UK Bill Would Outlaw Open Wi-Fi 250
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.
First (Score:2, Insightful)
Srsly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet another case where elected officials aren't really thinking, or they don't understand what they're doing.
1) They think everyone can still have free Wi-Fi in public places, but it'll be "protected."
or
2) Someone's paying them off... Maybe the ISPs since they can swoop in and say, "Hey! Even though you can't offer free (beer) wi-fi, we can help you out! We can set it up so any BT subscriber can use your wi-fi, and that's like X% of the population. That'll be almost as good."
Or, it could just be innocent rampant stupidity.
Re:Srsly? (Score:5, Insightful)
ISPs hate these proposals even more than we do, since the Government wants them to keep records of Internet traffic for all of their subscribers - that means increased costs to the ISP, which will eventually be passed on to subscribers, meaning fewer subscribers, and possibly even fewer ISPs in the long run as the smaller ones struggle to stay profitable.
As for "protected" WiFi, the protection appears to be mainly against copyright owners having to do any work to prove that someone somewhere has illegally downloaded and/or distributed some of their work.
-MT.
Re:I went to a drinking club once (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really anologous to what TFA is dealing with - at least with booze, you've already paid for it once you're in the club. And there's not much prospect of the Government requiring the club to keep records of all the drinks that punters bought, mainly due to the fact that drinks manufacturers and pub / club chains would a) balk at such regulation of their trade, and b) lobby the Government to water down or drop any such proposal.
-MT.
Typical government document. (Score:3, Insightful)
> "This seems almost unprecedented to me, for a government document."
This seems quite ordinary to me, for a government document.
Re:Open wi-fi should be perfectly legal (Score:3, Insightful)
I 100% agree with you, but I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here.
Once you start handing out child pornography it's bad.
Brown envelopes (Score:4, Insightful)
All-fronts attack (Score:5, Insightful)
What's really needed is a multi-national organization to address what's clearly an all-out assault on internet freedom by a variety of vested interests. Governments, patent trolls, multi-national entertainment corporations...all of them are pushing in the same direction, and there doesn't seem to be any unified push back.
Let's be clear: I'm not alleging a conspiracy. What I'm saying is that these groups all know where their best interests lie (screwing the consumer/citizen/user/whatever) and they sense that if they don't get their boot on our throat, no matter how badly they have to bend the various constitutions of the democracies they use for cover, the opportunity will slip away. They aren't about to let that happen if they can possibly help it.
Re:Open wi-fi should be perfectly legal (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't happen. In fact, one of my neighbors runs a open wi-fi network, I've noticed absolutely no more traffic near their house or in the neighborhood since they started doing it.
As for any interference, it doesn't happen there are a multitude of channels and a nearly infinite amount of SSDs you can use for your own access points.
But sometimes across a whole country it helps to have some laws.
Not when it leads to a loss of liberty.
What about open streets? (Score:4, Insightful)
Would you allow us to have open streets, sir, or should we wear tags [wikimedia.org] to identify us while we walk outside?
Re:Srsly? (Score:3, Insightful)
The large ISPs that can afford to implement the recording are more than happy... Economies of scale mean they can implement the recording far more cheaply than the smaller players, many of whom will simply go bust leaving the big players to soak up the extra customers.
And when they charge extra for the recording, they don't have to spend all the extra revenue on actually implementing it... Much of that will go to profit.
Ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
The government have totally lost the plot. I'll be so glad when BRrown and his morons get voted out in May.
Password as your SSID (Score:3, Insightful)
There, its secure :)
Imprisonment In The Community is here (Score:2, Insightful)
Every call will be logged, every transaction filed, what you do, where you go, who you see and what you think will be traceable. You will be watched, profiled, targeted, and the number plate of your vehicle registered at each motorway intersection.
There will be no cheating and you will do what you are told - though to be fair, for the milch cows amongst us that will not be a problem.
The UK government introduced the quaintly named. "Care in the community" in order to allow them to cut costs by dumping people with serious psychological disorders out of the hospitals and on to the streets.
Now they are taking it a step further. Welcome to, "Imprisonment in the Community". No need for the concentration camps. You are already under control right where you are - going about your daily business.
Re:Can't set up a secure access point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure. And that's probably how the lobbyists sold it. The problem, at least in the States, is that we no longer seem capable of electing politicians who _think_. The good ones just _deal_ and justify it as the way pragmatic realpolitik works. The bad ones purposefully deal for dollars.
very british (Score:3, Insightful)
* Shut down the last hiding-place. Anonymity be gone.
* Make encryption illegal. No Secrets.
* Make people sign every ip-packet with their government-issued key and make ISPs drop all unsigned packets. Total accountability.
=> Everyone secure beneath watchfull eyes [wired.com] (especially our children)
creepy!
Re:Depends (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>people shouldn't have truly open access points to begin with.
Why not? If I want to open my kitchen and give away free food, I can. If I want to buy a bunch of blank CDs and hand-out copies of Ubuntu Linux, I can. Why can't I give-away free access to Wi-Fi in my home or restaurant?
No reason I can think of, except to limit free speech/protest and give the government even more control over public policy (i.e. push their one true agenda).
Alex Jones the Nutter was just discussing this on his radio show: http://yp.shoutcast.com/sbin/tunein-station.pls?id=175591 [shoutcast.com] - about how Microsoft, corporations, and government are colluding to silence the people and control what we hear or read.
Re:Brown envelopes (Score:4, Insightful)
You forgot to add 'unelected (twice)' in your description of Peter Mandelson. He shouldn't be anywhere near government, let alone at the heart of it.
I don't get it... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's to stop coffee shops from setting a password protected wifi spot and then putting a big poster with the password on it?
Re:Srsly? (Score:3, Insightful)
As a network administrator for a small local ISP I have to say I would absolutely loathe this proposal. I can't even begin to imagine the infrastructure and management nightmare to do something like this at all of our locations.
So OK, you use encryption for your APs, which you then have to give the password out to your customers making the wireless in effect public anyway.
Or do you propose we only use WPA2-EAP? So what, we have to not only manage each account individually, but I assume we have to do personnel verification? We simply could have some sort of web based account creation, but would we be held liable if they forged/stole the information? Do we have to do some sort of credit card authorization to make sure the person is who they say they are or do we have to see their ID personally? This kind of defeats the purpose of wireless in some locales.
And I assume they will want us to log all of the traffic otherwise we'd have to route our public IPs. While in and of itself is not that difficult, most of the time this would be increasingly difficult. Have you priced peering lately? It's not cheap and we're running out of IPs, running NAT at these places is sometimes the only way to bring wireless there. If we can run NAT but have to log the traffic the kind of hardware necessary in order to retain logs for any length of time and keeping it low latency is pretty astronomical and economically infeasible.
So here's a list of services that they will have to run in order to comply with this: Account management/key storage(ldap), Authentication(RADIUS), Account Creation(web whatever), Packet Logging(ntop) OR Peering Connection/Routable IPs, some sort of database for log retention, and an AP capable of handling the processing power for WPA2-EAP/Authentication. Oh plus you'll need someone to implement and administrate it.
Does the government plan on paying for this? While the company I work for has the ability to do this and we do for some locations, doing it everywhere would be a nightmare. Not to mention how ripe for abuse this whole system would be. There's a reason why it's not already done. It's expensive, time consuming, hurts the service, and it's easy to get around.
This is a dumb idea and it won't work. It will put smaller ISPs out of business and even the big ones will have trouble with it. And what do we do about Mom and Pop that don't know how to secure their own wireless? Do they now become liable if someone uses their connection?
The hell happened to common carrier status?
Re:Depends (Score:4, Insightful)
I pirate stuff myself. I just don't try to fool myself that it's morally inert. I guess you *could* argue that I wouldn't watch movies if they weren't free (which is probably true in the vast majority of cases).
In any case, we're talking about WiFi. If you use your neighbor's wifi, you deprive him the use of the quota that you used, however little it may be. You're also using a certain percentage of his quota, which you did not pay for.
Don't try to fool yourself with flimsy technicalities in a childish attempt to screw with your moral compass. No amount of post-hoc justification can make a wrong right, it'll just fuck up your moral compass.
Re:Brown envelopes (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is, apparently, that the big copyright holders already did that - except they probably used a brown wheelbarrow.
What is most troubling is that the Digital Britain bill will give Lord Voldem^H^H^H^H^H^HMandelson the ability to do pretty much as he wishes regarding controls over the Internet, without having to trouble himself with asking Parliament if it's OK. :(
-MT.
Re:Depends (Score:2, Insightful)
No, they aren't say they won't pay for access to the service. They are saying they shouldn't be held responsible for HOW it's used.
A more correct example would be:
Say you got a land line, and ran an extension phone out to the sidewalk in front of your house for anyone to use. Somebody calls in a bomb threat using the extension. Should you be responsible for the bomb threat? If you should be responsible, how is it different than from calling using a public telephone?
Re:Ridiculous (Score:1, Insightful)
No matter who you vote for, the Government always gets in.
Re:Depends (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>You would be perfectly free to give away Wi-Fi but if someone downloaded a movie and you were sued you couldn't use the defense "oh well I have an open wifi connection so it must have been someone else.
So?
People come-and-go from public buildings all the time. If a product goes missing, do they hold the owner of the building responsible? No. They figure it must be one of the anonymous persons. - What they are doing here is the equivalent of demanding you show an ID every time you come-and-go from a store, mall, restaurant, et cetera. It's an excessive imposition.
Re:Depends (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Depends (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd like to step back a bit and say that if you need the law to intervene in a petty minor dispute with your neighbour over usage of what is essentially a glorified newspaper, then you probably have bigger problems... like an insufferably regulated and micro-managed society, for one thing...