News Bill signals end of free WiFi

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2010/03/01/bill-signals-end-of-free-wifi/1

The Digital Economy Bill - designed to curtail copyright infringement online - could have a nasty side effect: preventing businesses from offering their customers free WiFi.

 

It's not going to stop copyright material being pirated! Every one know some one who can get the latest dvd's or 360 games just pop to the pub and ask around. Its not going to make it more difficult it will just push more money in to organized crime! the goverment is just trying to look like there doing something and its not going to work

 

I think both cases are true. Laws always always increase administrative burden, and this is especially felt by smaller organisations without ease of access to specialist legal teams either through hiring the services of a lawyer or through an in house legal expert.

But similarly I tend to think of internet connections along the same lines as phone lines. Obviously, there are limitations of your responsibility, but if you were offering a free phone line (for example, for people to phone their parents to pick them up from a kids club or something), and then someone uses that phone line maliciously - it is YOUR responsibility as it is YOUR phoneline.

The same goes with the internet unfortunately. I would love for there to be a way around it - wimax is promising (which in a way is the phoneline analogy of the advent of mobile phones!) but until there is a neat solution unfortunately it is at small organisations own risk if they let anyone use their internet connection without caution.

 

Many of the countries I travel through have lots of free wi-fi access points - pubs, coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, airports ... it really puts the UK to shame with it's multiple thousands of hotspots you have a to pay a premium to use (and if you have an iPhone remember, you are still paying that premium, it's not free).

Recently though more and more free hotspots have been cropping up over here - even my local library started their own free wi-fi service a few months ago.

Unfortunately, it sounds like this bill is just going to push access point owners further away from either being able, or wanting to offer these services for free. In an age when the government is trying to ensure 'internet access for all', this is A BAD THING.

 

Further proof of the mess the DEB is.

 

I saw someone speeding the earlier on. Best rip up the entire road network.

If pure piracy is the only problem then surely limited bandwidth per user per minute, then a cap on usage per day/hour or whatever would mean no real amount of pirating could be done.

 

Has anyone else ever taken a kid to a fake library? Let me tell you, it's not a good sight. Movie workprints, Hanna Montana music, and WMD instructions are on every computer.

 

I'm considering setting up a single AP at work and offering free Wi-Fi to my customers. I don't imagine any of them would be into copyright infringement, but now I don't know if I'm just opening myself up to more grief. Well done government.

 

matticus raises a decent issue.

At university, you aren't allowed to download through file sharing, as peer to peer is banned (i believe they close the ports associated with it). At university there are also other measures such as bandwidth and usage each day (although this is a large figrure)

With help, small businesses could set up an open wifi network that would mean people can't use filesharing. It was only a while ago that companies were setting up wireless networks across whole towns. The government keep taking measures to stifle us growing, just because its worried about file sharers.

 

Shhhh - don't give them ideas!

 

In Germany, MacDonalds went about this problem like this: You get Free WiFi, but get the password by sending them a text message, and receiving the text message on your phone.
They then clim, that whoever's phone was used, is the user of this password.

Someone fileshared? We haven't got his name, but this connection was requested by this phonenumber.

On the other hand in Czechia, lots of cafe's have a full open network, no problem.

All depends on the local (national) law I guess.

 

does that mean all the bt business hubs with bt openzone would have to have openzone disabled?

 

Another freedom gone

 

GL with this goverment lol

i dout it rich

BT has the resources to track user logins

 

@RichCreedy - interesting point. And what about FON - sharing your wi-fi is their whole business model! http://www.fon.com/en/info/whatsFon

 

So what about all these Wi-Fi town's and city's the government is in the process of spending millions and millions on?
what do they propose for them? scrap them? or more likely pay to access them?
Smells like another attempt to tax/make money off Joe public.

 

I may live in the US, but this bill sounds like a pretty bad idea. Hopefully this doesnt steamroll into making the Gov think that they can tax people for every little thing. Lets hope this dies. Otherwise I can see my retarded government copying this.

 

Bahahaha, Singapore will still enjoy 2 more years of free public WiFi like, freaking everywhere!

 

That's not true.

If I stab someone with your knife? You are responsible?
If I run someone over with your car?
If I use your wifi to download copyright material, you honestly believe you are the one who should be punished?

You do not believe those things, and If you do, give me your address and the SSID of your wireless router, I'll come download some copyrighted material and get you into trouble so that you can confront your ******** beliefs head on.

This sort of narrow minded, 'it doesn't affect my pocket book so I don't care' attitude is exactly what ruins democracy. You don't give a **** about small business owners, so you refuse to consider their position, it's selfish and sadly it's pervasive in our society. Nobody takes notice until they are personally inconvenienced, and by that time, the laws will be law and you won't have any personal freedoms left.

It's easy to dismiss the 1984-quoting, freedom-championing minority as pirates and hippies, who-cares, but it doesn't mean they aren't right. Which in this case, they are. Governments spying on their people is wrong, governments forcing private businesses to spy on their people for them is wrong. Governments forcing private business to spy on their people for other private businesses is sickening.

 

These arguements don't even take in to account the fact that to implement these laws and sanctions they will need to be able to indentify what the actual downloaded material is, and that would be an invasion of privacy laws. We have also heard many cases of wired connections being hijacked. So what happens then? Back to the old silly arguement of 'So my gun gets stolen and gets used to commit a crime so I personally get convicted of said crime?'