We've found that our hotspot location owners' biggest reason for not "doing it themselves", is the liability issue. We've had several instances where users of the hotspot network were engaging in illegal activity and the location owner (who owns the fixed broadband connection) was hit with a legal threat-notice from the bandwidth provider. Because we keep logs of all our users and their credit card info, we were able to absorb the liability on behalf of our location partners.
I think this problem is only going to grow. But the same can be said of anonymizer/proxy services such as http://www.your-freedom.net. Clever bad people will always find a way to do bad things and not get caught...open nodes or not. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lee Barken Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 8:55 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [SOCALWUG] [nycwireless] the anti-free wifi movement (fwd) This was an interesting post on the nycwireless list... thought I would share it here.... Our view at SoCalFreeNet.org is that the benefit outweighs the risk. Every tool that can be used for good has the potential to be used in a negative way. We could ban cars and save 50,000 lives a year-- but we don't because the automobile has enormous utility... just like the Internet. So our role as the enabler of the technology is to implement guard rails and air bags and take reasonable steps to promote everybody's safety. Take it easy, -Lee President, SoCalFreeNet.org ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 09:10:53 -0500 From: John Geraci <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Subject: [nycwireless] the anti-free wifi movement I'm curious to hear what others think about the front-page article in the NY Times on Saturday, which equated leaving your wifi open with helping child pornographers and credit card thieves (and maybe even terrorists). It seemed like a bit of yellow journalism to me, and reflecting of how much the public has assimilated John Ashcroft's point of view that we should all submit willingly to government surveillance. Still, I think the groups and people that support free wifi have to have a good rebuttal to the argument that was made, and not just dismiss it. I came across a to-do list on this Sony site "lifehacker" just now (http://www.lifehacker.com/software/security/todo-secure-your-wireless- network-036577.php). They recommend that their readers 1. set up WEP on their router 2. create an access list of what computers can access the Internet 3. turn off their SSID broadcast. Granted, everyone should know how to lock down their router, but it seems that the press is going farther, making it your civic duty to close off your Internet access. What is the free wifi movement's response? Maybe it's just a good counter argument. Maybe it's developing new tools that allow users to easily find some sort of middle ground between fully open wifi and fully closed wifi. Not sure, but I think there should be some sort of response. -John -- NYCwireless - http://www.nycwireless.net/ Un/Subscribe: http://lists.nycwireless.net/mailman/listinfo/nycwireless/ Archives: http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycwireless/
