--- Ed Street  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> This would put a monkey wrench into the wireless project
> 
> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,276720,00.html  "Michigan Man
> Fined for Using Coffee Shop's Wi-Fi Network"  
> 

>From the article:  "Under the statute, individuals who log on to a
Wi-Fi network with the owner's permission, or who see a pop-up screen
that says it's a public network, can assume they're authorized to use
the network, Hopkins said."

Note the requirement for a popup on a public access point.  

The reasons for this is so that, given a town like Grand Rapids MI,
where most of e.g. 28th Street [a main cross-town thoroughfare] has
overlapping WiFi coverage, or like Holland, where there is a WiFi
network cover all of downtown, users won't be able to e.g. take a WiFi
Skype handset and get free local and long distance telephone service
anywhere inside the umbrella - the pop-up is a [trivial] protection for
the telcos against having a WiFi handset that will seamlessly move from
AP to AP [network to network] without dropping a call.  

The cell phone companies that offer that tech [untethered wireless] are
are jealously [legalistically] guarding the technology, since they know
that VoIP+WiFi spells the death of their hyper-inflated cell phone
rates if it fulfills its potential.  

I personally have not looked at Georgia's Laws, but someone should -
Newt Gingrich's fingers have got to have been in this... The state code
is almost certainly online - I know AL put theirs up years ago, so
Georgia can't have been too far behind. ;)


0x0000

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