Hi Gary, I think it's safe to say we have different views on this topic. I don't present my view to be "right", but I do think it's a valid viewpoint.
You've been running with an assumption that he is prohibited from opening up his WiFi by some entity - what if he's not? Similar point for everyone that reads his article. I thought a little more about what was underpinning my position and this is what I came up with: * I believe contract law to be a valid and useful approach to defining a business relationship. * I believe that contracts should be negotiable by both parties. * I believe that a contract you enter into should be respected - or you should be willing to face a contract specified penalty, or failing that, civil law. A tangent on law and morals... I think that there is a difference between what is lawful and what is morally right or wrong. There are lots of arguments along this line but here is strawman1: The Government makes it illegal to wear jeans. If I wore jeans the day before the law was passed - was I a morally bad man? What if I wore jeans the day after the law was passed? The law then gets repealed as being intolerable stupid. Was I morally bad to wear Jeans the day before the law was repealed? Just because something is the law doesn't make it moral to obey that law or immoral to to disobey it. There were & are many cases where 'bad' laws have been passed by repressive regimes to make their policing easier & more effective. Here's strawman2: The law says 'fink on your neighbor for being (insert religious or political membership) and we'll shoot him. If we find out you knew and didn't fink then we'll shoot you both'. Is it morally right to turn in your neighbor because she is a "liberal"? Is it morally wrong to not turn in the neighbor for being a "liberal"? In the end I do whatever I want, understanding that there may be legal consequences to some of the positions I take. I speed where it is safe to do so - if I get caught I don't complain, I suck it up and pay the fine. I don't speed if I don't think it is safe to do so. There is one speed limit and it applies to every driver without regard to skill or training and to every vehicle - motorcycles, Ferrari's, dump-trucks & minivans. Those drivers & vehicles all have different capabilities but are all bound by the same legal limit. Maneuvers made safely by one driver & vehicle may be hazardous in another. Moving to the RIAA: I download music. I download copyrighted music. There I said it. Come get me! What I do is neither legally or morally wrong - here's why: In Canada I'm legally allowed to format-shift my music. If I can't easily rip the CD I just bought then I just D/L the tracks. I've got the CD - no infringement has occurred and the RIAA, record company & artist have all made some money on me. Downloading music isn't "wrong" - "stealing" is wrong. Taking something without compensation is wrong - what I did was have someone else do the rip for me. I've got about 300CDs on my iPod. The iPod is nice and light and fits in my pocket and I've got the CD for every tune on it. My CD collection on the other hand is way heavy and wouldn't even fit in a backpack. Same argument for ringtones based on songs. If I have the song I just sample it and copy to my cell phone - there is no legal or moral justification to have me pay $3.00 to listen to 20seconds of a song on my phone that I already have in my CD collection. On theft of resources: On a legal level I agree with you - theft of services is "bad". The problem I have is that I'm subject to a contract that I can't negotiate, the contract is imposed on me in a take-it-or-leave-it approach. What I want is a contract that gives me 'X' GB/month of traffic - the source, destination & content of the traffic is my problem - the ISPs problem is to carry that traffic. I can't get the contract I want so I have to take the only one available to me and that contract prohibits what I'm doing. I then make a conscious decision to circumvent elements of that contract - knowing that doing so subjects me to possible penalties within the contract or in civil law. I view this a lot like speeding - lacking the ability to show any actual harm (I never come close to my bandwidth cap), the only recourse they have is to impose a fine of some sort. Hmmm... just thought... I have a web hosting account with shell access - I could tunnel all the traffic from the WAP through my network, over Shaws and out to the webhost - I wonder if they would argue that that was a breach? Anyways - I'm sure we've both spent way too much time on this topic, I'll close out by saying that I don't think either of us are in any danger of being convinced by the other. I think you make some good points, I just don't agree with all of them. The discussion has forced me to think about the issues more thoroughly and that has made the time well spent. Cheers, J.J. On Sat, 2008-01-12 at 10:16 -0700, Gary Z. (If forwarding, PLEASE delete address from body of e-mail!) wrote: > > > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying
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