Jim Aspinwall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Thus the dilemma of trying to apply terrestrial-based principles, philosophies and laws to cyber-based and especially "ether-based" properties.So there's no point in trotting out the same set of terrestrial-based metaphors that aren't really a very good match for WiFi.
WiFi today has these unfortunate properties.
- There's a physical disconnect between the user and the provider
- Some people are making a deliberate decision to share bandwidth
- But they are not always doing a good job of signposting this fact. And there's not even any convention for how to do the signposting
- None of the hotspot databases are definitive. And given the explosive growth it's quite likely that they never will be.
- Most manufacturers are shipping product that is open by default and some AP owners are lacking in clue and so sharing bandwidth by accident. And they're using operating systems that share by default.
- Some users are lacking in clue and using operating systems that will just connect to and use an open AP. So there is no conscious decision. They may not even know that their machine has used some bandwidth to collect their email until they open it up later.
Which is all making it very hard to know what to advise our notional "suit who doesn't know an SSID from their nose".
I fall on the community side of the fence along with NYCWireless, Consume and so on. I happen to believe that very widespread deployment of *deliberately* open APs is a *good thing* and a worthy goal to work towards. I want to see a society where deliberately open APs outnumber accidentally open APs. At which point the onus of morality, legality and proof might fall more on the provider than on the user.
I recognise that we haven't got there yet and as always we're in a transitional period. I'm actually sitting on the fence as regarding the current morality and legality of using bandwidth you find and I wish I could share your certainty. I'm inclined to think that promoting the "It's not stealing" meme in opposition to the "It's stealing" meme is more likely to lead to the end goal of "very widespread deployment of *deliberately* open APs". That's not a moral judgement, that's pragmatism.
But in the mean time, much more interesting is to ask what we can do to help people make deliberate and conscious choices, both on the AP and on the user side. And what can we do to make deliberate sharing the norm.
And hence what we can do to promote the idea that just like "taking without permission being wrong", sharing is also "a foundation principle of civilised society".
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