EFF Advocates Leaving Wireless Routers Open

SD-Arcadia writes "We will need a political and technological 'Open Wireless Movement' to reverse the degradation of this indispensable component of the Internet's infrastructure. Part of the task will simply be reminding people that opening their WiFi is the socially responsible thing to do, and explaining that individuals who choose to do so can enjoy the same legal protections against liability as any other Internet access provider."

Comments

Same legal protections?

[mfnickster]

Yeah, I'll really enjoy making that assertion before a judge, *after* my door has been kicked in and my gear confiscated!

Re:Same legal protections?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you wonder why your rights get chipped away at, piece by piece.

Re:Same legal protections?

[spikenerd]

Mod parent A/C up. This whole discussion is chock-full of people whining about how standing up for rights *might* cost them something. Of course it might cost you something--we're talking about freedom here! Come on, people, have the self-respect to sacrifice one-tenth of what your ancestors sacrificed so that you could have freedom.

Re:Same legal protections?

[NeverVotedBush]

Even without the potential legal liability of having attacks, threatening e-mails, or child pornography traced to my router if I left it wide open to anyone who wanted to use it, why should I allow others to sap my bandwidth or help take my ISP into data caps?

I pay for my internet service and my neighbors can do the same for theirs.

I speak from experience. I allowed my next door neighbor to piggyback for "just e-mail and some web surfing". They seemed to be low on money so I helped them out.

Then their house sprouts an HD satellite antenna and I notice my own Netflix streaming stuttering. It turns out they had gotten a DVR/DirecTV setup and were doing their own streaming. I blocked DirecTV and next thing I get is them asking me to help them fix their connection because their X-Box wouldn't connect and they wanted me to enable specific ports. Their X-Box would connect and it turned out the ports were what the DirecTV service rep had told them to make sure were open.

They decided they wanted more bandwidth and were lying to me to get it. It pissed me off. I then configured QOS to limit their data rate to just what the X-Box needed to play online. They finally decided to pay for their own connection.

It's just a pain in the butt and a liability to open up a wireless connection to anyone who wants on. I realize my story isn't exactly what this thread is about but it isn't far away. Leave your router open and people will just start soaking up bandwidth. With all of the streaming services out there, data rate increases are inevitable. It's easier to just not ever get on that merry go round and lock down your router.

Besides, liability is far lower. Anonymous users have no accountability.

Re:Same legal protections?

[nedlohs]

if everybody left their wifi open then they wouldn't make that assumption.

Re:Same legal protections?

[Local ID10T]

I tried leaving my wifi open for awhile, but other people using it would slow my connection down...

Many modern routers support a "guest connection" with a separate SSID and allow limiting the bandwidth available to the guest(s). You can offer an open wifi connection without compromising your bandwidth beyond what you are comfortable with.

Re:Same legal protections?

[Oligonicella]

Don't conflate 'the public' with 'the criminals' you've written about.

Re:Same legal protections?

[smelch]

Wow, you're a selfish prick. You don't have to share your network if you don't want to, but being allowed to share your wireless is important and there is a lot of talk about not doing it or suffering legal consequences. Some people might like the idea of sharing their connection with the neighbors if they don't saturate their pipe and the neighbors don't have their own connection. Sounds like you're so caught up on what you have that you can't even think for a second about people who aren't total dickwads.

Safe harbor prov? Sorry, only if you're a big corp

[The O Rly Factor]

Tell all of this to the guy who had his door kicked down and assault rifles put to his head after a wardriver used his open access point for distributing child porn.

Oh hell no.

[Yaddoshi]

Maybe if Communism actually worked I'd consider doing something like this.

Re:Safe harbor prov? Sorry, only if you're a big c

[Joce640k]

A few more cases like that and we might get some laws changed...

An interesting idea, but...

[VGPowerlord]

Most of us have had the experience of tremendous inconvenience because of a lack of Internet access. Being lost in a strange place with no way to find a map; having an urgent email to send with no way to do so; trying to meet a friend with no way to contact them.

A wise man once said "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

Ok, hippies, enough is enough

[Loosifur]

I just RTFA to make sure I'm getting this correct, because I normally am fully in support of "damn the man" stuff like this, but this is just ludicrous. There has never been a time in my life where I have needed to "urgently" check my email and been unable to, nor has there ever been a time where the only thing standing between me dying of thirst and reaching a nearby oasis has been my ability to access Google Maps on a laptop. In fact, I would like to go so far as to say that if you are the kind of person who ever "urgently" needs to check your email, consider: a.) purchasing a cellphone and distributing that number to whoever might need to get in touch with you, b.) purchasing a smartphone so you can check your email without a WiFi connection, and/or c.) checking your email before you leave for a four-week safari. Who is this demographic that can afford a laptop and conducts vital business via the Interwebs, but can't afford a data plan?

I know that people around here get fussy about car analogies, so...

This is like asking me to buy a horse, and leave the horse saddled in my front yard just in case anyone needs to use it to go somewhere. And then just trusting that no one is going to hop on the horse, rob a stagecoach, and then drop the horse back in my yard for the posse to find.

At a certain point, personal responsibility has to enter into all of this. Of course someone shouldn't be liable for nasty things accomplished using a WiFi connection if they made an honest effort to secure it, or just didn't know that that was something one ought to do. But if they intentionally leave it open for anyone to use, they should accept some of the blame when someone uses it to do something naughty.

And furthermore, it's WiFi, not clean drinking water. Since when is leveling your paladin a vital civil liberty? What's next, should I set up an HD projection system on the side of my house so that people outside aren't suppressed by the tyranny of Netflix requiring a subscription? Because Ironman 2 is one of those bits of information that "wants to be free"?

bad press

[poptones]

They don't go after people who "download" it. Just the other day there was a story on here about someone arrested for "downloading" KP. It also mentioned in the same article the story of another who was arrested for "downloading" Millions of images from a boat using a cantenna several blocks away from the WAP.

But if you actually read the SOURCE articles for that, the truth comes out: the one who "downloaded Millions" did NOT "download" but UPLOAD. And it wasn't Millions that were UPLOADED (for, obviously, that would take many many hours and this was alleged to have happened in one very late night) but MILLIONS of images that were found on the guy's PC when he was raided.

This seems to be a deliberate confusion of the truth. "Upload" is consistently confused with "download" in articles like this so the reader is led to believe if you even download something from the internet big brother doesn't like then the MIB will come knock down your door and drag you to hades. Of course this is in the interests of the MEDIA OWNERS who publish this nonsense, because the more fear of the internet they can generate the more likely people are to be good little sheep who only use their connections as an extension of their TV sets, thus ensuring even more monthly income for the big media giants who own shit like hulu and who profit from others like netflix.

The witch hunt won't end until the last big media conglomerate lies dead in its grave. This is why I don't have cable, I don't go to movies, I don't subscribe to magazines, and I don't "rent." Ayup, I watch what the fuck I want to watch, and listen to what the fuck I wanna listen to. Sorry Alice, I know you own your work but I've bought enough copies of Billion Dollar Babies in my life from people who show absolutely no respect for the rights of the people of the society from which they profit.

Re:ISPs have been trying to scare people for years

[element-o.p.]

ISP's don't give two shits what you do with your bandwidth, as it's not a server.

Uh, yeah they do care, because they are overselling it to an absurd degree. Anything you do that makes it more likely that you are actually using the bandwidth that you purchased puts stress on their network. One of the major providers where I live is trying to build a system by which they can bill by usage, rather than by max download speed just to get around this problem. Keep in mind, most ISPs are loss-leaders for the more profitable services in a telco or cable company. The ISP typically loses money every month on Internet accounts, but since it is part of a bundled service, the parent company makes up the difference in residential, long-distance, and/or cellular telephone services; or cable TV, PPV, VoD, etc. Consequently, they have incentive not to build a better network than they have to, and the more you use that network, the fatter the pipes they have to build.

Furthermore, some ISPs have in their AUPs a provision that says you can't run a server on anything but a business account (since business accounts are typically quite a bit more expensive than residential accounts). The other major provider in my area, for whom I used to work as a sys admin, was such an ISP. While most of the ISP admins didn't really care, the provision was in our policies, and I was aware of a couple of instances where we terminated peoples' accounts for reselling services off of residential Internet accounts. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to see an ISP interpret sharing an open WiFi access point as "reselling" a service (i.e., payment is in goodwill and/or karma rather than cash).