> Is it still my responsibility if they send a nasty to > the whitehouse? If I have no wireless and a Burglar comes in > and sits at my computer and hacks the Whitehouse is this my > responsibility? Not!
There are much worse things than Tom Ridge knocking at your door. All it takes is one pedophile to download his daily fix via your AP, and you'll probably wish you _were_ in the klink. And then there's always drive by spammers, worm publishers, DMCA... Is it worth the pain and financial burden to clear your name? Also, the fact that you just posted online shows that you are well aware of these potential issues, which puts you out of the 'ignorant wifi consumer' category. And if you happen to post your open node address on some public node site you are then legally considered a de facto WISP, whether you charge for the service or not. And that opens up a whole new can of regulatory crap. Yeah, it sucks I know. I think the community wireless thing is great in concept but doesn't address various practicalities of society. Personally, I wouldn't open up my AP to people I don't know. At this point, the situation is almost like 'not putting a fence around your pool and getting sued by a drowned burglar's family..' So I suppose reasonable due diligence would be to lock your front door and use WEP. One idea would be to require users to use encryption completely through your network. That way you would not have any reasonable means to be aware of their nefarious activities. (i.e. Boingo, iPASS VPN) D. -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
