They are advertised as "plug and play", and that is exactly what most people do with them.
It is one which is almost certainly true.
So you seem to accept that the courts would agree that leaving it open is not the same as giving permission to use it.
Such as?
They *could* have their PC impounded while it is examined for evidence, but unless they ahev done something illegal with it themselves, they will get it back when no such evidence is found.
For the simple reason that it is NOT then acceptable for others to use it.
Operated by BTOpenzone - not free, you have to pay to use them, just the same as you do for the Openzone Hotspots in Motorway services.
Most hotels offering WiFi access in my experience actually just have one of the regular providers, such as T-Mobile or BT Openzone, which have to be paid for.
I'm sure there *are* some who offer free access - probably usually only intended for customers, but if they don't password protect it, they will find that hard to enforce.
But you also cannot compare free WiFi access offered by organisations to home networks, which is what you have been doing all along.
I just changed it to level the playing field a bit.
If they want to complain, yes they do have some responsibility to secure themselves, yes.
But that still does not make it right for others to assume they can help themselves.
There are many cities where the police would advise you not to go into certain areas alone after dark. If you do so, then you are not being sufficiently careful, and the police would rightly be annoyed with you when you got mugged.
But that still doesn't mean that the gang who mug you are right.
Are you thinking of one of the RIPA clauses or the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act?
As I have already pointed out, it is quite definitely not the case that all UK ISPs are able to map an IP address to a specific customer (if by that one means a named individual).
It follows that either such ISPs are contravening the law or that there is no such requirement.
If I leave my bicycle leaning against my front gate, does that mean it is OK for you to just borrow it without asking?
I don't think you would think it does, but it is just as "available", being there where anybody can pick it up, and it is just as "advertised", being visible to anyone who walks by.
I very much doubt that this paid-for business model is sustainable for much longer, as has been shown in the USA and Canada.
The cost to any business, even a coffee shop, of providing free WiFi access is so insignificant that competitive pressure will force provision of free access.
Leaving the default is neutral. It is neither inviting others to use it, nor is it forbidding others from using it.
The manufacturer could make more of an effort in encouraging people to activate security, but if they shipped the unit in a way that it wasn't activated until the user chose either secure or insecure, then they'd have a tech support nightmare, as well as many resturns.
A huge hassle, even though they did nothing wrong.
Not true. It is neither inviting others to use it, nor is it forbidding others from using it. Like many things in society. It is not as black and white as you are trying to make it.
which relate to provision of logs when requested and may (opinions vary) mean that logging must be enabled when a s22 notice is served. There is NO requirement generally to log when no notice has been served.
which currently only has a voluntary scheme
HOWEVER
almost all[*] UK ISPs can map IP addresses to accounts -- for if not they would be unable to disconnect spammers, insecure end user systems, virus infected machines etc. Failure to cope with abuse is not a recipe for a fruitful peering relationship with others.
[*] I currently know of none that specifically cannot, but doubtless some are less competent than others :(
accounts are notionally mappable to individuals or companies; but success at doing so will indeed vary considerably
Here I do know of ISPs that have no clue who their users actually are
So in practice there is widespread logging, but this is NOT the result of any statutory requirement.
ISPs do not generally break the law :) and that is because there is no such requirement in law at present (though the EU Commission are about to publish a draft Directive which would lead to such requirements in the future)
AIUI (and I may be wrong), they are required to either have an account linked to an identifiable individual, and now which account an IP was allocated to, or to have a connection linked to an identifiable phone number.
The problem here is that at least in my experiences in my own city, cafes, restaurants, parks, etc. that offer free wireless, usually make no mention of the fact that free wireless is available. I.e., a park near my house has free wireless, but the only way I happen to know about it is that when the park was built there was an article in the weekly throwaway newspaper about it. There are no signs, there is no one to ask permission from, there is no business to be a customer of. It's just an open, unsecured network. Such networks are all over the place; you turn on your notebook PC, and Windows jumps onto it, apparently assuming that any unsecure network is intentionally available for it to use. Permission is assumed.
There are restaurants with the same sort of setup. I think that they do not want to advertise free wi-fi too much, for the obvious reasons, yet at least in Silicon Valley, free wi-fi is so ubiquitous that you almost expect it to be available. Permission is assumed.
Apparently free wi-fi is not nearly as common in the UK, so the assumptions are different.
I don't advocate using someone's Wi-Fi that they don't want you to use. But there is an expectation now, at least in the U.S., that if the nework is unsecure, then permission is assumed. This is despite the fact that probably every state has some sort of law that would make using an unsecure network without permission, some sort of a crime.
Parking in front of someones house to use a connection, as happened in a Florida case recently, is another matter entirely.
Perhaps the real culprit here is the wireless router companies that advertise all sorts of security features, but do not enable them at the factory, leaving this to the end user. OTOH, most end users probably don't bother because they don't give a damn if someone uses their signal. This is unwise, but it's the way it is.
Just because the USA and Canada have a different model does not mean that ours is not sustainable. It might be theirs that isn't, or both may be viable.
I think the charging structure for internet access is different here, and that means that the cost is not as insignificant as you may think.
If "free" access becomes commonplace, then yes, competitive pressure would force others to also offer it free, or stop bothering to offer it at all. But I don't see that happening particularly soon.
A pain in the ass, and a tech support nightmare. Assuming it was WEP, they'd need to configure each router differently at the factory, and put a sticker on it with the key.
I think that they need to come up with some strong encouragement to secure the network, i.e., an extra year of warranty when you submit proof that you enabled security. Or maybe they should but a big red sheet of paper in the box, SECURE YOUR NETWORK! YOU COULD BE HELD LIABLE FOR UNAUTHORIZED USE BY CRIMINALS!
It really is a trivial task to accomplish. Most people don't bother because they don't care if someone else uses their network, but they fail to understand all the implications of running an unsecure network.
Thank you for confirming that ISPs in the UK are not required by law as a matter of routine to map and record customers to IP addresses.
Some of those ISPs who provide PAYG dialup access, funded entirely from per-minute telephone charges, cannot map customers to accounts because there are no accounts. The most they can do is to map an IP address to a telephone number and often have the means to block access from particular telephone numbers in the event of abuse. But they cannot, in general, map the telephone number or the activity to a named person.
I don't particularly wish to give publicity to these ISPs but I'll name one if anyone doubts that this is so.
Nah. That's just a little boo boo. You screwed up *big time*. (I don't remember what it was, but I could look it up and embellish it! ;-)
...
Hey, what he did was *dumb*. But he claims, and there isn't really any evidence to suggest otherwise, that he *was* going to show it all to someone higher up. He just got caught before he got around to it. He wasn't stealing company secrets to sell to the competition, or whatever...
Actually that explanation is one that his lawyer had to try to get around! The dumb shit sat there an talked to the cops all about it, because he simply didn't understand the legal view of what he had been doing. The trial court allowing evidence from interview with the police was one of the things appealed, and lost.
Yep. That was simply bad publicity for Intel and did them no good at all. It probably hurt them far worse than it did Schwartz.
But clearly you bring some sane common sense to the table too! Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen.
...
Exactly. Somebody is going to be used to generate some case law, and they aren't going to recover well...
This fits exactly the same scenario I mentioned above with the danger in 1990-95 that to me was obvious for anyone in a telephone office who actually understood what a computer was doing. The only reasonable response is to keep a squeaky clean nose... because that means you can sit on a fence and bad mouth everyone running around in circles stomping on the dumb shit that didn't see it coming.
Those who ignore what we are saying, might just be that dumb shit.
Not at all. The manufactures produces lots of the same item, the end user is the one who is the differentiator. And the usual installation procedure on network equipment is to first get it working, and then do any additional tweaks for security. I would not have wanted my routers to come pre-configured, since I would not use the pre-configuration anyway, and it would be one more step in the installation.
Most people have never heard of 2wire, I suspect that their volumes are so low that it's not an issue for them to ship with the unit secured.
Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.