UK Bill Would Outlaw Open Wi-Fi

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from ZDNet about another troubling aspect of the UK's much-maligned Digital Economy Bill: "The government will not exempt universities, libraries and small businesses providing open Wi-Fi services from its Digital Economy Bill copyright crackdown, according to official advice released earlier this week. This would leave many organizations open to the same penalties for copyright infringement as individual subscribers, potentially including disconnection from the Internet, leading legal experts to say it will become impossible for small businesses and the like to offer Wi-Fi access. 'This is going to be a very unfortunate measure for small businesses, particularly in a recession, many of whom are using open free Wi-Fi very effectively as a way to get the punters in. Even if they password protect, they then have two options — to pay someone like The Cloud to manage it for them, or take responsibility themselves for becoming an ISP effectively, and keep records for everyone they assign connections to, which is an impossible burden for a small cafe,' said Lilian Edwards, professor of Internet law at Sheffield University." Relatedly, an anonymous reader passes along a post which breaks down the question of whether using unprotected Wi-Fi is stealing.

UK government do something stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Film at 11, streamed live via. WiFi!

Re:Can't set up a secure access point?

[peragrin]

At my work we have both. a closed mac address limited, use WPA keys to gain access. This dumps traffic right onto the VPN, with it's own inernal DNS severs, and traffic management( some websites are blocked etc)

But we also have an open access unsecured AP that uses the local ISP DNS servers, and never touches the closed network. This is for salesmen to gain internet access when they visit. There is usually range limitation on that point as well. I ofen see this type of setup at places that offer free wifi with their services. One closed network for themselves, and one open one for guests.

Re:Srsly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another case where elected officials aren't really thinking, or they don't understand what they're doing.

Who said anything about elected officials? This bill has been put together by (the unelected) Baron Mandelson (AKA The Prince of Darkness) who is a life peer sitting in the House of Lords, currently First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, President of the Board of Trade and Lord President of the Council. (Never ever confuse the British system of government with democracy as they are two very different things).

Re:What might make more sense....

[mark-t]

Well, in Canada, there's a section of the Criminal code (342.1) that disallows the use of computer computer resources (which would include WiFi) without permission from the owner. A person's ability to access the resources is not taken as an indication of any implied permission. If one can show that the use was inadvertent, it will not, in general, carry an legal penalties unless there are extenuating damages. Claiming "the network was unprotected" would not fly as evidence that it was inadvertent. In fact, if one actually tried to use that as an excuse, it would essentially be a confession that they knew that they were utilizing somebody else's network in the first place, and so make them legally liable.

Re:Srsly?

[gblackwo]

You MIGHT be right in the US, but in the UK the "free" wifi router/modem that comes with your service has a key automatically, which is usually on a sticker on the back of the device. I'm not sure if you can change the default settings but most people just plug them in and turn them on like an appliance. Hence most of the wifi networks I see in the UK have default serial number type ssids that came with their default keys. It is way way easier to find open wifi in America where everyone owns a "netgear" or a "linksys".

Re:Srsly?

[mrphoton]

All correct except your use of the word 'elected'. Lord Mandelson who is heading this bill is not elected at all. He is a Lord and that apparently means it is ok for him impose rules on us. Secondly, Brown our prime minister was never elected as prime minister, he just 'took over' after Blair stood down. So in short this is a c**p bill imposed my unelected morons. However, on the up side there will be a general election with in three months, so it will probably never reach the statute books.

Re:Enforcement? Not likely.

[troc]

The idea of a public TV license isn't as unique to the UK as people seem to think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence [wikipedia.org] - It's a lot more normal than you might think and doesn't make the UK unique or special.

It's more the US that's "special" because they don't have one.