"However. Legal obligations and practice, make me responsible what happens over my internet connection."
No, they don't. Look it up.
If you innocently "loan" someone else the use of some equipment, and they commit a crime with said equipment, you are not liable for their criminal acts.
The sole exception is an automobile. In some cases you can be held accountable for something someone else does with your car. But to the best of my knowledge, if you are not aware of the other party's illegal activities, that is the ONLY exception.
If you weren't watching your traffic, to the extent that your 250GB limit was exceeded (I use the internet A LOT, and that's a pretty generous limit), then it's your own fault.
If you don't have decent router software, you can log into your account on your ISP's site and see your usage so far for the month.
It's easy. So you really have nobody else to blame.
Exactly. Same here. I guess maybe some people live in areas where selfish neighbors make it impractical, but I can be happy that I don't live in one of those areas.
My open WiFi has been going pretty much constantly for 4 years now, with no real problems.
"Leaving my Wifi open somehow encouraging privacy?"
It's not intended to promote privacy. The Open WiFi project is intended as a public service... to help your fellow man, not to make your life more private.
"... I don't want some idiot to come by and saturate my connection when I'm trying to watch TV."
You spend 20 seconds and open your router software (each MAC address and its traffic level should be clearly visible if you have a decent router), blacklist the offending MAC address, and they will never bother you again.
End of problem.
I have been running an open router for years. In fact my router probably has the strongest signal in the neighborhood. I caught one person downloading music a few years ago, and that is all. I made a single file available to her on my network. An MP3 with a "bait" name. It was actually a recording of my voice. I called her by name, and told her to stop using my WiFi for downloading music. I think that freaked her out a little. I haven't had any problem since.
I won't say that nobody has ever downloaded files since then, but I have never since then noticed heavy traffic by anyone else on my network. If they're doing it, either they're doing it late at night or when I'm not using it much myself.
I know of a guy who had pissed some woman off. She wasn't too bright, though. So what she did was post signs on the side of her minivan saying "So-and-so is a child molester." And she drove around his neighborhood with those signs on her van. Even parked in front of his house.
Well, needless to say that was illegal (libel of the worst kind, at the very least) and she was picked up by the police.
BUT... ever since then, just about everybody in the neighborhood has been convinced that he was, in fact, a child molester.
"Hard to prove a negative (i.e. that it is not you), and with child porn cases presumption of innocence has been loooong gone"
Not so at all. As I mentioned above, I read recently about a child porn case in which the police used trickery to find out who it was. They had his IP address, but no judge would sign a warrant based on an IP address. So they had to resort to other methods.
It is getting more and more common -- almost universal now in the US, in fact -- for judges to reject warrants that are based only on an IP address.
The courts are already getting it right. And some people have been convicted for child porn. But they weren't convicted on the basis of their IP addresses.
There was one case that I read about recently, in which the police had the perp's IP address, but there were several homes in the neighborhood and with only that, they could not get a warrant.
So they somehow (I don't remember how) tricked the perp into accessing something on the internet at a particular time, and saw the packets coming from a particular residence. THEN they moved in and busted him.
But an IP address alone? These days? No way. They can't even get a search warrant on that basis, much less arrest and convict you.
"First, the obvious thing is that you would need a router that supports guest access - giving others internet access, without giving them access to your network."
That isn't "guest access". Guest accounts are something else. Most routers are configured by default to keep your local (NAT) network separate from your WiFi.
"But just because you think the IP address is meaningless, even if you are right, doesn't stop you from getting into enormous trouble, depending on what some stranger did on your network. The IP address isn't meaningless. It identifies the router in your home. If the router is involved in a serious crime, then you may be "presumed innocent", but you are still a first rate suspect and I would assume that the cops won't have any problems getting a search warrant."
Your assumption is wrong. That is the entire point. An IP address is not probable cause. Court after court has been ruling exactly that.
"If everybody opened their WiFi AP, then an IP address will become meaningless as a way of identifying a person to arrest or sue."
As someone else pointed out, it's already meaningless. Or nearly so. More and more judges are wising up to the fact that an IP does not identify an individual.
"It'll never happen though, what's to stop all the neighborhood leeches from freeloading off my cable modem and save themselves $50 a month?"
You are. You keep an eye on usage and if someone is abusing it, you blacklist their MAC address. End of problem.
And I should add: even those laws that make you responsible for somebody else doing damage with your car, are on very shaky legal ground. If you hunt around, you will find that those laws apply only to cars. And it is very questionable whether they should even apply to cars.
"If someone on your network DDoSes my server, I will sue YOU for being negligent for letting some fuckwad on YOUR network."
Haha. Good luck with that.
Not, it's NOT like lending someone your car. Automobiles are a unique situation. The law that makes you responsible if somebody commits a crime with your car applies ONLY to cars. It doesn't apply to ANYTHING else.
If I loan you a gun, for legitimate reasons (or so I thought), and you go out and kill somebody with it, I am NOT legally responsible.
Same with a router. Or just about anything else... except a car.
She actually has more options than just those two.
(1) Contact the EFF.
Tell them: "Go ahead and sue me. I can prove that it wasn't me," or something to that effect. Most of these copyright trolls are not even remotely interested in suing anybody. It costs too much. And the only case they have won so far was one in which the defendant admitted everything. Result: you walk.
Dude, look. I understand which "side" of the argument you are on... that's where you have done a lot of work. But I am not obligated to respect bad science just because you make a living at it.
Prove your points, or fuck off. Actually, just fuck off.
"You've repeated your support for Latour's article, which is fractally wrong."
[1] That doesn't cut it, even remotely. REFUTE his arguments. A statement that he is "fractally wrong" is just so much hot air. Refute the argument(s) or go away. You claim to be a scientist. You understand this.
[2] In order for peer review to legitimately reject bad papers, they have to be seen and reviewed. It is public knowledge that Jones, Mann, et. al conspired to prevent certain papers from being properly reviewed. Denying this is denying easily verifiable facts. You claim to be a scientist. You should understand this.
I'm not a "liberal", but that's beside the point. In order to give me orders, you need legal authority. If you don't have that legal authority, and you attack me, kiss your own ass goodbye.
If they had reason to believe that the person in question had committed a crime against their employer, they MIGHT, under many circumstances, have effected an citizen's arrest.
However, citizen's arrest does not include any legal right to search ANYTHING. They put their hand in my pocket, they get it broken off.
What the hell are you talking about? What questions have I posed, in the last few days, that will take months to answer?
I don't understand you, man. Really. I'm asking... not to be rude or impolite, but just to understand, because I do not. Do you by any chance have Asperger's or some other mild form of autism?
This is a sincere question, and the answer might must change my own behavior. But I'm only asking, not implying. If the answer is no, then I'll accept that it's no.
"Don't flatter yourself. Debunking misinformation and defending scientists against baseless attacks are my unhealthy obsessions."
Bullshit. If that were so, why didn't you bother to repeat the part where I publicly posted where it was adequately explained to me, and that I understood and had been wrong?
Huh? No... you never bother to re-post that when it happens. Instead, you consistently and repeatedly post just the wrong things I stated, without repeating when I am right.
"... while quoting hacked private emails from years ago to baselessly attack scientists."
This is -- I'll be as polite as I can -- disingenuous at best. There is no significant evidence that those emails were "hacked" for one thing (in fact there is substantial, if only circumstantial, evidence that it was an "inside job"). Further, there was no "attack". They were direct quotes. If they reflect badly on those scientists, maybe they should not have written what they did. I, too, am interested in the TRUTH, "Khayman80". At least I am not guilty of a concerted effort to keep legitimate papers away from publication, as they were. If you want to call that an "attack", so be it... but if so it is well deserved.
"Let's consider some of the "many times" you mentioned. When I asked for references to support your claims about climate science, you called me a vindictive asshole."
YOU KEEP MISSING THE POINT!!! What is wrong with you???
I have explained this MANY times now: It isn't (usually) WHAT you write, it's how you go about it. I didn't call you a vindictive asshole because you asked me a question. I called you that because of your habit of being annoying, rude, insulting.
And yes, these circumstances ARE a good example. I don't care whether it was some personal issue on your part that caused a delay; it is still rude, and rather a Slashdot faux pas, to interrupt some conversation I am having with someone else in order to demand an answer that YOU want from some other discussion that happened weeks or months ago. And yes, you have done that a number of times. And then you do it in such a rude and insulting manner... do you REALLY expect an answer? Why the hell should I bother? Further, as I have also stated several times before, even if I were inclined to answer you, you have waited until long after those conversations have dropped off my que, making it that much more difficult for me to go find them and give you a considered reply. Which, again, is rude. Whatever your personal reasons for it.
It isn't your PHYSICS I have an issue with, Khayman80, it's your behavior.
"I'll prove you both wrong. Again, patience."
I rather doubt that.
"More generally, you seem to be asserting that there's a statute of limitations on debunking misinformation."
Absolute bullshit. There IS however, something of a statute of limitations on when (and where) it is considered appropriate to reply to somebody on Slashdot!
"I'm posting my comments as replies to your most recent comment to make a frozen public copy, and to give you a chance to respond on neutral ground."
I don't really care. The way you go about it is rude, insulting, and inappropriate. If you ever get that part straightened out, maybe I would be more inclined to take you seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
"However. Legal obligations and practice, make me responsible what happens over my internet connection."
No, they don't. Look it up.
If you innocently "loan" someone else the use of some equipment, and they commit a crime with said equipment, you are not liable for their criminal acts.
The sole exception is an automobile. In some cases you can be held accountable for something someone else does with your car. But to the best of my knowledge, if you are not aware of the other party's illegal activities, that is the ONLY exception.
Mod Up.
If you weren't watching your traffic, to the extent that your 250GB limit was exceeded (I use the internet A LOT, and that's a pretty generous limit), then it's your own fault.
If you don't have decent router software, you can log into your account on your ISP's site and see your usage so far for the month.
It's easy. So you really have nobody else to blame.
Exactly. Same here. I guess maybe some people live in areas where selfish neighbors make it impractical, but I can be happy that I don't live in one of those areas.
My open WiFi has been going pretty much constantly for 4 years now, with no real problems.
Well, I'm glad I don't live where you live. I have been running an open router for years and I haven't had any real trouble.
"Leaving my Wifi open somehow encouraging privacy?"
It's not intended to promote privacy. The Open WiFi project is intended as a public service... to help your fellow man, not to make your life more private.
"... I don't want some idiot to come by and saturate my connection when I'm trying to watch TV."
You spend 20 seconds and open your router software (each MAC address and its traffic level should be clearly visible if you have a decent router), blacklist the offending MAC address, and they will never bother you again.
End of problem.
I have been running an open router for years. In fact my router probably has the strongest signal in the neighborhood. I caught one person downloading music a few years ago, and that is all. I made a single file available to her on my network. An MP3 with a "bait" name. It was actually a recording of my voice. I called her by name, and told her to stop using my WiFi for downloading music. I think that freaked her out a little. I haven't had any problem since.
I won't say that nobody has ever downloaded files since then, but I have never since then noticed heavy traffic by anyone else on my network. If they're doing it, either they're doing it late at night or when I'm not using it much myself.
I know of a guy who had pissed some woman off. She wasn't too bright, though. So what she did was post signs on the side of her minivan saying "So-and-so is a child molester." And she drove around his neighborhood with those signs on her van. Even parked in front of his house.
Well, needless to say that was illegal (libel of the worst kind, at the very least) and she was picked up by the police.
BUT... ever since then, just about everybody in the neighborhood has been convinced that he was, in fact, a child molester.
"Hard to prove a negative (i.e. that it is not you), and with child porn cases presumption of innocence has been loooong gone"
Not so at all. As I mentioned above, I read recently about a child porn case in which the police used trickery to find out who it was. They had his IP address, but no judge would sign a warrant based on an IP address. So they had to resort to other methods.
It is getting more and more common -- almost universal now in the US, in fact -- for judges to reject warrants that are based only on an IP address.
The courts are already getting it right. And some people have been convicted for child porn. But they weren't convicted on the basis of their IP addresses.
There was one case that I read about recently, in which the police had the perp's IP address, but there were several homes in the neighborhood and with only that, they could not get a warrant.
So they somehow (I don't remember how) tricked the perp into accessing something on the internet at a particular time, and saw the packets coming from a particular residence. THEN they moved in and busted him.
But an IP address alone? These days? No way. They can't even get a search warrant on that basis, much less arrest and convict you.
"First, the obvious thing is that you would need a router that supports guest access - giving others internet access, without giving them access to your network."
That isn't "guest access". Guest accounts are something else. Most routers are configured by default to keep your local (NAT) network separate from your WiFi.
"But just because you think the IP address is meaningless, even if you are right, doesn't stop you from getting into enormous trouble, depending on what some stranger did on your network. The IP address isn't meaningless. It identifies the router in your home. If the router is involved in a serious crime, then you may be "presumed innocent", but you are still a first rate suspect and I would assume that the cops won't have any problems getting a search warrant."
Your assumption is wrong. That is the entire point. An IP address is not probable cause. Court after court has been ruling exactly that.
I think a new American revolution would be pretty careful what kind of government they implement. After all... they've been through it before.
"If everybody opened their WiFi AP, then an IP address will become meaningless as a way of identifying a person to arrest or sue."
As someone else pointed out, it's already meaningless. Or nearly so. More and more judges are wising up to the fact that an IP does not identify an individual.
"It'll never happen though, what's to stop all the neighborhood leeches from freeloading off my cable modem and save themselves $50 a month?"
You are. You keep an eye on usage and if someone is abusing it, you blacklist their MAC address. End of problem.
And I should add: even those laws that make you responsible for somebody else doing damage with your car, are on very shaky legal ground. If you hunt around, you will find that those laws apply only to cars. And it is very questionable whether they should even apply to cars.
"If someone on your network DDoSes my server, I will sue YOU for being negligent for letting some fuckwad on YOUR network."
Haha. Good luck with that.
Not, it's NOT like lending someone your car. Automobiles are a unique situation. The law that makes you responsible if somebody commits a crime with your car applies ONLY to cars. It doesn't apply to ANYTHING else.
If I loan you a gun, for legitimate reasons (or so I thought), and you go out and kill somebody with it, I am NOT legally responsible.
Same with a router. Or just about anything else... except a car.
She actually has more options than just those two.
(1) Contact the EFF.
Tell them: "Go ahead and sue me. I can prove that it wasn't me," or something to that effect. Most of these copyright trolls are not even remotely interested in suing anybody. It costs too much. And the only case they have won so far was one in which the defendant admitted everything. Result: you walk.
Gone are the days when your company supported Microsoft's latest or else .
Today, there is no or else. Microsoft is just another player in a large market.
Dude, look. I understand which "side" of the argument you are on... that's where you have done a lot of work. But I am not obligated to respect bad science just because you make a living at it.
Prove your points, or fuck off. Actually, just fuck off.
And I'd PREFER that you would take your skewed science elsewhere and leave me the fuck alone.
"You've repeated your support for Latour's article, which is fractally wrong."
[1] That doesn't cut it, even remotely. REFUTE his arguments. A statement that he is "fractally wrong" is just so much hot air. Refute the argument(s) or go away. You claim to be a scientist. You understand this.
[2] In order for peer review to legitimately reject bad papers, they have to be seen and reviewed. It is public knowledge that Jones, Mann, et. al conspired to prevent certain papers from being properly reviewed. Denying this is denying easily verifiable facts. You claim to be a scientist. You should understand this.
Listen up, "conservative":
I'm not a "liberal", but that's beside the point. In order to give me orders, you need legal authority. If you don't have that legal authority, and you attack me, kiss your own ass goodbye.
Capische?
If they had reason to believe that the person in question had committed a crime against their employer, they MIGHT, under many circumstances, have effected an citizen's arrest.
However, citizen's arrest does not include any legal right to search ANYTHING. They put their hand in my pocket, they get it broken off.
What the hell are you talking about? What questions have I posed, in the last few days, that will take months to answer?
I don't understand you, man. Really. I'm asking... not to be rude or impolite, but just to understand, because I do not. Do you by any chance have Asperger's or some other mild form of autism?
This is a sincere question, and the answer might must change my own behavior. But I'm only asking, not implying. If the answer is no, then I'll accept that it's no.
"Don't flatter yourself. Debunking misinformation and defending scientists against baseless attacks are my unhealthy obsessions."
Bullshit. If that were so, why didn't you bother to repeat the part where I publicly posted where it was adequately explained to me, and that I understood and had been wrong?
Huh? No... you never bother to re-post that when it happens. Instead, you consistently and repeatedly post just the wrong things I stated, without repeating when I am right.
"... while quoting hacked private emails from years ago to baselessly attack scientists."
This is -- I'll be as polite as I can -- disingenuous at best. There is no significant evidence that those emails were "hacked" for one thing (in fact there is substantial, if only circumstantial, evidence that it was an "inside job"). Further, there was no "attack". They were direct quotes. If they reflect badly on those scientists, maybe they should not have written what they did. I, too, am interested in the TRUTH, "Khayman80". At least I am not guilty of a concerted effort to keep legitimate papers away from publication, as they were. If you want to call that an "attack", so be it... but if so it is well deserved.
"Let's consider some of the "many times" you mentioned. When I asked for references to support your claims about climate science, you called me a vindictive asshole."
YOU KEEP MISSING THE POINT!!! What is wrong with you???
I have explained this MANY times now: It isn't (usually) WHAT you write, it's how you go about it. I didn't call you a vindictive asshole because you asked me a question. I called you that because of your habit of being annoying, rude, insulting.
And yes, these circumstances ARE a good example. I don't care whether it was some personal issue on your part that caused a delay; it is still rude, and rather a Slashdot faux pas, to interrupt some conversation I am having with someone else in order to demand an answer that YOU want from some other discussion that happened weeks or months ago. And yes, you have done that a number of times. And then you do it in such a rude and insulting manner... do you REALLY expect an answer? Why the hell should I bother? Further, as I have also stated several times before, even if I were inclined to answer you, you have waited until long after those conversations have dropped off my que, making it that much more difficult for me to go find them and give you a considered reply. Which, again, is rude. Whatever your personal reasons for it.
It isn't your PHYSICS I have an issue with, Khayman80, it's your behavior.
"I'll prove you both wrong. Again, patience."
I rather doubt that.
"More generally, you seem to be asserting that there's a statute of limitations on debunking misinformation."
Absolute bullshit. There IS however, something of a statute of limitations on when (and where) it is considered appropriate to reply to somebody on Slashdot!
"I'm posting my comments as replies to your most recent comment to make a frozen public copy, and to give you a chance to respond on neutral ground."
I don't really care. The way you go about it is rude, insulting, and inappropriate. If you ever get that part straightened out, maybe I would be more inclined to take you seriously.
Most excellent point. Mod up.