[dundee] Open Wi-Fi 'outlawed' in Digital Economy Bill

[Rick Moynihan]

On 3 March 2010 21:12, Iain Barnett <iainspeed at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Equating "crap network security" with open hotspots is a sweeping
> generalisation, and I find it hard to believe that legislation is
> going to improve the security of the average household.
>
> Networking is not a crime any more than building roads is, and we all
> know bank robbers use Roads for their get-aways!  The world needs more
> free, open registration-less WiFi, not less.
>
> I _do_ equate anonymous access with a bad setup. If you can give me one good reason to run a network that allows entirely anonymous access (at the local level) that would make sense to anyone who spends their time running a network, you go for it! I can't see "Completely Open and Anonymous Networks 101" reaching a (good) network security course any time soon :-p

Well, you're assuming it has to be a "network", rather than a simple a
pipe to the Internet.  And there are many reasons these are desirable,
community wifi projects being one of them.  The legislation here
essentially says "only big companies can become ISP's"...  Legislation
like this is driving smaller players out of the market... Making the
whole industry less competitive.  Would Robert Ladyman have ever set
himself up as a rural ISP if more legislation like this were in
place?!?!  Maybe, maybe not... I'm hoping he can answer this point.

What does this legislation mean for community Mesh networks and future
WiMax projects?  WiFi technology is rapidly approaching a saturation
point large enough to sustain large community networks...  With future
wireless technologies such as WiMAX and it's successors around the
corner mesh networking becomes increasingly viable.  We could have a
future within 5 years where most users wouldn't need ISP's, and could
instead get free internet access with self configuring mesh
networks...  The technology to do this exists today, and it will
likely be in your home in a couple of years.  Legislation like this is
prohibitive of this future, and means that we'll likely remain paying
our ISP's £20 per/month for the next hundred years.

The telco cartel have far too much control over Internet and mobile
communications as it is, for example charging approximately £900 per
MB (for SMS's) is scandalous.  Not to mention the fact that we're
effectively giving control of the Internet to the copyright lobbyists.
 Disney and others would have killed the Internet a decade or more
ago, if they'd known what the world today is like...  If you'd rather
a parallel universe; sans Internet, then I can understand you
supporting this legislation...  Otherwise, I struggle to see why
allowing them to push through this legislation benefits anyone other
than the established 'rights holders' and Telco's.

Ensuring authentication on the endpoints does nothing to improve
security on the Internet either, as malicious users and those with
something to hide can simply bounce a connection around the world a
couple of times through something like TOR.  So again, all this does
is penalise legitimate users with additional inconvenience, whilst
propping up the failing business models of incumbent industries, and
preventing future innovation in services and wireless technology.

There are countless other ways that this legislation is ill conceived,
but given you've now got many good arguments as to why this
legislation is bad, perhaps you can offer us a reason as to why it's
good?  So far all you've said in support of this is that it will
"improve network security", do you have a stronger argument or more
straw men?

Incidentally if you want a full treatise on the effect of legislation
such as this, I'd recommend reading Yochai Benkler's seminal work "The
Wealth of Networks" (
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/Main_Page ) and
Lessig's first book "Code - and other laws of cyberspace" (
http://codev2.cc/ ).

> I could only come up with avoiding the long arm of a totalitarian regime, but that stretched the point into a new one. Or the "Sex And The City meets the Spice Girls" argument - because we want to! :-p Always a poor one for me.

Sounds more like a Billie Piper argument to me :-)

> However, due to this discussion I had a look and I did find an article in which Bruce Schneier advocated it (for himself, at least). Schneier's arguments rely on the practical aspect of (and I paraphrase) "it doesn't matter to me" or "it's bad elsewhere so why bother, better to focus on other aspects", because the technical reasons are so weak, which, to his credit, he admits.
> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html
> It didn't convince me at all. Comments section was quite good though.

Yes, I provided a link to this Schneier article in my original message.

--
Rick Moynihan
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