea Party founder John Press, who rallied against the Ground Zero Mosque in recent weeks, again raised the spectre of foreign domination. "The Mosque is founded by a very scary people and the US Constitution does not guarantee the right of a foreign nation to build a mosque in our country," he said. It's unclear if Mr. Press had merely forgotten the First Amendment, but one member of his protest group did recall the constitutional barrier on government suppression of religion -- he just chose to ignore it.
Link
Mark Williams, chairman of the Tea Party Express, blogged about the 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center planned at Park Place and Broadway, calling it a monument to the 9/11 terrorists. "The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists' monkey-god,"
Link
Example 2: Tea Party anti-abortionists that WANT government to legislate against abortion.
Link
Example 3: Tea Party WANTS laws to differentiate Gay and Lesbians.
Montana Tea Party Leader Endorses Violence Toward Gay People
Link
In other words the Tea Party is nothing more than religious conservatives trying to control our lives. The Libertarian Party used to be run by Ron Paul who helped kick start the tea party movement. The two are clearly intrinsically linked. Libertarian has come to mean the opposite of its original definition thanks to people trying to play double-speak.
So, please cite your sources, particularly on the matter of Libertarian support for control of the internet
You don't really need them to answer this, you should know the answer. S/he's probably confused about what the movement actually means, and is blinded by the rhetoric spewed forth on these forums regarding Net Neutrality. Something such as:
You are Libertarian. You think you should be able to do whatever you wish, like control the Internet through NN by letting yourself and your rich cronies control what content I am allowed to receive through my computer. This is the opposite of the true meaning of Libertarianism, you should be ashamed.
The biggest point being, that they think "it is the opposite of Libertarianism." Well, they're right. It is, and it's why Libertarians don't believe in that stuff.
I've been a registered Libertarian since 2002. Until recently, we've enjoyed relative obscurity because everyone else (especially Democrat Liberals who call themselves such even though they don't know the meaning of THAT word) has been too busy complaining about a president who decided it was a good idea to oust one of the World's most evil men. Now they have their buddy in the Oval Office and they have decided that now is the time to focus attention on the coming threat. Those of us who are sick and tired of bureaucratic waste and hope to improve the inherent qualities of our country, rather than enable everyone to simply continue their life-long mooching off the haves.
And this correlation between Libertarians and the Religious Right is utter nonsense. While I'm sure there are Libertarians who have religious views (a recent interview on PBS Newshour mentioned that in a study, something like 1% of respondents said they were Atheist or Agnostic) they are not the same Temperance Movement type of people you might remember from your days during previous centuries. I am an Agnostic and a Libertarian. I don't particularly like people (especially family and friends) telling me that I "need to find God." I'm a fucking Agnostic you moron, I've already decided that I won't "find God" because it is simply outside the scope of my comprehension.
Now, all of you Demicans and Republocrats can continue on with your self-serving discussion.
For me, when I'm at a hotel I don't use tappable/monitorable e-mail. I'm either using secure IMAP to my own server, running a client on my home machine remotely via X11-over-SSH, or using my own WebMail server (or a Google one) via HTTPS with a check of the certificate. I assume that any time I'm on a "free wi-fi" network there may be proxy servers handling all unencrypted traffic (and potentially trying to MITM SSL traffic), so I avoid running anything across the network that I don't want the general public to see.
Hotels offer free wifi since guests demand it. If red tape turns up which turns them into an ISP I don't see it necessarily stopping them from offering wifi. Instead some enterprising company will sell an ISP in a box, which will be a glorified NAS / router with extra logging /audit trail.
"This is probably not likely to lead to a more widespread adoption of free WiFi services in hotels." Here's a much better one - "This may lead to less free WiFi services in hotels."
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
... Libertarians, and also the TEA party ...
How exactly is this Insightful and not Off Topic?
(Ironically, this comment is most definitely off topic. Consider it a meta-comment.)
hankwang and timothy! Article title is misleading.
"Dutch Hotels Must Register As ISPs" is wrong (they do not) and should read "Dutch OPTA sues Hotels for being an ISP".
It is the OPTA that is test-trialing 10 large hotels to find out (by ruling) whether they are (or not are) ISP's.
"OPTA checks whether market parties comply with the law in order to protect consumers." - http://www.opta.nl/en/about-opta/
In what way exactly this move protects consumers i am not sure, but i reckon the OPTA wants to break down some vague holes in the law behind some ISP's might hide themselves.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Since the introduction of the Lex Nokia in Finland, which enables the ISPs to monitor the headers of e-mails (and other stuff) going through their pipes, this doesn't sound very surprising. I'm predicting that we will have similar laws here in Finland too, for Hotels and also Office buildings too, then later on extended to actual houses which share the same connection. This is their way of gaining control of the Internet.
If this happens, I'll be on the streets. Hope to see you there too. Stand up for your rights as a citizen of Earth! But in a peaceful way
GeoKone.NET
Early drafts of the Digital Economy Bill would have had all ISPs liable for data retention and, more onerously, require they could identify individual subscribers in the event of complaints about "illegal" downloading. Inability to comply would have meant the ISP taking full liability for their users actions. This would have been the end of collective Internet provision in a whole range of settings (hotels, cafes, managed business premises,...) where the costs of compliance would outweigh the revenue generated.
In its late stages, the bill was changed to exempt all but the larger ISPs from its provisions. Which is equally absurd because if you don't want your data retained and do want to download the latest Hollywood yawnfest then you sign up with one of the smaller ISPs.
Having hotels police the Internet is not really different to requiring them to have an old lady sitting on each landing noting the movement of people in and out of their rooms, a common practice in Eastern Europe back in the Cold War days.
The word "libertarian" comes from 19th century libertarian socialism, which was later called anarchism. It's a part of the socialist movement that rejected Marx's state socialism for being dictatorial and oppressive. They also rejected capitalist liberalism for creating privilege, injustice, and in the end also oppression.
I honestly think we should take another look at anarchism/libertarian socialism.
That's the case with many other countries' laws. You are a internet service provider because you provide internet service. Period. If ISPs in your country have certain requirements, you have to fulfill them. Instead of stating the obvious, maybe the authorities should think about relaxing certain requirements for ISPs. Laws made 20 years ago may be partially obsolete.
There is probably more then meets the eye here. The telecom regulator (OPTA) came into action after a complaint from a telco. It is not know what the complain is about but probably something about unfair competition ("we have to register as an ISP and the hotels get a free ride"). Currently OPTA is investigating if hotel wifi is a "public electronic communicationsnetwork". If they conclude hotel wifi falls into that definition then hotels (but also Starbucks and McDonalds) have to fulfill all obligations under the Dutch Telecommunications Act. And those are making the network ready for wiretapping and data retention. And that is not limited to responding to a wiretap warrant. They'll have to adjust their network so that they can execute the wiretap according to specs in the regulation. Those specs also require security measures for the wiretap equipment, screened personnel to handle warrants, etc. In the end hotels will conclude that this is costly and complicated. That is when the telco steps in (remember, they complained to the regulator). They can offer hotspots with all wiretap and data retention obligations already implemented. Profit! Hotels can of course easily fix the problem - if open wifi turns out to fall within that definition in the law - by requiring a password for wifi access. After that it's not pubic wifi anymore.
Hotels also supply customers with electricity, water and often tv over cable network. They dispose of their customers trash and relay messages left for their customers. So they should have to register as power distributor, waterworks, cable network company, postal company and waste disposal contractor, right?
Either you are an ISP and abide by applicable legislation, or you take responsibility for the traffic on your network. So if somebody publishes something copyrighted through your router, you get to decide: either you claim you're an ISP and the authorities subpoena your logs or you claim you're a private citizen and have to defend yourself in court.
This will have analogous implications to libraries, schools and private companies as well.
i dont think "Libertairians" think that devolving government to the local level is desirable they want a very small number of key competencies delivered by government (normaly things like defence) and I suspect that a real libertarian would do away with the individual "states" ability to do anything.
Europe is doomed, there is only one rule that politician have to follow : if something works, make sure you break it by creating a pointless law.
I'm born European and left 7 years ago, never ever I would live there again, NEVER !
False history. a lot of current tea party activists were the ones who burned up the phone lines to oppose the big bank bailouts (the enrich wall street crooks even further act) and then the government motors bailouts. They were and are against the two illegal wars currently running.
What a lot on the outside don't realize is that there are two distinct wings inside the tea party movement, loosely based around economics and then social issues. thee is a ron paul=ish wing/group, then the palin type folks.
Now, a lot of these people if you go back are the same ones who pushed the reform party, which was against globalist ripoff issues like nafta and gatt and the wto, etc., plus all the huge increases in government employment/expense/bloat. They have been consistent over the years. This tea party movement has its roots going way back before the current obamanation. We just can't seem to break the corrupt two party "system". So we have to compromise, and with only two choices, it is apparent which of the two is closer.
Of course if you really paid attention over the years you would know that....
Why you see now that they appear to be part of the R party is that at least some Rs support those ideals, the Dems don't offer any hope at all, just change to even larger and more obtrusive government. The dems particular fail on small business, ye gads do they suck. They have made it a freaking nightmare to run a small business or a family farm. the only "jobs" program they support is more government workers! They fail on all the issues, free speech to economics, and because of the way the winner take all vote system and political system is stacked, you are forced to fall behind one banner or the other. If the dems had ANY smaller government and more freedom support, they wouldn't be in the position they are now, losing mind share daily.
The dems took the JFK legacy and by letting the extreme progressive wing take over their policies have pushed it so far they bankrupted the nation.
You can't promise the moon sun and stars to everyone when all you have is an asteroid budget to work with, I mean, econo 101 fail. There ain't enough money in the world to support all these looney tunes social engineering projects that consistently fail combined with government workers bloated salaries and pensions, we are trillions in the red from those policies.
I have a Galaxy S, yesterday I had to give to my poor iPhone friend some internet by turning my Galaxy S into a wirless hub.
That would make me an ISP.
Does that mean I have to retain his emails for 8 years ?
I've been a registered Libertarian since 2002. Until recently, we've enjoyed relative obscurity because everyone else [...] has been too busy complaining about a president who decided it was a good idea to oust one of the World's most evil men.
Just an aside, but if I knew some guy living on my block was a murdering drug dealer and I decided to go publicly kill him, I'd be thrown on jail for murder. I'd expect a president to be beholden to the same rule of law and due process that I am, at the very least (I'd actually say he should face more controls since he wields disproportionately more power). I certainly wouldn't expect to be landing lucrative deals off the back of my vigilante actions. Oh, and someone who has already decided there is no god is an atheist. An agnostic has no belief but is not closed to the possibility of a god.
Hi, if you're connected to the Internet from a hotel, your connexion is NOT SECURED, you can be easily tracked, and all your actions logged. That's why, if you are connected to the Internet from a hotel, you should buy a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to hide everything you are doing. Here is a list of more than 100 VPN providers and informations if you want to know more about VPN: http://www.start-vpn.com/
Oh, and someone who has already decided there is no god is an atheist. An agnostic has no belief but is not closed to the possibility of a god.
Not that you'll read this, but thanks Captain Duh. I'm not sure where you read that I "have decided there is no God" but I didn't say that. Go back, read once more. I clearly said that I will not find God. It's kind of like keys, especially lost ones. I know those keys are somewhere, I just can't find them.
You get -1 for comprehension.
And on the note of Saddam, fuck due process. Due process had been attempted for years and years and years. The World Government had failed to exact any meaningful change in Iraq. They developed Resolutions to prevent specific activities and then failed to hold those violating those resolutions accountable.
Why don't you go tell the families of the people who lost their lives at the hands of Saddam that they should have just waited for due process. And yeah, I'm sorry for all of the troops who have lost their lives, but if they weren't ready to make that sacrifice, they shouldn't have signed up.
Just an aside, but I'm also sorry for all of the troops who lost their lives ridding the world of Hitler. Unfortunately, I'm also sorry for the millions who lost their lives while waiting for due process to occur.
By the very nature of the design of the internet anyone using the internet is an ISP. The Netherlands should simply make registering as an ISP part and parcel of registering to vote or something else every citizen is required to do.
TEA party crowd (though they are not exactly the same) favor a smaller government all the way around. Sure, there are some who, for instance, hate recreational drug use. However, as they favor less government, they don't want the government to restrict it.
What Tea Party figurehead has come out against government restrictions on drugs? Has any speaker at any Tea Party event even brought this up?
No. The Tea Partiers are only against government restrictions on rich white christian folk.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Anarchy: oppresion by the strongest warrior or most charismatic gang leader. In other words, Libertarianism Lite.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Has any speaker at any Tea Party event even brought this up?
Very first hit on Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-73xSqoq5s
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The laws around the world really should back off from ISPs. Internet is so easy to give access to and so important, people should be entitled to it.
I think if we make ISPs accountable for giving access to the Internet to people, then we should consider owners of supermarkets, malls, parks etc as Public Property Providers and make them accountable too... Like forcing them to install cameras everywhere, including washrooms, and make every visitor/customer sign a list when they enter the area.
Access to the Internet should be easy. Laws making ISPs and owners of public WiFi networks accountable for their users set back the advancement of society and Internet technology (not to mention the room for abuse, since any statement criticizing a government can be called an act of terrorism and used to identify you and get you in legal trouble. Many accused 'terrorists' have done nothing more than criticizing the West and happening to be acquainted with Al Qaeda members, but are not members themselves and never helped prepare or commit terrorist actions).
If the authorities want to know who's visiting what website, they should use similar methods as in real life (like observing traffic on a specific website suspected of harboring criminal activity). In real life, the law does not require people to keep records of who accesses their property (you don't sign in when you enter a store, do you?). 'Cheating' by using any means available to fight crime is not without consequences. Authorities have trouble understanding that.
Just imagine if someone was following you around, taking note of everything you do (where you go, who you talk to and what you talk about, what you buy, how you travel, what clothes you wear, etc) and then that person had to give all this information to the police if you were suspected of even the tiniest felony? Just because it's the Internet does not make it any less intrusive.
Bottom line: the Internet is a great piece of technology. It can really advance society in many ways. But most governments treat it more as a tool for criminality rather than something useful.
I was in Paris recently and had to register with their ISP as a free WIFI user prior to being granted access to the Internet.
They claimed it was due to a recently passed law (and provided a link to the law but I chose not to follow up as it was easier to just register and move on rather than argue with anybody during my vacation).
How is a hotel different from a family sharing an internet connection? Like even when the kids and their friends sit down at the dinner table and study.
There are a couple issues stated but one of them involves sending spam. Since most spam is sent from compromised it seems to me that the purveyors of fragile operating systems need to have their feet held to the fire.
Some purveyors charge much more for a software update than they charged the OEM to install the fragile OS in the first place.
Obsolescence is not a license to extort more fees.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.