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.
Depends (Score:3, Interesting)
This is mostly just an excuse to shake people down for their change than actually fight any kind of real problem.
I went to a drinking club once (Score:4, Interesting)
Bars were outlawed. The only place that could serve drinks were private clubs.
So I paid a $7 "membership fee" at the door and had a great time. First drink was free!
To paraphrase the philosopher Ian Malcom, "Life finds a way".
Ad-hoc too? (Score:4, Interesting)
What happens when your diners start sharing across an ad-hoc wireless network in your shop? Are you obliged to jam signals?
Re:Ad-hoc too? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, that would be illegal. I think the first point here is that the government wants to remove their responsibility for wrongdoings.
More importantly, while I really doubt they would go around disconnecting everyone with open wifi, it gives them a nice
convenient law they can use to harass, arrest, detain and threaten people with. Dont forget every crime in the UK can get you
arrested and as it involves more than one person, you'd probably fall under the SOCA legislation meaning they can detain you
for upto 28 days.
Open wi-fi should be perfectly legal (Score:4, Interesting)
*yes, it does increase bandwidth and would slow down your internet use, but how often is someone going to notice that?
Re:Can't set up a secure access point? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Open wi-fi should be perfectly legal (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd care if you giving away those free water bottles or books lead to an increase in traffic in my residential neighborhood. Or even just at inconvenient hours of the night.
Believe it or not, what happens on your property can bleed over into mine. Maybe you're a reasonable chap, and will stop doing things when you realize that the things you do bother me...or maybe you're not.
But sometimes across a whole country it helps to have some laws.
So far, you haven't articulated a good reason against this one.
Re:Open wi-fi should be perfectly legal (Score:1, Interesting)
Because we all know that there are always loads of cars in front of people's houses that have free wi-fi....
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.
I believe you misunderstand my words. You seem to be focusing on this narrow interpretation, as if it were a strict analogy, as opposed to a broader one, meant to provide an understanding of a particular principle, not simply to create a narrow example. Try perceiving it as "Oh, I see why somebody might have a problem doing that, I can see there's a reason, that there might an impact caused by a decision to give away water" so you can recognize the principle.
To be honest, I've never had a problem with people giving away free water, but I have had problems with people doing things on their property like having a party (perhaps drinks were served there?) or a lot of garage sales. This spread out to impact me. So I support limits on such activity.
Accordingly, I could also be convinced to support not allowing public WiFi access willy nilly. If you want to discuss the reasons there, let's at least find out if we can agree on the principles. If we can't, then what's the point of arguing the particulars?
Not when it leads to a loss of liberty.
Going to have to repeal a lot of laws then. My neighbor will probably like you, he wants the liberty to operate his contracting business out of his backyard. For some reason, I, and the laws of my municipality say no.
Re:Depends (Score:1, Interesting)
The article is also bung. The blog post, that is. Using your neighbour's WiFi is stealing, every single one of the vast array of arguments the blogger puts forward is either shallow, misdirected, based on false assumptions, predicated on absurd analogy, plain stupid, or some combination thereof.
If you're on a WiFi that you don't have reasonable grounds to conclude was intended by the owner to be free, then it is stealing. End of story. Now, can we stop it with the absurd excuses? It's even more disingenuous than the proposition that copying movies is not stealing. It is, people just do it anyway. Let's stop retroactively justifying ourselves.
Re:Srsly? (Score:3, Interesting)
True. Here in the UK, both British Telecom (BT) and VirginMedia will complain but will be probably be able to shoulder the burden anyway. And, as the Phorm debacle revealed, they are not overly concerned about the privacy of their customers...
-MT.
Re:Depends (Score:2, Interesting)
If I want to open my kitchen and give away free food, I can.
As long as you pass a health inspection to make sure you aren't going to kill or make ill any large groups of people.
If I want to buy a bunch of blank CDs and hand-out copies of Ubuntu Linux, I can.
Because the authors allow you to do so.
Why can't I give-away free access to Wi-Fi in my home or restaurant?
You can! Nobody is going to put out a firmware revision that works on all wireless access points that will not allow them to have open access. However if you do chose to provide access as such, know that you are responsible for what happens.
Say you got a land line, and ran an extension phone out to the sidewalk in front of your house for anyone to use. Someone calls a $1.99 per minute pay line, and talks for an hour. Should you not be responsible for the phone bill? If no, why not?
cost/benefit (Score:2, Interesting)
Ignoring any moral arguments against these laws, did anyone actually do the analysis of the cost vs. benefits? I mean these laws have direct costs for 1) ISPs 2) small businesses/libraries/etc...3) the increased costs to the state for enforcing such laws. There will be indirect costs for 4) all internet users as the cost of connection is raised. Finally, this will mean loss of connectivity, either in certain contexts or simply due to rising costs hence there will be a cost 5) the economy as a whole.
Alright, what about benefits. Did someone do actual accounting how much the entertainment industry will gain from these rules (I am assuming they are the biggest beneficiary). Not how much they are saying they are losing. That's a made up number. But in reality, did anyone analyze how higher the profits will be with these rules in place? What needs to be taken into account is that some people who download illegal content would not buy it legally, and further what needs to be taken into account is that such rules will only reduce the rate of piracy (presumably) and will definitely not eliminate it. People copied content before the internet and they will continue to do so. Perhaps less so, but it will continue to occur.
Finally, did anyone independent really analyze the benefit to society and economy from the increased profit of the entertainment industry? Is there a pressing need? Are there fewer artists that create content? Are movie studios not making new movies? Would really more content be generated with these rules in place? Do make sure to figure into any analysis that decreased connectivity will to some degree stifle content creation, and besides the negative effect on society that this may have, this will also have a negative effect on the very industry which they are trying to "protect."
Another perhaps strange effect is that people ARE willing to pay for things even when it is possible to get them for free. Economists often forget to figure in this effect. If you look at statistics of album sales during the napster days, you will notice that sales were up when napster was around and there was plenty of illegal music sharing, and sales went down around the same time that napster got shut down. Without drawing a conclusion of causality, such correlations should be on better scientific footing that simply the "obvious" conclusion that the music industry could have made even more money if napster wasn't around.
I have not seen any such analysis done anywhere. The only arguments for are the faux-common-sense arguments that espouse the obviousness of the benefits of such rules and therefore there is no need to actually figure out what the benefits are.
Of course I am assuming that internet access does contribute to value creation in an economy and it is not true that internet is used solely for viewing porn and downloading illegal music. If I am wrong in this assumption then of course these rules are a boon to the economy. It will be a double whammy, less illegal downloads AND people will probably do actual work out of boredom from not being able to access porn.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)
So what? The alternatives don't have to win. They just have to start gaining enough share.
Then other voters might go "hey they might have a chance the next round", and if they agree, actually vote for them the next round.
And the winning party might also go "uh oh, they might actually have a chance the next round, maybe we should be slightly more like them".
Otherwise the option is for the stupid sheep to just keep voting for either of the same two wolves to eat them.
Re:Depends (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Enforcement? Not likely. (Score:3, Interesting)
The UK already has one: they patrol neighborhoods scanning for unlicensed televisions, those on which they haven't paid their "license fee", which anyone else in the world would call a television tax.
Re:Depends (Score:2, Interesting)