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Finland: Open WiFi Access Point Owner Not Liable For Infringement
New submitter mjrauhal writes "In Finland, the operator of an open WiFi access point was found not guilty for copyright infringement allegedly committed over said access point. The operation of such access points would have become legally risky were this decided otherwise. Appeal by the Finnish Anti-Piracy Center is still possible for this district court ruling."
I think this goes to show that in most cases, its better to have some encryption than an open network. Sure, you can possibly
fight your way legally, but you're going to need decent lawyers, money, and the press. I just don't think its worth it for most people,
especially with draconian penalties for stuff like child porn tacked on.
Offtopic: Can we please automatically delete all posts with links to my clean pc?
Ontopic:
This baffles me on how money is wasted on anti-piracy. This case should have been dismissed at the very beginning. How can you blame someone simply on the basis of ownership? This is like suing an owner of a car for not locking his car, because his car stolen and used in a crime.
What happens if I use WEP encryption? Would I be liable as well? I wish that the media corporations stopped trolling and started creating some business models which actually make sense in this day and age. All others have already moved forward.
No. That's absolute bullshit. What you're suggesting is similar to collective punishment: punish everyone by not allowing them to have open WiFi because some people might do something illegal.
Guess what? The fact that it's difficult to catch the actual offenders is completely irrelevant. That's their job, and if it's difficult, tough luck. That's no reason to ban things or punish the wrong people.
Does the font used on this article give anyone else a headache?
In Germany, you are legally obligated to secure your wifi. There's a reason why the Pirate Party is receiving many votes in the state elections. If you're in Germany, a lot of YouTube videos (most of them are legit) are blocked because of GEMA (the German RIAA). I've heard that some bands aren't even allowed to post their OWN music on YouTube because GEMA won't allow this. My guess is that the old East German Stasi was just renamed to GEMA.
This is absolutely absurd and will be reversed on appeal.
Yeah, well, you know...that's like just your opinion man
You simply cannot create liability black holes where one provides access to the internet and does not adequately track and monitor those
Umm, that's the basis of the whole legal system, prove beyond a reasonable doubt or STFU
who use that access in order to properly determine who is responsible for what criminal act, and expect society to continue to survive.
Riiiiiiight, because society needs the internet, and the internet is like some angry god that can come destroy us all!
You cannot evaporate liability and expect the rule of law to remain intact;
Tell that to the industries that are constantly lobbying to make laws in their favor
the internet will soon be forced to learn this. In my mind, the solution will likely be per user insurance for internet connections, similar to car insurance.
Hahahahaaa that's priceless. You are so delusional. I'm glad Skynet has been invented already to learn this lesson.
The Kafkaesque feature to this incident is, that should you use encryption with your AP, YOU'd probably get sentenced when someone cracks your lame encryption scheme and downloads warez.
The prosecutors and judges probably wouldn't understand that someone can illegally use someone else's private wlan, as it's "secured".
I got at least ten wlans in my neighborhood I could associate with and crack (mostly lamer WEP). And with most APs having factory default admin passwords, much hilarity could ensue.
In Finland it's legal to use all (even private-but-) non-encrypted wlan networks (like your clueless neighbor's). I suppose this is a major headache to all MAFIAA media crooks.
But it apparently protects the AP owner from idiotic and malicious lawsuits.
This fanfare over piracy, thinking of the children, and terrorism is just masking the real issue. Follow the money trail - it leads to mobile phone carriers.
If everyone had open access wifi, there would be reduced need for 3G data plans in major cities. Handsets would use VOIP.
A few weeks ago, I foolishly ran a strange executable file that one of fellow slashdotters posted in a comment. As someone who doesn't know much about computers, at the time, I thought nothing of it. "Why would my fellow slashdotter want to hurt me?" Following this line of thought, I ran the file without question.
It was pretending to be a strange anti-virus software I'd never heard of from a company I'd never heard of.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
or FAP.
Ever heard of an arcade? It used to be that video games would come out first on an arcade platform such as Neo Geo or Capcom Play System and then get ported to a console six months later. That was the video game equivalent to films' theatrical window.
You leased that connection from the ISP and what goes across it is your responsibility.
The amount of calories being burned over so-called piracy is absurd, though.
Except that copyrighted works are one of the few things that the United States still successfully exports. If the United States has no goods or services for export, then by the Balassa-Samuelson model, the value of its currency will plummet and it'll have a hard time importing things like energy.
But if there's a Nintendo DS on your WLAN, then your hardware can only do WEP.
If everyone had open access wifi, there would be reduced need for 3G data plans in major cities.
How so? A device with a 3G data plan can connect to the Internet on public transit, unlike a device with only Wi-Fi.
The suspense is killing me! What happened next?!
The world ended and everybody died. Didn't you notice?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
I forgot the name, but a while ago there was talk about a way to let routers wireless routers operate in a way that there would be full, password-protected network and an open, restricted side. The restricted side would not allow access to the internal LAN, be bandwidth restricted, etc.
The idea was to give people an easy way to check e-mail while walking on the street, etc. Don't you hate it when you're out and you're in range of 20 networks and none of them is public?
by BootyFucknessJones
I was expecting the virus to inflict massive amounts of tickle on the PC repair people's bootyasses.
Maybe, just maybe, from a MBA point of view, the buyers are the pirates....
Once you "buy" something you can:
1. Lend it (like libraries are now doing)
2. Sell it (and the original owner doesn't get a cut).
3. Shift it (backup to newer media to continue its usefulness).
4. Show it (have friends over and put it on).
5. Trade it (With friends, others who haven't seen it)
6. Watch it instead of watching something just released (and requiring payment).
All the above takes "profits" from a business (from their perspective); look at the attack going on against Used-Game sales right now, I expect we are only a few years (5-10) away from the same thing happening to movies. Where the ability to "buy" movies will go away (I think the start of this was with the XBox and PS3 wanting to be the "home media center") and you'll have to pay a fee or monthly charge for viewing movies at all.
Talk to any business person, venture capitalist, etc. and what they want NOW in a business is recurring charges (monthly, per-use, etc) forever. They do not want to invest in companies that don't have a plan for continued recurring charges; therefore, businesses are having to find a way to "ding" their users on every "use" or get some sort of "monthly" plan.
MS has been talking about this for years (and sounds like Win8 may be the portal into it), Apple is bucking the trend but it's starting to creep in for them too (iCloud), Google has always had it (and that's why they are a business darling). Even cars, with Service, On-Star, Roadside Assistance, have ways to get that monthly/yearly recurring billing and I expect as more computers/tech go into cars there will be even more ways to get that nickel/month.
Businesses love the idea of "low" recurring fees, it means a person can spend FAR more than they would have normally for the same thing; and, it can make a person "seem" to have a lot more money then than have. e.g., If a person makes $4000 a month, and saves to buy everything in cash, then they must take time and effort (and thus must analyze) before making that purchase (e.g., $800 Phone); however, if you can give it to them now for $50 a month for 24 months then the person can say they still have $3950 a month left. We have been tricked into thinking we should use the House Mortgage concepts for small purchases and this is REALLY BAD! The double whammy is that the $800 phone, if it could not be sold amortized would probably only sell for $300-400. Therefore, EVERYONE (even those who want to pay cash) get screwed. We end up paying 2-3 times the price for an item (because the Market can bare it) and we then pay the "servicing" fees which can double that cost yet again.... Ridiculous is an understatement and this is unfortunately the market that EVERY business now wants (or has to become to get financing). It is this model that makes FaceBook worth so much :(
For me, I've given up, I put a value on everything (e..g, Movies worth $5 max, CDs less) and wait until I find those items in bargain bins before I buy them. I do not pirate (at all), not because I can't or won't (I used to pirate a lot back when I spent $200-$400 a month on media), but because I have just given up! Too much BS has made me contrary, to the point where I have realized I am better off without ANY of it.
Now, I figure they'll have to work real hard to ever win me back; that $200-$400 I used to spend is just going into a bank account; to think, there was a time when I considered $20-$25 for a move a good price and worth it (I had over a thousand VHS movies at that time -- all new! and about 300 that were copied onto blank tapes), Then, I got rid of those VHS movies, and now have 600 DVD's (all new) but only a dozen of so cost more than $5, and not a single copied one (unless backed up do to the DVD cracking). So 1000 * $20 ~= $20,000 spent with no qualms. Now, 600*$5 ~= $3000 spent. (This is over about the same period of time too, I am actually buying less, even though I am trying to replace all
You could have a centralized system (like Steam) for tracking user activities.
How would such a system track user activities on a Free operating system, where the user can modify the OS kernel to limit the "centralized system (like Steam) for tracking user activities" to a sandbox that can't see much? And even without a sandbox, how would it track music and movies that don't match any well-known hashes because they have been copied through the analog hole or otherwise reencoded?
As for unknown files, all you need is a pop up box where you ask the user what original files does it match.
For one thing, the user has no incentive to answer correctly. Either there is a way to answer that the file is a file that the user created (in which case the user will lie), or there is no way for the user to create an original work or otherwise add a file that isn't a major-label published work (in which case it's as locked down as a game console). Or I'm missing something fundamental.
The suspense is killing me! What happened next?!
Somebody invented a /. "spam" filter and this thread's first post mysteriously disappeared...
If everyone had open access wifi, there would be reduced need for 3G data plans in major cities.
A device with a 3G data plan can connect to the Internet on public transit, unlike a device with only Wi-Fi.
Last time I tried, 3G did not connect to the public Internet
Neither does Wi-Fi, which is behind NAT in every single deployment that I remember having used.