Myths Persist About Running Public Wi-Fi in the UK (arstechnica.co.uk)

If you're running a Wi-Fi hotspot in the U.K., Ars Technica found most of the available legal advice online was either "ill-informed" or "invented", and "the same wrong advice repeated by multiple sources -- including vendors offering to help clients ensure compliance with the 'rules.'" An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: If you run a public Wi-Fi service, can you be held responsible if someone uses it to infringe copyright, defame someone or commit a crime? Ars Technica examines the situation under English law on intermediary liability, as well as looking at data protection law and obligations (or not) to store traffic data for law enforcement.

According to Ars, much publicised "guidance" for would-be Wi-Fi operators indicates that an operator would be liable, but the legal experts who spoke to Ars are far less convinced.

Comments

hmmmm

[Pax681]

If you're running a Wi-Fi hotspot in the U.K

Then it says..

Ars Technica examines the situation under English law on intermediary liability

ok so that covers England and Wales.. what about Scotland and N. Ireland who both have seperate and distinct legal systems??? English law != Law that affects other constituent countries of the UK

Re:Wow - the original article is poorly written.

[jrumney]

There are no actual requirements. Just a bunch of companies claiming that there are, and by the way, they can sell you a package that takes care of all their claimed requirements for a nice premium over the price of the router and bandwidth you need to provide the actual service, and collect your users' data for their own marketing purposes (ie, for sale to spammers) to boot.

Well, is it or not?

[wonkey_monkey]

If you run a public Wi-Fi service, can you be held responsible if someone uses it to infringe copyright, defame someone or commit a crime?

According to Ars, much publicised "guidance" for would-be Wi-Fi operators indicates that an operator would be liable, but the legal experts who spoke to Ars are far less convinced.

Oh, well, that's cleared that up then.