The main issue with this is that you are limiting your audience to (native) English speakers only. That may be a huge issue to e.g. Gmail and other sites that can handle a larger area than the English speaking world only. The current CAPTCHA is language independent (except of course the audio version(s)).
And then there is the issue of automatically creating them... a human created pool would quickly prove too small, and computers are not smart enough to create this kind of CAPTCHA. Otherwise they would be answering them all the same anyway.
I was thinking exactly the same after reading the article. Sensationalism at it's top. Of course this kind of stories will grab headlines - however I am wondering about real important details behind it.
Was this person hospitalised when the alleged infringement took place? That would be an interesting point: an alibi so to say. And there are more loose ends to this blurb of course.
Being ill doesn't allow anyone to break the law of course. Though the RIAA with their dragnet style of litigation is also not clean for sure.
Newyorkcountrylawyer, I admire the work you do in these RIAA cases, but please submit this kind of stories to the mainstream press, and keep the more legal/technical stories for/.. That is where the two belong./. editors: that is also a hint for you. If I want to read those sorry human interest stories I will buy a tabloid from a news stand, I'm here for the tech/nerd stuff, including the more technical RIAA related stuff. Even though I don't live in the USA nor have I ever set foot there yet.
Go to Preferences, tab Security, click the Show Passwords button for a list of saved logins, and in that window again Show Passwords, and one more click to confirm.
VoilÃ, all your saved passwords, all in plain text.
The Security tab is also where you can set your master password, by the way. I assume setting this password will also encrypt your saved passwords, not sure as I have never tried it.
The default of FF is afaik to not password-protect the password list. This is an option that has to be switched on manually, hidden in the preferences somewhere. I don't remember having ever got the question of FF to password-protect this list, not even on a first use (i.e. storing the first password in the list).
For about 20(!) years my bank in The Netherlands uses this system of one-time tokens. In the beginning they sent you a simple paper list (they still do that on request), nowadays the standard is to send a one-time code (probably even time limited, not sure about that part as I don't use it at the moment) by SMS to your mobile. When the system was implemented mobile phones weren't used very much yet.
It's nothing new. It's safe, really, even with a simple paper list. I still don't understand why the USA and my current homeland Hong Kong don't have something like that.
On a related note, it wouldn't surprise me if swap-files played into the luser tendency to
call disks "memory."
Which is definitely not luser speak: not so long ago (10-15 years) I recall it to be very very common to talk about "internal" memory and "external" memory in computer literature and advertisements and so. The first is what is nowadays commonly called "memory" or "RAM" (volatile: gone when the power is off), the second is the hard disk (for non-volatile storage, surviving power off). This is from the time that even "cache" memory was external, I recall myself plugging extra SDRAM chips in my 386 motherboard to increase the cache memory.
In Dutch it is still very common to talk about "intern geheugen" (=internal memory) when talking about the RAM.
The USA has overall very relaxed gun laws (and "smuggling" from one state to another with stricter laws is trivial of course), and a very high number of gun deaths, murder, self-defence, accident, or otherwise.
Europe has overall very strict gun laws and much lower gun death rates.
Most countries in the world with a properly functioning government have stricter gun ownership laws, and lower gun related death rates than the USA.
As soon as someone has their hands around your neck, is stronger than you, and has the intent of killing you, it's pretty much too late to start digging for your gun. If someone is really intent on killing you, and has planned it, then not much defence will save you.
Carrying a gun MAY help you against a sudden attack, but then if e.g. a robber is standing in front of you with his gun drawn, the last thing you should do is to start digging up your own gun. Provided you'd like to live to tell the tale.
Not sure whether this should be considered a compliment, but to me it indicates that FF matters. It has enough market share for criminals to target.
Unfortunately not many details on this exploit: is it really an exploit in FF (for the drive-by download)? Or is it more like a trojan (for the download duping)?
Sorry to not realise you live in a society where there are so many arms around that everybody is afraid of everybody else. I live in Hong Kong, no-one carries arms here, and homicides and other violent crime levels are one of the lowest worldwide. Even just across the border, in Shenzhen, which belongs to the world's most criminal cities, no-one carries a gun.
Besides, there are more ways of self-defence than guns or other weapons. Think e.g. martial arts. Yes that needs training but for a gun to be effective, training is also necessary.
And yes I may suffer some mental illness. It's called "common sense". Something that's absent in many "I need a gun!" kinds of people.
So how is a gun any different than a screwdriver, brick, hammer, etc.?
The sole purpose of a gun is to kill. People or animals. On the streets of most countries you do not find animals, at least not animals one would want to eat (the only valid reason to kill an animal imho). And almost certainly no animals that would want to eat you.
There is NO valid reason of carrying a gun on the streets. Really, there isn't.
And that is the difference between a gun and the other objects you mentioned: those objects do have a valid function in modern day life.
Price parity isn't there yet but it won't take long. Devices like the iPod and EEE-PC really have brought critical mass to the SSD. Look for example at the price points of the first and second generation EEE: ten times the storage, larger screen, same or even lower overall price.
SSD prices are falling, and falling fast. Critical mass has been reached. Fs vendors should be about ready now for the SSD specific file systems, now is the time for them to build up mindshare and critical mass. The SSD is taking over the laptop market, a few % market share now though it's growing. Very fast.
It comes to show that modern mobile phones, especially the high-end ones (smartphones), are basically just a general purpose computer, miniaturised, with some specialised user interface (small screen, a handful of buttons, camera, speaker and microphone).
It's really an impressive hack, but hardly surprising that it is possible in the first place. After all the iPhone is running a specialised version of OS-X already.
Most batteries simply loose capacity over time. I have heard a number of 30% per year capacity loss for many rechargeable batteries, even when the battery is not in use. After about three years most batteries simply need replacement.
My four-year-old iBook is still doing about two hours on a battery charge, I'm impressed. Only 60% capacity loss after all those years.
Yes but didn't realise that flash thing is not an ad but a movie. No caption so I didn't click on it (I have FlashBlock of course). No caption normally means advertisement.
Really no idea on "syncing speed" etc. I am paying for a 2M/2M line with fixed IP, and honestly I do expect to get this bandwidth in full. It's not that much to begin with, my home ADSL has 6M and costs just over half. Including some IP-TV channels (Netvigator). Reliability has been very good so far, better than the home connection. You get what you pay for.
This 3M bandwidth I seem to get anytime: usually of course I'm dealing with it during the day, but sometimes also in the evenings I have reached it. Usually though I simply don't pay attention. It works and that's it.
Loading speeds of web sites indeed do not seem to be influenced much as soon as you have like 1 Mbit of bandwidth available, as most of the time you're waiting for the server to reply (adservers are notorious) or scripts to run (like the new/. home page, which by now takes >30 seconds to render in FF2 on a 1.5 MHz or so computer).
Because nobody is using them to the max anyway of course:) If the users would actually start using those bandwidths, then, you know, trouble would come over the telcos. They would have to stop overselling their capacity and so.
So no it's good as it is. ISPs happily overselling their services, and in the meantime keeping their excessive users nicely in check to allow the government to monitor everything without being swamped. Now who would want to change that ideal situation.
P.S. just for the mods: the above is of course meant to be ironic.
Living in Hong Kong, my office is connected to the Internet over a 2M/2M ADSL line - 2M both up and down, from Wharf T&T Telecom.
The interesting thing is that in both directions I usually get 3Mbps throughput! That is 50% more than the headline... I have to say I haven't tried pushing up and down to the max at the same time. Would be an interesting experiment.
Rolling out a wireless network (mobile phone, mobile data, etc) is much much cheaper than rolling out a wired network. It saves digging in all those cables to the end users. Apparently the copper running to GP's home is not suitable for ADSL, I don't know the technology so can't comment on this matter. Having to replace such cables is mighty expensive.
That said 2 kbps is of course ridiculously slow for a 3G mobile connection. I would expect to get 50-100 times that; here in Hong Kong 3G is advertised in the Mbps ranges - rare to get that though but a 30% of that is quite commonly reachable. Even on GPRS I used to get about 14 kbps.
If you decide to no longer publish, the following things are true:
- You have (in effect) given up your agreed-upon "right" to monetary compensation based upon the temporary monopoly (which is what "copyright" is) over the work. If you're not selling, then nobody is buying from you.
Then I create one more copy, put that for sale for say US$ 1 billion. Happy now?
The whole rest of your argumentation is moot as the work will eventually end up in the public domain anyway: as soon as the copyright period expires.
Or imagine I'm in a band, write some cool songs, but don't record them. Only play them live. Those songs are copyrighted by me. Why registering? And do I have to do that in every single country in this world? I'm not an USAian, mind you. My world is bigger. I have the copyright on the song, and have the right to allow you to play it in public as well (or not). Whether or not the song is recorded and sold should not matter. Maybe our band decides against making recordings, doing only live gigs. Live gigs you're also not allowed to record without permission of the artist, even though the gig may be free. The music played at each gig is unique, they are all different, the beauty of live music. Should you register them all? There should not be recordings in the first place - but what if someone illegally makes a recording of your gig? Trouble if registration is required.
Read Lessig's book. If is necessary - if I can't find a work's copyright holder, how can I get use to it?
The author's name (or a notice of the name of the copyright owner) is normally included with the reproduction of the work.
And would be impractical anyway.
Funny, I had no problem registering domains, why should registering a copyright be any harder?
1) Volume: orders of magnitude more copyrighted works exist than that there are Internet domains registered.
2) Volume again: a domain is only a handful letters; a song or a book is orders of magnitude larger. And often only in physical format. Of course a copy of the original work will have to be included with the registration to show what is being registered in the first place.
3) It's impractical. I am writing comments on/., I own the copyright, and don't like the idea that it can be reproduced to other websites than/.. Same for letters that I have written to newspapers and got published: I own the copyright to those letters, however by sending it to the newspaper I grant them an implicit licence to publish them in their paper. But not just anyone else - they will have to ask me. It is impractical to have to register all that, from all people. Let alone make the register usable.
I don't believe bits should be copyrightable. That MP3 as well as the CD it comes from is just a long number, and I don't believe anyone should own any numbers. Numbers should be free; ALL of them.
So in your opinion, as soon as a work is created in digital form, it can not be copyrighted - at all? How about computer software, for example? Music on a CD? As soon as an artist makes a digital recording of their songs (no-one uses analogue any more) they lose their copyrights? That's just ridiculous.
Sorry bud, but it ain't gonna happen. The "rightsholders" are the labels - this is only one of many reforms that need to be made. The recording artists should own copyright; they should NOT be "works for hire".
This is the free choice of the artists: either keep your copyrights and remain poor or have a minuscule chance of actually getting money for it. That's basically how it now stands.
Copyright lengths need to be brought back down to sane levels.
Sure.
Copyrights need to be registered again. Automatic granting of copyright is madness.
And that is a very bad idea. The idea behind copyright is that anyone producing a work owns the rights to it. Registration is not necessary. And would be impractical anyway. Registering copyright is a nice extra option to make it easier to defend it if necessary.
Out of print works should not be covered by copyright.
Why is that so? Copyright expires (after way too long time nowadays), after that the works enter the public domain. Now if I were to write a computer program, publish it, and later decide not to publish it anymore within my copyright period: that is my right. Why should I always have to continue to publish and (in effect) distribute a work that I own?
Copyright as it was originally devised was good. Later extensions made it worse. Copyright surviving the death of an author is debatable, the length of copyright is debatable. But the core is good, and should stay: copyright is automatic, inheritable/transferable, for a certain period of time, and sales of reproductions of a work fall under the first-sale doctrine (can be re-sold unrestricted - note, that is the original reproduction, no copies of that reproduction).
The last point however is getting tough for digital files: maybe I can re-sell that MP3 but how is it the original reproduction? Nothing physical is present.
After all, ISPs have always been protected as carriers, just like the postal service - and the postal service is not subject to search and seizure without due process. Nobody can open my private mail (unless it crosses borders) and check for pirated DVDs, without a really good reason to suspect that I'm pirating DVDs.
ISP's are not a "carrier like the postal service". The main difference: the postal service must accept mail from anyone, and deliver it to any address within their service area (usually a country). Very few restrictions here. ISP's are not required to just accept anyone as customer, nor are they required to carry any traffic the customer tries to put through them.
There may be some protections of ISP's, though I doubt it goes as far as the postal service which afaik is even forbidden to open any mail or parcel; I only know about customs officials opening and inspecting in-transit mail when it crosses national borders. I have never heard of any such restrictions on ISP's: forbidden (as in: by law) to read e.g. in-transit e-mail. Injecting ads in web pages for example indicates that they can snoop on in-transit data.
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The main issue with this is that you are limiting your audience to (native) English speakers only. That may be a huge issue to e.g. Gmail and other sites that can handle a larger area than the English speaking world only. The current CAPTCHA is language independent (except of course the audio version(s)).
And then there is the issue of automatically creating them... a human created pool would quickly prove too small, and computers are not smart enough to create this kind of CAPTCHA. Otherwise they would be answering them all the same anyway.
I was thinking exactly the same after reading the article. Sensationalism at it's top. Of course this kind of stories will grab headlines - however I am wondering about real important details behind it.
Was this person hospitalised when the alleged infringement took place? That would be an interesting point: an alibi so to say. And there are more loose ends to this blurb of course.
Being ill doesn't allow anyone to break the law of course. Though the RIAA with their dragnet style of litigation is also not clean for sure.
Newyorkcountrylawyer, I admire the work you do in these RIAA cases, but please submit this kind of stories to the mainstream press, and keep the more legal/technical stories for /.. That is where the two belong. /. editors: that is also a hint for you. If I want to read those sorry human interest stories I will buy a tabloid from a news stand, I'm here for the tech/nerd stuff, including the more technical RIAA related stuff. Even though I don't live in the USA nor have I ever set foot there yet.
In Firefox 2.0.18 (Mac OS-X):
Go to Preferences, tab Security, click the Show Passwords button for a list of saved logins, and in that window again Show Passwords, and one more click to confirm.
VoilÃ, all your saved passwords, all in plain text.
The Security tab is also where you can set your master password, by the way. I assume setting this password will also encrypt your saved passwords, not sure as I have never tried it.
The default of FF is afaik to not password-protect the password list. This is an option that has to be switched on manually, hidden in the preferences somewhere. I don't remember having ever got the question of FF to password-protect this list, not even on a first use (i.e. storing the first password in the list).
For about 20(!) years my bank in The Netherlands uses this system of one-time tokens. In the beginning they sent you a simple paper list (they still do that on request), nowadays the standard is to send a one-time code (probably even time limited, not sure about that part as I don't use it at the moment) by SMS to your mobile. When the system was implemented mobile phones weren't used very much yet.
It's nothing new. It's safe, really, even with a simple paper list. I still don't understand why the USA and my current homeland Hong Kong don't have something like that.
On a related note, it wouldn't surprise me if swap-files played into the luser tendency to call disks "memory."
Which is definitely not luser speak: not so long ago (10-15 years) I recall it to be very very common to talk about "internal" memory and "external" memory in computer literature and advertisements and so. The first is what is nowadays commonly called "memory" or "RAM" (volatile: gone when the power is off), the second is the hard disk (for non-volatile storage, surviving power off). This is from the time that even "cache" memory was external, I recall myself plugging extra SDRAM chips in my 386 motherboard to increase the cache memory.
In Dutch it is still very common to talk about "intern geheugen" (=internal memory) when talking about the RAM.
The USA has overall very relaxed gun laws (and "smuggling" from one state to another with stricter laws is trivial of course), and a very high number of gun deaths, murder, self-defence, accident, or otherwise.
Europe has overall very strict gun laws and much lower gun death rates.
Most countries in the world with a properly functioning government have stricter gun ownership laws, and lower gun related death rates than the USA.
Seeing a trend here?
As soon as someone has their hands around your neck, is stronger than you, and has the intent of killing you, it's pretty much too late to start digging for your gun. If someone is really intent on killing you, and has planned it, then not much defence will save you.
Carrying a gun MAY help you against a sudden attack, but then if e.g. a robber is standing in front of you with his gun drawn, the last thing you should do is to start digging up your own gun. Provided you'd like to live to tell the tale.
Not sure whether this should be considered a compliment, but to me it indicates that FF matters. It has enough market share for criminals to target.
Unfortunately not many details on this exploit: is it really an exploit in FF (for the drive-by download)? Or is it more like a trojan (for the download duping)?
Sorry to not realise you live in a society where there are so many arms around that everybody is afraid of everybody else. I live in Hong Kong, no-one carries arms here, and homicides and other violent crime levels are one of the lowest worldwide. Even just across the border, in Shenzhen, which belongs to the world's most criminal cities, no-one carries a gun.
Besides, there are more ways of self-defence than guns or other weapons. Think e.g. martial arts. Yes that needs training but for a gun to be effective, training is also necessary.
And yes I may suffer some mental illness. It's called "common sense". Something that's absent in many "I need a gun!" kinds of people.
So how is a gun any different than a screwdriver, brick, hammer, etc.?
The sole purpose of a gun is to kill. People or animals. On the streets of most countries you do not find animals, at least not animals one would want to eat (the only valid reason to kill an animal imho). And almost certainly no animals that would want to eat you.
There is NO valid reason of carrying a gun on the streets. Really, there isn't.
And that is the difference between a gun and the other objects you mentioned: those objects do have a valid function in modern day life.
Price parity isn't there yet but it won't take long. Devices like the iPod and EEE-PC really have brought critical mass to the SSD. Look for example at the price points of the first and second generation EEE: ten times the storage, larger screen, same or even lower overall price.
SSD prices are falling, and falling fast. Critical mass has been reached. Fs vendors should be about ready now for the SSD specific file systems, now is the time for them to build up mindshare and critical mass. The SSD is taking over the laptop market, a few % market share now though it's growing. Very fast.
It comes to show that modern mobile phones, especially the high-end ones (smartphones), are basically just a general purpose computer, miniaturised, with some specialised user interface (small screen, a handful of buttons, camera, speaker and microphone).
It's really an impressive hack, but hardly surprising that it is possible in the first place. After all the iPhone is running a specialised version of OS-X already.
Most batteries simply loose capacity over time. I have heard a number of 30% per year capacity loss for many rechargeable batteries, even when the battery is not in use. After about three years most batteries simply need replacement.
My four-year-old iBook is still doing about two hours on a battery charge, I'm impressed. Only 60% capacity loss after all those years.
Yes but didn't realise that flash thing is not an ad but a movie. No caption so I didn't click on it (I have FlashBlock of course). No caption normally means advertisement.
Really no idea on "syncing speed" etc. I am paying for a 2M/2M line with fixed IP, and honestly I do expect to get this bandwidth in full. It's not that much to begin with, my home ADSL has 6M and costs just over half. Including some IP-TV channels (Netvigator). Reliability has been very good so far, better than the home connection. You get what you pay for.
This 3M bandwidth I seem to get anytime: usually of course I'm dealing with it during the day, but sometimes also in the evenings I have reached it. Usually though I simply don't pay attention. It works and that's it.
Loading speeds of web sites indeed do not seem to be influenced much as soon as you have like 1 Mbit of bandwidth available, as most of the time you're waiting for the server to reply (adservers are notorious) or scripts to run (like the new /. home page, which by now takes >30 seconds to render in FF2 on a 1.5 MHz or so computer).
Anyone got a movie of this stunt? Sounds really cool, would be even cooler to actually see him doing it.
Because nobody is using them to the max anyway of course :) If the users would actually start using those bandwidths, then, you know, trouble would come over the telcos. They would have to stop overselling their capacity and so.
So no it's good as it is. ISPs happily overselling their services, and in the meantime keeping their excessive users nicely in check to allow the government to monitor everything without being swamped. Now who would want to change that ideal situation.
P.S. just for the mods: the above is of course meant to be ironic.
Living in Hong Kong, my office is connected to the Internet over a 2M/2M ADSL line - 2M both up and down, from Wharf T&T Telecom.
The interesting thing is that in both directions I usually get 3Mbps throughput! That is 50% more than the headline... I have to say I haven't tried pushing up and down to the max at the same time. Would be an interesting experiment.
Rolling out a wireless network (mobile phone, mobile data, etc) is much much cheaper than rolling out a wired network. It saves digging in all those cables to the end users. Apparently the copper running to GP's home is not suitable for ADSL, I don't know the technology so can't comment on this matter. Having to replace such cables is mighty expensive.
That said 2 kbps is of course ridiculously slow for a 3G mobile connection. I would expect to get 50-100 times that; here in Hong Kong 3G is advertised in the Mbps ranges - rare to get that though but a 30% of that is quite commonly reachable. Even on GPRS I used to get about 14 kbps.
If you decide to no longer publish, the following things are true:
- You have (in effect) given up your agreed-upon "right" to monetary compensation based upon the temporary monopoly (which is what "copyright" is) over the work. If you're not selling, then nobody is buying from you.
Then I create one more copy, put that for sale for say US$ 1 billion. Happy now?
The whole rest of your argumentation is moot as the work will eventually end up in the public domain anyway: as soon as the copyright period expires.
Or imagine I'm in a band, write some cool songs, but don't record them. Only play them live. Those songs are copyrighted by me. Why registering? And do I have to do that in every single country in this world? I'm not an USAian, mind you. My world is bigger. I have the copyright on the song, and have the right to allow you to play it in public as well (or not). Whether or not the song is recorded and sold should not matter. Maybe our band decides against making recordings, doing only live gigs. Live gigs you're also not allowed to record without permission of the artist, even though the gig may be free. The music played at each gig is unique, they are all different, the beauty of live music. Should you register them all? There should not be recordings in the first place - but what if someone illegally makes a recording of your gig? Trouble if registration is required.
Registration is not necessary.
Read Lessig's book. If is necessary - if I can't find a work's copyright holder, how can I get use to it?
The author's name (or a notice of the name of the copyright owner) is normally included with the reproduction of the work.
And would be impractical anyway.
Funny, I had no problem registering domains, why should registering a copyright be any harder?
1) Volume: orders of magnitude more copyrighted works exist than that there are Internet domains registered.
2) Volume again: a domain is only a handful letters; a song or a book is orders of magnitude larger. And often only in physical format. Of course a copy of the original work will have to be included with the registration to show what is being registered in the first place.
3) It's impractical. I am writing comments on /., I own the copyright, and don't like the idea that it can be reproduced to other websites than /.. Same for letters that I have written to newspapers and got published: I own the copyright to those letters, however by sending it to the newspaper I grant them an implicit licence to publish them in their paper. But not just anyone else - they will have to ask me. It is impractical to have to register all that, from all people. Let alone make the register usable.
I don't believe bits should be copyrightable. That MP3 as well as the CD it comes from is just a long number, and I don't believe anyone should own any numbers. Numbers should be free; ALL of them.
So in your opinion, as soon as a work is created in digital form, it can not be copyrighted - at all? How about computer software, for example? Music on a CD? As soon as an artist makes a digital recording of their songs (no-one uses analogue any more) they lose their copyrights? That's just ridiculous.
Sorry bud, but it ain't gonna happen. The "rightsholders" are the labels - this is only one of many reforms that need to be made. The recording artists should own copyright; they should NOT be "works for hire".
This is the free choice of the artists: either keep your copyrights and remain poor or have a minuscule chance of actually getting money for it. That's basically how it now stands.
Copyright lengths need to be brought back down to sane levels.
Sure.
Copyrights need to be registered again. Automatic granting of copyright is madness.
And that is a very bad idea. The idea behind copyright is that anyone producing a work owns the rights to it. Registration is not necessary. And would be impractical anyway. Registering copyright is a nice extra option to make it easier to defend it if necessary.
Out of print works should not be covered by copyright.
Why is that so? Copyright expires (after way too long time nowadays), after that the works enter the public domain. Now if I were to write a computer program, publish it, and later decide not to publish it anymore within my copyright period: that is my right. Why should I always have to continue to publish and (in effect) distribute a work that I own?
Copyright as it was originally devised was good. Later extensions made it worse. Copyright surviving the death of an author is debatable, the length of copyright is debatable. But the core is good, and should stay: copyright is automatic, inheritable/transferable, for a certain period of time, and sales of reproductions of a work fall under the first-sale doctrine (can be re-sold unrestricted - note, that is the original reproduction, no copies of that reproduction).
The last point however is getting tough for digital files: maybe I can re-sell that MP3 but how is it the original reproduction? Nothing physical is present.
After all, ISPs have always been protected as carriers, just like the postal service - and the postal service is not subject to search and seizure without due process. Nobody can open my private mail (unless it crosses borders) and check for pirated DVDs, without a really good reason to suspect that I'm pirating DVDs.
ISP's are not a "carrier like the postal service". The main difference: the postal service must accept mail from anyone, and deliver it to any address within their service area (usually a country). Very few restrictions here. ISP's are not required to just accept anyone as customer, nor are they required to carry any traffic the customer tries to put through them.
There may be some protections of ISP's, though I doubt it goes as far as the postal service which afaik is even forbidden to open any mail or parcel; I only know about customs officials opening and inspecting in-transit mail when it crosses national borders. I have never heard of any such restrictions on ISP's: forbidden (as in: by law) to read e.g. in-transit e-mail. Injecting ads in web pages for example indicates that they can snoop on in-transit data.
Sorry to be a grammar nazi here but the word "only" belongs at the end of the sentence:
criminals would choose to be using public wifi points only.