My computer is setup to connect to the nearest WiFi connection at the library down the street.
My next door neighbour:
Step 1: Goes to Best Buy and asks a sales rep what he needs to buy. Step 2: Goes home and connects the right wires to the right places (pretty simple). Step 3: It works, but his network is insecure.
Now my WiFi connects to his WiFi instead because its nearer. Am I now a hacker?
"If he did not know, then why the suspicious behaviour? Why didn't he ask permission?"
If the Brazillian man was not a terrorist then why did he run from the armed plain clothes police officer? Why the suspicious behaviour? Why didn't he ask permission to run away?
Sorry, but he either hacked into their network or not. To me hacking involves more than a computer automatically connecting to a network. I don't like these guilty unless you can prove otherwise laws.
"In the end wifi products are shipped from the factories without security features enabled....., does not make it legal for all to use. "
Its not that they have security features switched off, they have 'allow everyone' switched on. If you ignore the login as the proxy for permission then you can't have open wifi.
Likewise you can't walk in the open forest because forests are open by default, or swim in the open sea because sea is open by default, or walk through an open square because the square is open by default.
"*YOU* know that in all likelyhood the owner of the wifi would not let anyone join his network if he knew how to secure it"
I know nothing, I select "This Network", I make no attempt to disguise who I am, my computer requests a connection and the remote wifi says "sure, here have ID 1847565". If I walk in the open forest and the intention wasn't that it was supposed to be open isn't that just trespass?
Can I asked, if I said that it was the equivalent to 'trespass' would you accept that as true?
"This is quite different to the situation where my phone connects automatically to a nearby tower, (without me even being aware) *provided* by the mobile phone network company for that very purpose."
Not so, its provided by *a* mobile phone network, for *a* user. There is some chain of contracts that stretch from that tower operator to your service provider and to your headset seller and to you, the login is the proxy for that chain of contracts.
The WiFi is no different, it is there for some purpose, to provide network to *a* user by some entity. The login is a proxy for that.
What they're saying here is that the login can't be taken as a proxy for permission but then you can't have open wifi because you can never know if the intent of the person providing it was to permit open wifi or not.
The login was the way they give permission or not and they've just discounted that!
"I think the difference is something like this: the Internet is a well-known public network,"
Its not just the Internet & Mobile Phone networks, and Mail servers talking to mail servers and and and...
Its the problem that if you ignore the login as a proxy for the persons permission then you screw yourself whereever one computer talks to another. Because the computer can never read a signature on a contract or talk to the owner so can never get permission from the human operator.
Its not the same as hacking, when a hacker goes into a network they are rejected by the login, and try to get in anyway.
"and was aware that he was using resources without permission from the human owner."
Actually the guys didn't say this, it was the arresting officer which said that he needed permission from the network owner.
"A wireless router is not a person, and therefor cannot be compared to the person saying come in."
But the Wifi login *is* the electronic proxy for the person. It *is* where the person gets to say whether its OK to come in or not.
A mobile phone tower is not a person either, your phone connects to a tower. You do not have explicit permission from the owner of the tower that its OK to use it. You assume that because your phone connected that there is some permission via your provider to use it.
The login from the phone to the tower is the *proxy* version of whatever contracts give you permission to use that tower.
"As has been mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, the guy was aware that he did not have the owner's consent to use the connection."
Yet his computer asked for concent and was told it was OK. Your cell phone for example is a very similar device. You drive around, it gets a good connection to a nearby tower, and you make your call.
You don't get extra permission to use that tower, you assume because your phone says its ok that its ok.
You visit a website, its password protected so you don't use it. You visit a website and its not password protected so you do use it. Did you get extra permission? Internets also a shared public network, just like WiFi.
"...the door is unlocked = no encryption, no security."
Man 1: "Knock knock", Man 2: "Come in", Man 1: Goes in. Man 2: Police arrest that man. Man 1: But I knocked and you said I could come in Man 2: But that was a misconfiguration, if I wanted you to come in I would have put a "FreeToComeIn" sign on my door.
"The name should tell you if it's a known company or called 'FREEANDUSEME'. "
Except there's no convention for matching an SSID to a usage condition. So 'FreeOnMondayNights' might mean the guy wants a date on mondays or his computer is free on mondays or his wifi is free.....
You can't know from the SSID what the conditions of usage for that network are.
Take another example, you try to connect to "MiksNetwork" and it connects, but you are not sure if Mik really wanted it that way. How the fuck are you supposed to know who Mik is, how you get permission from him, or who has authority to give you permission. His network says it OK, yet you're supposed to assume it still isn't?
"that under British Law you cannot just assume rights over another person's property (in this case a computer accessed via a wireless connection)."
Except that his computer asked, it said "here - I'm an anonymous connector, is it ok to connect to your network" and the other guys WIFI said "sure".
Think about the Internet, do you get permission to connect to someone website and download some files? Hell no, its a public network, and if you want to stop people visiting the website, you can password protect it.
"Fortunately, most courts still discriminate between intentionally and accidentally doing something. "
Except for one thing, you can't know if he neighbours INTENT was to share his open wireless connection for sharing. Thats the whole point of Open WiFi afterall, sharing. By doing this they're making Open WiFi illegal, because not only does your computer have to get permission to connect to the network (via the login) but now extra permission is needed too.
Let me put it another way. Suppose you have free open municiple wifi and Fred Bloggs open wifi, you computer has no way of telling which is the free Municiple open wifi and which is not so it connects to Fred Blogs's net, attempts to login and is given permission -> crime comitted. You had the intent to connect to an open network, but not the method to determine which network is permitted.
Or rather you did have the way, the login, but the court ignored that.
"these services require charging, billing and customer support. certainly not something that can be done by clever marketing and adding a codec to kazaa."
Its perfectly OK to issue invoices electronically now (e.g. via a website now) so how they do now is fine and scales well. Google bills huge numbers of businesses for its adsense and that works well given the small number of employess dedicated to it.
Telcos pay a lot for customer support because they sell physical services which break down (telephone lines, telephones etc.) So Skype doesn't have their problems and so doesn't need to recreate Telco's customer support service.
"if i really need a cheap internet calling card (essentially what skypeout is), i will hunt around for the best deal, keeping my skype id aside, there is no stickiness in calling phone numbers from a particular VoIP provider."
Its not just Skype ID though is it. Its the protocol, we run Skype primarily for Skype to Skype communications. But we're looking at buying a skype compatible handset (I guess money goes from those back into Skype?). Cringely suggested advertising on the client etc. so there are lots of ways of making money from Skype. Its not equivalent to a cheap internet call card.
Assuming it does end up owning the VOIP market (a risk) then it potentially will end up with 300-500 million users, getting $10/year out of those seems pretty easy to do.
My recollection was that Major was chosen as a new Mrs Thatcher, Mrs Thatchers position had become weak and she was seen as hostage to the cabinet rather than leader of them. He was touted as a new Thatcher, not weakened by political scars.
Major hadn't been in power long before his reelection attempt, Labour blew it by saying they would negotiate away the nukes, and if they couldn't get an agreement, they would give them away anyway (any child can see the fault with that). So Major was reelected, or rather they voted not to give away the nukes unilaterally.
Then we had a term of total incompetence, as he would swing with every random thought that came into his head. When his party would be critical of him, he would attack them or threaten to resign to cause a crisis.
At the next election, it was vote that Conservative idiot out. Now I see a distrust of Conservatives in myself, simply because of the memory of that idiot Major.
"There are many, many reasons why Conservatives didn't and won't get voted in to power. It's mostly because they are the greedy representitives of industry and most people don't care less what these slef-righteous self-important scum bags think."
They were like that under Mrs Thatcher, yet it didn't stop them getting elected.
So I stand by my comment, I think it was the staggering incompetence of John Major that made them unelectable. if you recall how huge the vote was in favour of the then unknown Blair over the then, very well known, Major.
It's a disaster because nobody wants to elect the Conservatives after the idiot John Major. So all the Conservatives do now is try to copy Labour but out-do them.
Labour wants a million cameras watching everyone all the time, and Conservatives want, no, DEMAND, 2 million cameras. Labour wants detention without trial, Conservatives want execution without trial. (OK, so I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea).
The voter has no choice, there is Labour and Labour-to-the-Max (Conservatives). All because Tony Blair is such a convincing orator that they don't want to disagree with him.
"Google has bet the farm on the idea that putting some of the nation's smartest people in a productive work environment will make the company money."
Nah, put an even number of PhD's in a room and they cancel out. You either have to put an odd number of PhD's in the room, or lots of PhD's and a common sense manager to throw half of them out and to know which half to throw out!
The good thing about Google isn't the PhD's, its that it lets its people do stuff. Large companies generate an inertia because the people in them are never allowed to change things and so they end up like Oracle or MS, minor upgrades, nothing too shocking, all very predictable....
I caught his talk on it on Friday night. He said that the normal way people get to read an author is to buy the book in a shop, but the shops only carry books from known authors....
Isn't that history, all the major blocks have been assigned, there's no involvement needed by ICANN now, its down to RIPE and ARIN subdividing the blocks allocated to them.
I notice we keep talking about the history of the Internet rather than the future. Its pretty sensible to protect the net from any single authority.
Doesn't RIPE handle Europes IP allocation now? RIPE is the same thing isn't it, a collection of European ISPs that got together to handle distribution of IP addresses.
"The most effective model for achieving this is to enable right-holders to authorize a collecting society of their choice to manage their works across the entire EU,"
Isn't EU job to ensure there are no market barriers in Europe? He could create a directive to stop copyright holders parcelling up copyright along National barriers in Europe and leave it for them to sort out the system.
Instead he proposed a 'collecting society' which sounds very much like a super quango - more overhead so the artists will get less not more.
Would the artists be able to license directly to the collecting society or would they still have to go through the lower layers? Would the collecting society simply be an authority ontop of existing one? i.e. another fat lazy luncheons and lobbyists group.
What about internationally? Would a music store in Europe be allowed to sell to the world? If not why not? Russia can sell to everywhere but Europe not?
"Two other European legislators from Germany who have favored stronger software-patent protections also have industry ties. One works with another top patent-law firm, and another sits on the board of U.S. software giant Veritas Software Corp. and holds options to buy 85,416 shares of Veritas stock, according to U.S. securities filings."
How on earth do we end up with a legislator that not only has outside interests, but outside American interests?
Slashdot Mirror
My computer is setup to connect to the nearest WiFi connection at the library down the street.
My next door neighbour:
Step 1: Goes to Best Buy and asks a sales rep what he needs to buy.
Step 2: Goes home and connects the right wires to the right places (pretty simple).
Step 3: It works, but his network is insecure.
Now my WiFi connects to his WiFi instead because its nearer. Am I now a hacker?
"If he did not know, then why the suspicious behaviour? Why didn't he ask permission?"
If the Brazillian man was not a terrorist then why did he run from the armed plain clothes police officer? Why the suspicious behaviour? Why didn't he ask permission to run away?
Sorry, but he either hacked into their network or not. To me hacking involves more than a computer automatically connecting to a network. I don't like these guilty unless you can prove otherwise laws.
"In fact, Joe Bob User probably doesn't know his computer is out there handing out IP Addresses, "
But I don't know Joe Bob, from Smart Alec.
"More than likely, they're not smart enough to figure out how to add any access controls to it."
Yet they're smart enough to run a home network and more than one computer? Yet they're using shared public broadcast signals.
"An open network does not give implied consent to use anymore than an unlocked house or car."
Can I connect to your network? I am foo bar.
Yes, "foo bar", here have ID 198675 and IP address 192.111.111.111
What do you mean '*implied* concent'? Surely 'explicit concent'!
"In the end wifi products are shipped from the factories without security features enabled....., does not make it legal for all to use. "
Its not that they have security features switched off, they have 'allow everyone' switched on. If you ignore the login as the proxy for permission then you can't have open wifi.
Likewise you can't walk in the open forest because forests are open by default, or swim in the open sea because sea is open by default, or walk through an open square because the square is open by default.
"*YOU* know that in all likelyhood the owner of the wifi would not let anyone join his network if he knew how to secure it"
I know nothing, I select "This Network", I make no attempt to disguise who I am, my computer requests a connection and the remote wifi says "sure, here have ID 1847565". If I walk in the open forest and the intention wasn't that it was supposed to be open isn't that just trespass?
Can I asked, if I said that it was the equivalent to 'trespass' would you accept that as true?
"This is quite different to the situation where my phone connects automatically to a nearby tower, (without me even being aware) *provided* by the mobile phone network company for that very purpose."
Not so, its provided by *a* mobile phone network, for *a* user. There is some chain of contracts that stretch from that tower operator to your service provider and to your headset seller and to you, the login is the proxy for that chain of contracts.
The WiFi is no different, it is there for some purpose, to provide network to *a* user by some entity. The login is a proxy for that.
What they're saying here is that the login can't be taken as a proxy for permission but then you can't have open wifi because you can never know if the intent of the person providing it was to permit open wifi or not.
The login was the way they give permission or not and they've just discounted that!
"I think the difference is something like this: the Internet is a well-known public network,"
Its not just the Internet & Mobile Phone networks, and Mail servers talking to mail servers and and and...
Its the problem that if you ignore the login as a proxy for the persons permission then you screw yourself whereever one computer talks to another.
Because the computer can never read a signature on a contract or talk to the owner so can never get permission from the human operator.
Its not the same as hacking, when a hacker goes into a network they are rejected by the login, and try to get in anyway.
"and was aware that he was using resources without permission from the human owner."
Actually the guys didn't say this, it was the arresting officer which said that he needed permission from the network owner.
"A wireless router is not a person, and therefor cannot be compared to the person saying come in."
But the Wifi login *is* the electronic proxy for the person. It *is* where the person gets to say whether its OK to come in or not.
A mobile phone tower is not a person either, your phone connects to a tower. You do not have explicit permission from the owner of the tower that its OK to use it. You assume that because your phone connected that there is some permission via your provider to use it.
The login from the phone to the tower is the *proxy* version of whatever contracts give you permission to use that tower.
"As has been mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, the guy was aware that he did not have the owner's consent to use the connection."
Yet his computer asked for concent and was told it was OK.
Your cell phone for example is a very similar device. You drive around, it gets a good connection to a nearby tower, and you make your call.
You don't get extra permission to use that tower, you assume because your phone says its ok that its ok.
You visit a website, its password protected so you don't use it. You visit a website and its not password protected so you do use it.
Did you get extra permission? Internets also a shared public network, just like WiFi.
" ...the door is unlocked = no encryption, no security."
Man 1: "Knock knock",
Man 2: "Come in",
Man 1: Goes in.
Man 2: Police arrest that man.
Man 1: But I knocked and you said I could come in
Man 2: But that was a misconfiguration, if I wanted you to come in I would have put a "FreeToComeIn" sign on my door.
"The name should tell you if it's a known company or called 'FREEANDUSEME'. "
Except there's no convention for matching an SSID to a usage condition. So 'FreeOnMondayNights' might mean the guy wants a date on mondays or his computer is free on mondays or his wifi is free.....
You can't know from the SSID what the conditions of usage for that network are.
Take another example, you try to connect to "MiksNetwork" and it connects, but you are not sure if Mik really wanted it that way. How the fuck are you supposed to know who Mik is, how you get permission from him, or who has authority to give you permission. His network says it OK, yet you're supposed to assume it still isn't?
"that under British Law you cannot just assume rights over another person's property (in this case a computer accessed via a wireless connection)."
Except that his computer asked, it said "here - I'm an anonymous connector, is it ok to connect to your network" and the other guys WIFI said "sure".
Think about the Internet, do you get permission to connect to someone website and download some files? Hell no, its a public network, and if you want to stop people visiting the website, you can password protect it.
"Fortunately, most courts still discriminate between intentionally and accidentally doing something. "
Except for one thing, you can't know if he neighbours INTENT was to share his open wireless connection for sharing. Thats the whole point of Open WiFi afterall, sharing. By doing this they're making Open WiFi illegal, because not only does your computer have to get permission to connect to the network (via the login) but now extra permission is needed too.
Let me put it another way. Suppose you have free open municiple wifi and Fred Bloggs open wifi, you computer has no way of telling which is the free Municiple open wifi and which is not so it connects to Fred Blogs's net, attempts to login and is given permission -> crime comitted. You had the intent to connect to an open network, but not the method to determine which network is permitted.
Or rather you did have the way, the login, but the court ignored that.
"these services require charging, billing and customer support. certainly not something that can be done by clever marketing and adding a codec to kazaa."
Its perfectly OK to issue invoices electronically now (e.g. via a website now) so how they do now is fine and scales well. Google bills huge numbers of businesses for its adsense and that works well given the small number of employess dedicated to it.
Telcos pay a lot for customer support because they sell physical services which break down (telephone lines, telephones etc.) So Skype doesn't have their problems and so doesn't need to recreate Telco's customer support service.
"if i really need a cheap internet calling card (essentially what skypeout is), i will hunt around for the best deal, keeping my skype id aside, there is no stickiness in calling phone numbers from a particular VoIP provider."
Its not just Skype ID though is it. Its the protocol, we run Skype primarily for Skype to Skype communications. But we're looking at buying a skype compatible handset (I guess money goes from those back into Skype?). Cringely suggested advertising on the client etc. so there are lots of ways of making money from Skype. Its not equivalent to a cheap internet call card.
Assuming it does end up owning the VOIP market (a risk) then it potentially will end up with 300-500 million users, getting $10/year out of those seems pretty easy to do.
Again I disagree,
My recollection was that Major was chosen as a new Mrs Thatcher, Mrs Thatchers position had become weak and she was seen as hostage to the cabinet rather than leader of them. He was touted as a new Thatcher, not weakened by political scars.
Major hadn't been in power long before his reelection attempt, Labour blew it by saying they would negotiate away the nukes, and if they couldn't get an agreement, they would give them away anyway (any child can see the fault with that). So Major was reelected, or rather they voted not to give away the nukes unilaterally.
Then we had a term of total incompetence, as he would swing with every random thought that came into his head. When his party would be critical of him, he would attack them or threaten to resign to cause a crisis.
At the next election, it was vote that Conservative idiot out. Now I see a distrust of Conservatives in myself, simply because of the memory of that idiot Major.
"There are many, many reasons why Conservatives didn't and won't get voted in to power. It's mostly because they are the greedy representitives of industry and most people don't care less what these slef-righteous self-important scum bags think."
They were like that under Mrs Thatcher, yet it didn't stop them getting elected.
So I stand by my comment, I think it was the staggering incompetence of John Major that made them unelectable. if you recall how huge the vote was in favour of the then unknown Blair over the then, very well known, Major.
It's a disaster because nobody wants to elect the Conservatives after the idiot John Major. So all the Conservatives do now is try to copy Labour but out-do them.
Labour wants a million cameras watching everyone all the time, and Conservatives want, no, DEMAND, 2 million cameras. Labour wants detention without trial, Conservatives want execution without trial.
(OK, so I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea).
The voter has no choice, there is Labour and Labour-to-the-Max (Conservatives). All because Tony Blair is such a convincing orator that they don't want to disagree with him.
"Google has bet the farm on the idea that putting some of the nation's smartest people in a productive work environment will make the company money."
Nah, put an even number of PhD's in a room and they cancel out. You either have to put an odd number of PhD's in the room, or lots of PhD's and a common sense manager to throw half of them out and to know which half to throw out!
The good thing about Google isn't the PhD's, its that it lets its people do stuff. Large companies generate an inertia because the people in them are never allowed to change things and so they end up like Oracle or MS, minor upgrades, nothing too shocking, all very predictable....
IANAC (I am not a chemist so I'm allowed to be dumb), whats the question marks at the right edge about?
Cory's famous for doing the book version of this, distributing his books for free as a means for getting promotion.
http://craphound.com/
I caught his talk on it on Friday night. He said that the normal way people get to read an author is to buy the book in a shop, but the shops only carry books from known authors....
Searching on his Google ID
p ub-7461244205906982
g
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=sfp&p=
Shows only 2 entries
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DigitalPhotographyBlo
and the ProBlogger one.
Since he's not allowed to have multiple Google Adsense accounts, he must only have 2 sites.
Isn't that history, all the major blocks have been assigned, there's no involvement needed by ICANN now, its down to RIPE and ARIN subdividing the blocks allocated to them.
I notice we keep talking about the history of the Internet rather than the future. Its pretty sensible to protect the net from any single authority.
Doesn't RIPE handle Europes IP allocation now?
RIPE is the same thing isn't it, a collection of European ISPs that got together to handle distribution of IP addresses.
"The most effective model for achieving this is to enable right-holders to authorize a collecting society of their choice to manage their works across the entire EU,"
Isn't EU job to ensure there are no market barriers in Europe? He could create a directive to stop copyright holders parcelling up copyright along National barriers in Europe and leave it for them to sort out the system.
Instead he proposed a 'collecting society' which sounds very much like a super quango - more overhead so the artists will get less not more.
Would the artists be able to license directly to the collecting society or would they still have to go through the lower layers? Would the collecting society simply be an authority ontop of existing one? i.e. another fat lazy luncheons and lobbyists group.
What about internationally? Would a music store in Europe be allowed to sell to the world? If not why not? Russia can sell to everywhere but Europe not?
"Two other European legislators from Germany who have favored stronger software-patent protections also have industry ties. One works with another top patent-law firm, and another sits on the board of U.S. software giant Veritas Software Corp. and holds options to buy 85,416 shares of Veritas stock, according to U.S. securities filings."
How on earth do we end up with a legislator that not only has outside interests, but outside American interests?