I hope those in the discussion yesterday also subscribe to clug-talk. I could
not, in all conscience, continue the discussion there. It was the wrong group
for it.
In the light of a new day I re-read the Wired article by Schneier, i.e.
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/01/securitymatters_0110
He gives a whole host of reasons to open up your WiFi. He is more concerned by
computer security, by illicit use of the connection coming home to haunt him
and by those 'stealing' (if that's not a laugh, I don't know what is) too much
bandwidth but he is not at all concerned with theft from the ISP and possible
degradation of services to other (paying) subscribers on his node. He even has
the gall to say:
The RIAA has conducted about 26,000 lawsuits, and there are more than 15
million music downloaders. Mark Mulligan of Jupiter Research said it best: "If
you're a file sharer, you know that the likelihood of you being caught is very
similar to that of being hit by an asteroid."
In other words, go right ahead and do something criminal and unethical because
your chance of getting caught has a probablility approaching zero.
Great moral suasion, man. And this in what is supposedly considered a leading
magazine.
BUT, and this is why I am sending off this response, this time I read the
comments following his article.
NO ONE, not a soul, mentioned anything about the ethics of stealing
resources/services. The Robin Hood Syndrome was in full effect. It is extremely
unsettling and morally repulsive that the readers of Wired that chose to
comment were UNIVERSALLY OK with theft. True, they were concerned with illicit
use of their IP (but not illicit theft) and too much of their monthly allotment
taken, but they could not see that they were advocating crime if it hit them in
the face.
What does that say about the ethical standards of today's Internet savvy?
Now admittedly, it is dangerous to use this small cross-section to generalize
to a whole generation, but there was NOT A SINGLE comment in three pages that
addressed theft of resources. Surely this paints some kind of a picture,
doesn't it?
Gary
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