Also remember that both the movie & record distributors have been caught repeatedly doing some very funny accounting in reguards to what makes a 'profit'. Most of the contracts issue an advance followed by royalties after a net-profit has been gained.
ISTR that a producers new Ferrari was once considered an 'expense' in calculating net profits. For a modern example of this look no farther than New Line Cinema & Peter Jackson - LOTR1 is showing $100M+ discrepency in the audit. That's a lot of money to be 'disputed' as an expense - like 2 more movies. Worse, although it's in the contract, NL is trying to bar Jackson from auditing the books on the other 2 movies. We are talking potentially 1/2 of $1B in profits being swept under the table & hidden from the 'Artists'.
Having an IM's IP traced back to the WAP was the probable cause to search the house. The fact that it was open was the defense against the search warrant.
Rather than your analogy, this is more like the police seeing a crack deal go down on your front steps & you claiming that because it's the front steps they can't search your house. The rule of thumb is "If you hear quacking, look for the duck".
Hell, if the police see 'Bob' sell crack & they follow him 6 blocks to your house, where he has dinner, and then runs off to sell a few more rocks, the police do have probable cause to search your house. When they find nothing, it's supposed to be over. In this case, rather than nothing, they found cases of evidence. The requirement for 'probable cause' in the US is pretty low, and the IP address certainly qualifies as enough information to get a warrant.
They just said it was a stack with pedo-porn. Remember screenshots from Traci Lords career are still around - and they are sill illegal in the US since she was under 18 while filming. So downloading a CD with a single shot from one of her films gets you a Pedo rap.
Without knowing the pictures & the quantity/percentage of the images, you can't really say anything. In some cases, the source is important too. If you burn archives from usenet, I'm sure your archive is going to contain some. In that light 1 shot of a 17 year old on a full CD doesn't a Pedo case make. An entire directory of obvious children in obvious sexual positions does.
They don't have someone, but they generally do have an "Open" sign, or hours of operation posted prominently, even if it's "Open 24 Hours".
And unconfigured APs have a big sign out front that says "Use Me". I have seen XP change APs because a truck drove past a cafe, if the system is designed to permit & encourage that, then the people need to take the responsibility to configure their APs. They want the convenience, that's fine, they need to take the responsibility too.
I think the guy in the story was an ass. However I think the ruling was just as bad because it doesn't take into account how the technology works. By my rough estimate*, 30% of the people in WiFi dense neighborhoods are commiting a crime. That tells me that the ruling isn't going to be enforced equitably, which means it's a bad ruling.
I've done several configs for people & none of them could ever tell me which of the multiple connections were theirs - they just chose the top one when they needed to.
I think you're at least the second person to describe an incident like that--please provide details or link to a news article in which someone accidentally gave their computer an entry on a publicly-facing DNS server, thus allowing people to access their documents. Otherwise, stop bringing these cases up.
I know that my cable modem was listed with dyn.dhs.org for a while under someone's domain other than mine. So you don't have to accidentally register for a DNS server entry to get one.
As for your points:
1. What exactly does "publicly accessible" mean to you? Does "people can access it" automatically equate to "people should be allowed to access it?"
Publicly accessible means that it is clearly visible from the public domain & can be accessed by the public using the protocols designated for public access. HTTP and Anonymous FTP being the most commonly known. Given the protocols & standards in place, if people can access it - via the standards for public access, then yes people should be allowed to access it. Otherwise you cannot determine in advance if your use of a service is legal or trespass until after the fact.
I also agree that people should learn to secure their wrouters and I try to educate everyone I know who does not. But the fact that YOU KNOW that people simply don't know any better means that you are aware that it's not 100% certain of the owner's intent.
US farmers don't intend for kids to cut through fences, break lock, climb silos and fall to their deaths inside them. However, they are anually held liable for these events reguardless of their intent. If that's the case then certainly the owners of these APs can be held liable for at least not taking in the big flashing welcome signs on them.
RFC's and the related standards define exactly how a protocol is designed to work. As such, they frequently do set a legal precedent as they define the standard practices of the industry. This is exactly why the Google-hacking cases were tossed. People followed the specifications within the HTTP standard and were deemed to be acting legally even though they were acting against the wishes of the companies providing the web pages.
Accounting laws don't enumerate most accounting practices, they quote 'accepted accounting practices'. Same with most laws governing engineering, they don't tell you what type of steel to use, just 'as generally accepted by the industry'.
My position is fully thought out, the request/authorization sequence of both HTTP and DHCP are governed by their respective RFCs. In both cases, the RFC clearly states that the default is to allow, with defining denial of service the responsibility of the service provider. Per your argument, HTTP's RFC carries weight & is legal, while the DHCP's isn't. You don't get it both ways. The RFCs & standards carry weight, or every use of a web server requires prior authorization from the owners. Standards with responsibility, or chaos.
Sure, governments can make using someone's AP illegal - of course I want to see them actually prosecuting everyone who's not connecting to their neighbors AP because they can't tell which one is theres. I also want them to prosecute those people who's XP box jumps from one AP to another by itself. And I want them to proscecute those people using those handy WiFi/Cell phones that swap back & forth based on the WiFi availability.
Even if you don't like all those reasons - let's move to real property comparisions. In the US, if your land (AP) abutts public space (the rest of the world) you cannot file charges of trespassing against people who are crossing your land unless you have posted the land as public property (get off the defaults).
As for TA, the guy was an ass. That doesn't mean that the ruling was right. Hit him with stalking/public distrubance/loitering whatever. Don't go creating rulings/laws about technology you don't understand just because "it's the way it should be". Combining my experiance with this ruling, I get a rough estimate that 30% of people in dense WiFi areas are criminals, that's just a briliant ruling with firm understanding of the realities surrounding it.
[snip]there is a big legal difference between the two: It is perfectly legal to access using HTTP files placed in a public directory on a web server but it is not legal to deliberately access someone's computer and/or ISP services via a wireless network without permission - and that permission that does not include simply broadcasting the SSID.
You state that there is a big legal difference between the 2. There is not. Check out Google-Hacking: The heart of the rulings is: The presence of a service on an open network is sufficient to grant authorization to use that service reguardless of the intent of the owner of the service. That has been held for both HTTP & Anonymous FTP.
Your initial argument was that the hardware/service cannot legaly authorize you to use a service. The plain fact is that for any automated system connected to the open network- HTTP/FTP/DNS/DHCP etc - it must be the service which provides the authorization as there is no human interaction at the point of contact. The rules that govern that authorization are the responsibility of the service owner - as upheld in the US by the Google-hacking cases.
I appreciate there might be difficulties in some cases deciding in court whether somebody is doing the latter deliberately or just simply by accident
Per the ruling & the laws I've seen tyring to criminalize this, they don't make a distinction. Both war-driving & misconfiguration are theoretically treated equally as unauthorized computer access. Last time I did a setup in Boston for a friend, there were 4 open APs all broadcasting the same default SSID - connecting to 3 of them would make my friend elligible for prosecution. The fact that he owns his own AP & service should make it evident that he didn't intend to commit computer trespass, but he still has to go through all the steps of being proscecuted for it before he gets to a jury.
Lets take it a step farther, WinXP will jump to a new AP without asking as long as the SSID has been registered as useable before. That means using a single default Linksys AP will set XP up to jump to any Linksys AP still using the default SSID without warning. Do you want a legal structure where MS's programming & your neighbors incompetence gets you a court date?
I'm not saying that leeching service & war-driving is OK & good. I'm saying the methods being used to handle it are ignoring the details of the protocols, the technology, and the consequences. You want to make using someone else's access point a criminal offence, fine. Just make sure that running a default configured AP is prosecuted under the public nucense laws too.
An inanimate piece of equipment cannot grant your legal authority to someone
Per your interpretation, you have just engaged in criminal computer tresspass by using the slashdot web site. You requested permission to use the system (through your browser), that permission was granted by the system (through the web server). Since a piece of equipment cannot grant legal authority to someone, you had no authority to use the system.
There is no technical difference between the protocol exchange in the HTTP & the 801 series, both are automated request/response protocols which grant authorization.
Note that you placed the lock on your door. Hell, you have a door. An open AP not only doesn't have a lock or a door, it has a big sign out front saying "Hey come on in!"
It is not possible to "accidentally" set up a DNS server or web server to offer content
It's a big comfort to all those people who accidentally posted their shared folders to the web when they thought they were sharing them with their 2nd computer using internet sharing. They must be absolutely ecstatic to know that it really wasn't possible for them to have done that, so it never happened.
why people who mooch wireless believe that they are justified in assuming that the owner wants them to use the resource
How about:
Because according to the IEEE standard defining the WIFI protocol, an open AP is public accessable.
Because defining any access other than by the owner & those with explicit permision as criminal, creates legal chaos when neighbors accidentally cross connect (An extremely common occurance).
So how about we lay it out flat, this guy was a douchebag. People who deliberately mooch wireless generally are. However, this ruling & the associated laws fail to take into account the realities of people using technology they both do not understand, and do not want to understand. So how do you craft a law that makes certain that douchebags are punished while incompetents are not when they are doing exactly the same thing? The easiest way is to declare it's the owners responsibility to declare access off limits - exactly like requiring your land to be posted as 'No Trespassing' when it abuts public land before you can file trespassing claims.
Except that you are discussing a PROTOCOL. The protocol isn't residential v/ commercial. This particular case is residential, the problem is that the ramifications aren't limited to the residential situations. If you are sitting in an outdoor cafe marked as a hotspot, and your notebook says you have 2 networks with the cafe's name available, are you a criminal for choosing the corperate one instead of the public one?
Also note that the ruling & the law would apply equally if 2 neighbors both have AP's and one of them accidentally connected to the other's AP. I know from sorting it out several times that this is a very common occurance. By the standards of this law, everytime it happens, a crime is being commited. Want to make a guess as to how bad this type of situation is in high rise residential buildings in places like NYC?
So, no, it's not disingenuous. Your choices are:
Treat an open AP like a business & this type of useage isn't a crime.
Treat an open AP like a private residence & proscecute everyone who mistakenly connects to the wrong AP.
Proscecute people with default configured open APs under the attractive nucence laws.
I'm a fan of the 3rd option, but I doubt it'll ever get traction.
Blah, if you want people to use your Open AP, put "FREE FOR PUBLIC USE" in the SSID.
Do I get to sue you & MS when your XP box jumps to my AP that doesn't have "FREE FOR PUBLIC USE" on it? APs are made open & unsecured for the simple reason that the vast majority of people who want to use them can't be bothered to RTFM. It's the same reason that the NIC drivers will jump APs - because if it's more complicated than a toaster, the average user can't be bothered. I reset a wireless in Boston for a friend, 4 seperate open APs available & my friend had no idea which one was his. If he chose the wrong one, was he a criminal or just incompetent?
You can say that these are 2 different situations, and you're right socially, however the laws don't see them as seperate. Both are identical under the law. That's why people who know how the tech works get riled up over this. It's a bunch of dumb fucks who are too lazy to read a manual screaming that it's too hard to use right, so please Mr Judge, make it a legal nightmare for everyone.
You really don't pay any attention to the details of the protocols do you?
He *tried* the door handle. The door opened. Does this mean he had an automatic right to go inside?
According to the RFC's governing DHCP, yes he does have an automatic right to use the service. Per the standards, it is the responsibility of the server owner to restrict access. The failure of the server owner to lock down the DHCP server no more changes the proper useage of the protocol than a store owner forgetting to lock the door & flip the sign at closing time. The DHCP client asks for & receives permission/configuration details. A customer walks into a business with an open door. Both are default allow scenarios, you don't knock on the door of a business, you try the door & walk in if it's open.
Unless you are told/informed/read other wise, a network is NOT public.
Technically, the structure of the internet is built on a 'Default allow' schema. Essentially, if you don't say 'no' then I can. I don't have to get permission to use your web server, your anonymous FTP server, or route over your backbone. If you choose to, you can of course block all of those, but you have to choose to disallow me access.
Add to that the facts that public 'hot spots' are more & more common & XP will sometimes jump from one network to another without asking and you have a recipee for legal chaos when incompetents leave their AP's open.
It's no different than seeing an unlocked door. You wouldn't just walk in and look around would you?
Do it all the time - I don't actually remember the last time a business had someone out front asking me to come in.
HTTPS doesn't need & shouldn't have high priority. It's a waste of low latency bandwidth. Real time things need low latency - phone calls, video conferencing, streaming audio & video, etc. A web page doesn't need that type of connection. Trust me, you're not going to notice if packet 4 has to get retransmitted when there are 45K packets in the page. You will notice it on a voice call.
SSH as a protocol, also doesn't need low latency - it's just an encrypted terminal emulation. However, when you start tunneling X server data over that connection, then you need low latency. Perhaps SSHH & SSHL protocols to diferentiate the useage of the connection?
Hence, SCO & Novell are in Switzerland[Sweden?] arguing over the results of their contract - signed & executed in the US.
I hope doesn't, as you put it: "seem to suggest that the deal was signed in the location specified."
In international dealings, you agree what laws will apply. Yours, mine, or some neutral party.
Rent - remember it's by the square foot in office space - that means space for the servers, supervisors, management, training rooms etc.
Payroll - isn't just about the price per hour. It's also about benefits, workmans comp, unemployment insurance, etc.
Utilities - Call centers aren't made to be heated or cooled - especially cooled.
Hardware - PC, Phone, Phone server, Wiring, Desk, Chair, - plus the hardware needed for supervisors/management/hr/training/etc
etc, etc...
Anyway, the $3 amount was what was presented to me when they were discussing why it's important to get the customer off the phone as soon as possible. Of course this company also didn't understand they had to pay for more time when the customer called back if the problem wasn't fixed.
If you're going to ban someone, ban the idiots who refuse to learn. Start to finish - rent, electricity, hardware, 1800 time, payroll, etc - phone calls work out to about $3/minute. That means the 12th time you spend 20 minutes w/ Mrs Egghead trying to explain how to type in an URL, you spent $60 on that 1 customer - add in the other 11 times & you have spent more money on her than you will make.
Even at $7/gig, they would be better cutting off the top users of tech support than the top users of bandwidth.
It's unlikely, to be put on a gag order, SCO would have to show that she is:
Interfiering with their business in an unlawful way
An actual party to the litigation - not a 3rd pary observer.
Note that receiving funds 2nd had through a foundation that is supported - in part - by IBM doesn't make her a party.
Disseminating information not publicly available.
I think that any one of those might cause a gag order.
As for interfiering with their business, commenting on a legal case in progress isn't illegal. Stating your opinion isn't illegal. Telling people to stay away from a company because they are crazy enough to sue their customers might be tortuous interfierance, if it wasn't provable that they are in fact suing their customers. So that's not going to initiate a gag order.
Skipping to disseminating information not publicly available, Groklaw has on occasion posted things that were supposed to be filed under seal. The reason that was done is that the documents themselves were misfiled. PJ has deliberatly removed those documents from the archive each time this has occured. Other than that, I don't recall seeing anything that was presented that isn't part of the public record - IE, you can go down to the courthouse and pick up every document listed on Groklaw that originates in this case. Secondary comments & supporting documents or documents brought in from other locations to refute SCO or bolster IBM & Novell have likewise been available for public consumption - published works, web pages available from the internet, etc.
The only real hope SCO would have to get PJ silenced as a party to the lawsuit would be to prove she is an employee of IBM. Even then, they would have to show a reason to gag her when she's only commenting on publicly available documentation. They would also have to show how her discussions are any more biased than the SCOinfo.com site SCO itself maintains.
This motion is filed under SCO v IBM in order to get the deposition of PJ in SCO v Novell(when & if it happens) admitted to the SCO v IBM evidence.
SCO has already stated an intent to depose PJ for the Novell case, they just want to be able to add it to the IBM case. The general consensus is that it won't happen. Final discloures & depositions were supposed to be done over a year ago - adding this deposition will effectively re-open discovery after a year of waiting & the PSJ's have been argued.
Worse for SCO, all of the things they are arguing should allow this deposition into SCO v IBM all happened while discovery was open. In other words, it's not new it's between 2 & 3 years old and they had the oportunity to do the deposition within the proper scope of discovery & didn't. NYCountryLawyer may have better input, but from my understanding, weather the deposition goes forward or not, this motion is unlikely to be granted.
8 hours * $400/hour = $3200 for just the deposition, figure that again for prep time for the deposition. That's just the lawyers fees.
Spending 8 hours of your life trapped in a room with a bunch of lawyers who's sole goal is to make your life miserable.
Risking being dragged deep enough into SCO's legal battle to require that you no longer comment on it.
Those are the 3 that come to mind in the first 10 seconds of thinking about it.
Given the way SCO has treated it's previous deposees, I wouldn't do a thing to make their lifes any easier to find me. I don't need any more abuse in my life. If they can follow the rules & find me - so be it, if I can't quash the supeona, I'll show up. Until they follow all the rules - something they seem to be unable to do- I'm sitting on my butt laughing at them.
I don't think that the court will issue a warrant in a civil case. Also with a court summons, SCO would still have to provide the information to find her. Given what I have checked previously on how low the bar is, I don't think that SCO is looking very hard for her - in fact if they had tried to serve her earlier, they would have had a notice from the server on the steps they had taken to make service. No such notice has been presented to the court, so it's a fairly clear indicator that after 2 months they haven't tried serving her yet.
Give me 40 minutes with SquidGuard* & set your Browser to use it as a proxie & you have it done. Literally, that's it. There are proxies out there that can be used that do exactly that. The problem is that using them requires that the parents actually understand how a browser works & how to set it up to use a proxie.
If a group wants to do this, it only takes a cheap CoLo setup to run your proxie server & it's database. The problem is that the vocal groups who want the government to do soemthing, don't want to take the effort to set up their own system. It's easier for them to demand that 'something be done for the children' than spend an equal amount of time to actually do something productive.
*SquidGuard is a part of the Squid proxie system that uses a database system to generate filters based on your specifications. You can configure white and black lists from the filters, as well as have those lists modify based on day, time, and user. The database in the version I have is a series of flat files that can be appended to by a simple script. I believe there is a newer version that directly interfaces with Postgres or MySQL - if not, it shouldn't be all that difficult to make those changes.
Slashdot Mirror
Also remember that both the movie & record distributors have been caught repeatedly doing some very funny accounting in reguards to what makes a 'profit'. Most of the contracts issue an advance followed by royalties after a net-profit has been gained.
ISTR that a producers new Ferrari was once considered an 'expense' in calculating net profits. For a modern example of this look no farther than New Line Cinema & Peter Jackson - LOTR1 is showing $100M+ discrepency in the audit. That's a lot of money to be 'disputed' as an expense - like 2 more movies. Worse, although it's in the contract, NL is trying to bar Jackson from auditing the books on the other 2 movies. We are talking potentially 1/2 of $1B in profits being swept under the table & hidden from the 'Artists'.
Having an IM's IP traced back to the WAP was the probable cause to search the house. The fact that it was open was the defense against the search warrant.
Rather than your analogy, this is more like the police seeing a crack deal go down on your front steps & you claiming that because it's the front steps they can't search your house. The rule of thumb is "If you hear quacking, look for the duck".
Hell, if the police see 'Bob' sell crack & they follow him 6 blocks to your house, where he has dinner, and then runs off to sell a few more rocks, the police do have probable cause to search your house. When they find nothing, it's supposed to be over. In this case, rather than nothing, they found cases of evidence. The requirement for 'probable cause' in the US is pretty low, and the IP address certainly qualifies as enough information to get a warrant.
They just said it was a stack with pedo-porn. Remember screenshots from Traci Lords career are still around - and they are sill illegal in the US since she was under 18 while filming. So downloading a CD with a single shot from one of her films gets you a Pedo rap.
Without knowing the pictures & the quantity/percentage of the images, you can't really say anything. In some cases, the source is important too. If you burn archives from usenet, I'm sure your archive is going to contain some. In that light 1 shot of a 17 year old on a full CD doesn't a Pedo case make. An entire directory of obvious children in obvious sexual positions does.
And unconfigured APs have a big sign out front that says "Use Me". I have seen XP change APs because a truck drove past a cafe, if the system is designed to permit & encourage that, then the people need to take the responsibility to configure their APs. They want the convenience, that's fine, they need to take the responsibility too.
I think the guy in the story was an ass. However I think the ruling was just as bad because it doesn't take into account how the technology works. By my rough estimate*, 30% of the people in WiFi dense neighborhoods are commiting a crime. That tells me that the ruling isn't going to be enforced equitably, which means it's a bad ruling.
I've done several configs for people & none of them could ever tell me which of the multiple connections were theirs - they just chose the top one when they needed to.
I know that my cable modem was listed with dyn.dhs.org for a while under someone's domain other than mine. So you don't have to accidentally register for a DNS server entry to get one.
RFC's and the related standards define exactly how a protocol is designed to work. As such, they frequently do set a legal precedent as they define the standard practices of the industry. This is exactly why the Google-hacking cases were tossed. People followed the specifications within the HTTP standard and were deemed to be acting legally even though they were acting against the wishes of the companies providing the web pages.
Accounting laws don't enumerate most accounting practices, they quote 'accepted accounting practices'. Same with most laws governing engineering, they don't tell you what type of steel to use, just 'as generally accepted by the industry'.
My position is fully thought out, the request/authorization sequence of both HTTP and DHCP are governed by their respective RFCs. In both cases, the RFC clearly states that the default is to allow, with defining denial of service the responsibility of the service provider. Per your argument, HTTP's RFC carries weight & is legal, while the DHCP's isn't. You don't get it both ways. The RFCs & standards carry weight, or every use of a web server requires prior authorization from the owners. Standards with responsibility, or chaos.
Sure, governments can make using someone's AP illegal - of course I want to see them actually prosecuting everyone who's not connecting to their neighbors AP because they can't tell which one is theres. I also want them to prosecute those people who's XP box jumps from one AP to another by itself. And I want them to proscecute those people using those handy WiFi/Cell phones that swap back & forth based on the WiFi availability.
Even if you don't like all those reasons - let's move to real property comparisions. In the US, if your land (AP) abutts public space (the rest of the world) you cannot file charges of trespassing against people who are crossing your land unless you have posted the land as public property (get off the defaults).
As for TA, the guy was an ass. That doesn't mean that the ruling was right. Hit him with stalking/public distrubance/loitering whatever. Don't go creating rulings/laws about technology you don't understand just because "it's the way it should be". Combining my experiance with this ruling, I get a rough estimate that 30% of people in dense WiFi areas are criminals, that's just a briliant ruling with firm understanding of the realities surrounding it.
You state that there is a big legal difference between the 2. There is not. Check out Google-Hacking: The heart of the rulings is: The presence of a service on an open network is sufficient to grant authorization to use that service reguardless of the intent of the owner of the service. That has been held for both HTTP & Anonymous FTP.
Your initial argument was that the hardware/service cannot legaly authorize you to use a service. The plain fact is that for any automated system connected to the open network- HTTP/FTP/DNS/DHCP etc - it must be the service which provides the authorization as there is no human interaction at the point of contact. The rules that govern that authorization are the responsibility of the service owner - as upheld in the US by the Google-hacking cases.
Per the ruling & the laws I've seen tyring to criminalize this, they don't make a distinction. Both war-driving & misconfiguration are theoretically treated equally as unauthorized computer access. Last time I did a setup in Boston for a friend, there were 4 open APs all broadcasting the same default SSID - connecting to 3 of them would make my friend elligible for prosecution. The fact that he owns his own AP & service should make it evident that he didn't intend to commit computer trespass, but he still has to go through all the steps of being proscecuted for it before he gets to a jury.
Lets take it a step farther, WinXP will jump to a new AP without asking as long as the SSID has been registered as useable before. That means using a single default Linksys AP will set XP up to jump to any Linksys AP still using the default SSID without warning. Do you want a legal structure where MS's programming & your neighbors incompetence gets you a court date?
I'm not saying that leeching service & war-driving is OK & good. I'm saying the methods being used to handle it are ignoring the details of the protocols, the technology, and the consequences. You want to make using someone else's access point a criminal offence, fine. Just make sure that running a default configured AP is prosecuted under the public nucense laws too.
Per your interpretation, you have just engaged in criminal computer tresspass by using the slashdot web site. You requested permission to use the system (through your browser), that permission was granted by the system (through the web server). Since a piece of equipment cannot grant legal authority to someone, you had no authority to use the system.
There is no technical difference between the protocol exchange in the HTTP & the 801 series, both are automated request/response protocols which grant authorization.
Note that you placed the lock on your door. Hell, you have a door. An open AP not only doesn't have a lock or a door, it has a big sign out front saying "Hey come on in!"
It's a big comfort to all those people who accidentally posted their shared folders to the web when they thought they were sharing them with their 2nd computer using internet sharing. They must be absolutely ecstatic to know that it really wasn't possible for them to have done that, so it never happened.
How about:
So how about we lay it out flat, this guy was a douchebag. People who deliberately mooch wireless generally are. However, this ruling & the associated laws fail to take into account the realities of people using technology they both do not understand, and do not want to understand. So how do you craft a law that makes certain that douchebags are punished while incompetents are not when they are doing exactly the same thing? The easiest way is to declare it's the owners responsibility to declare access off limits - exactly like requiring your land to be posted as 'No Trespassing' when it abuts public land before you can file trespassing claims.
Except that you are discussing a PROTOCOL. The protocol isn't residential v/ commercial. This particular case is residential, the problem is that the ramifications aren't limited to the residential situations. If you are sitting in an outdoor cafe marked as a hotspot, and your notebook says you have 2 networks with the cafe's name available, are you a criminal for choosing the corperate one instead of the public one?
Also note that the ruling & the law would apply equally if 2 neighbors both have AP's and one of them accidentally connected to the other's AP. I know from sorting it out several times that this is a very common occurance. By the standards of this law, everytime it happens, a crime is being commited. Want to make a guess as to how bad this type of situation is in high rise residential buildings in places like NYC?
So, no, it's not disingenuous. Your choices are:
I'm a fan of the 3rd option, but I doubt it'll ever get traction.
Do I get to sue you & MS when your XP box jumps to my AP that doesn't have "FREE FOR PUBLIC USE" on it? APs are made open & unsecured for the simple reason that the vast majority of people who want to use them can't be bothered to RTFM. It's the same reason that the NIC drivers will jump APs - because if it's more complicated than a toaster, the average user can't be bothered. I reset a wireless in Boston for a friend, 4 seperate open APs available & my friend had no idea which one was his. If he chose the wrong one, was he a criminal or just incompetent?
You can say that these are 2 different situations, and you're right socially, however the laws don't see them as seperate. Both are identical under the law. That's why people who know how the tech works get riled up over this. It's a bunch of dumb fucks who are too lazy to read a manual screaming that it's too hard to use right, so please Mr Judge, make it a legal nightmare for everyone.
You really don't pay any attention to the details of the protocols do you?
According to the RFC's governing DHCP, yes he does have an automatic right to use the service. Per the standards, it is the responsibility of the server owner to restrict access. The failure of the server owner to lock down the DHCP server no more changes the proper useage of the protocol than a store owner forgetting to lock the door & flip the sign at closing time. The DHCP client asks for & receives permission/configuration details. A customer walks into a business with an open door. Both are default allow scenarios, you don't knock on the door of a business, you try the door & walk in if it's open.
Technically, the structure of the internet is built on a 'Default allow' schema. Essentially, if you don't say 'no' then I can. I don't have to get permission to use your web server, your anonymous FTP server, or route over your backbone. If you choose to, you can of course block all of those, but you have to choose to disallow me access.
Add to that the facts that public 'hot spots' are more & more common & XP will sometimes jump from one network to another without asking and you have a recipee for legal chaos when incompetents leave their AP's open.
Do it all the time - I don't actually remember the last time a business had someone out front asking me to come in.
HTTPS doesn't need & shouldn't have high priority. It's a waste of low latency bandwidth. Real time things need low latency - phone calls, video conferencing, streaming audio & video, etc. A web page doesn't need that type of connection. Trust me, you're not going to notice if packet 4 has to get retransmitted when there are 45K packets in the page. You will notice it on a voice call.
SSH as a protocol, also doesn't need low latency - it's just an encrypted terminal emulation. However, when you start tunneling X server data over that connection, then you need low latency. Perhaps SSHH & SSHL protocols to diferentiate the useage of the connection?
In international dealings, you agree what laws will apply. Yours, mine, or some neutral party.
Anyway, the $3 amount was what was presented to me when they were discussing why it's important to get the customer off the phone as soon as possible. Of course this company also didn't understand they had to pay for more time when the customer called back if the problem wasn't fixed.
If you're going to ban someone, ban the idiots who refuse to learn. Start to finish - rent, electricity, hardware, 1800 time, payroll, etc - phone calls work out to about $3/minute. That means the 12th time you spend 20 minutes w/ Mrs Egghead trying to explain how to type in an URL, you spent $60 on that 1 customer - add in the other 11 times & you have spent more money on her than you will make.
Even at $7/gig, they would be better cutting off the top users of tech support than the top users of bandwidth.
the YouTube TOS prohibits porn, and they actively remove it. Graphic portrayals of real violence have also been removed in the past.
Note that receiving funds 2nd had through a foundation that is supported - in part - by IBM doesn't make her a party.
I think that any one of those might cause a gag order.
As for interfiering with their business, commenting on a legal case in progress isn't illegal. Stating your opinion isn't illegal. Telling people to stay away from a company because they are crazy enough to sue their customers might be tortuous interfierance, if it wasn't provable that they are in fact suing their customers. So that's not going to initiate a gag order.
Skipping to disseminating information not publicly available, Groklaw has on occasion posted things that were supposed to be filed under seal. The reason that was done is that the documents themselves were misfiled. PJ has deliberatly removed those documents from the archive each time this has occured. Other than that, I don't recall seeing anything that was presented that isn't part of the public record - IE, you can go down to the courthouse and pick up every document listed on Groklaw that originates in this case. Secondary comments & supporting documents or documents brought in from other locations to refute SCO or bolster IBM & Novell have likewise been available for public consumption - published works, web pages available from the internet, etc.
The only real hope SCO would have to get PJ silenced as a party to the lawsuit would be to prove she is an employee of IBM. Even then, they would have to show a reason to gag her when she's only commenting on publicly available documentation. They would also have to show how her discussions are any more biased than the SCOinfo.com site SCO itself maintains.
This motion is filed under SCO v IBM in order to get the deposition of PJ in SCO v Novell(when & if it happens) admitted to the SCO v IBM evidence.
SCO has already stated an intent to depose PJ for the Novell case, they just want to be able to add it to the IBM case. The general consensus is that it won't happen. Final discloures & depositions were supposed to be done over a year ago - adding this deposition will effectively re-open discovery after a year of waiting & the PSJ's have been argued.
Worse for SCO, all of the things they are arguing should allow this deposition into SCO v IBM all happened while discovery was open. In other words, it's not new it's between 2 & 3 years old and they had the oportunity to do the deposition within the proper scope of discovery & didn't. NYCountryLawyer may have better input, but from my understanding, weather the deposition goes forward or not, this motion is unlikely to be granted.
Why avoid it?
Those are the 3 that come to mind in the first 10 seconds of thinking about it.
Given the way SCO has treated it's previous deposees, I wouldn't do a thing to make their lifes any easier to find me. I don't need any more abuse in my life. If they can follow the rules & find me - so be it, if I can't quash the supeona, I'll show up. Until they follow all the rules - something they seem to be unable to do- I'm sitting on my butt laughing at them.
I don't think that the court will issue a warrant in a civil case. Also with a court summons, SCO would still have to provide the information to find her. Given what I have checked previously on how low the bar is, I don't think that SCO is looking very hard for her - in fact if they had tried to serve her earlier, they would have had a notice from the server on the steps they had taken to make service. No such notice has been presented to the court, so it's a fairly clear indicator that after 2 months they haven't tried serving her yet.
You forgot exhotations to violence - both innane - Stickdeath - and graphic - the YouTube clip posted of a beheading.
Give me 40 minutes with SquidGuard* & set your Browser to use it as a proxie & you have it done. Literally, that's it. There are proxies out there that can be used that do exactly that. The problem is that using them requires that the parents actually understand how a browser works & how to set it up to use a proxie.
If a group wants to do this, it only takes a cheap CoLo setup to run your proxie server & it's database. The problem is that the vocal groups who want the government to do soemthing, don't want to take the effort to set up their own system. It's easier for them to demand that 'something be done for the children' than spend an equal amount of time to actually do something productive.
*SquidGuard is a part of the Squid proxie system that uses a database system to generate filters based on your specifications. You can configure white and black lists from the filters, as well as have those lists modify based on day, time, and user. The database in the version I have is a series of flat files that can be appended to by a simple script. I believe there is a newer version that directly interfaces with Postgres or MySQL - if not, it shouldn't be all that difficult to make those changes.