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Germany plans to remove owner liability for piracy on open Wi-Fi hotspots–report

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: Germany plans to remove owner liability for piracy on open Wi-Fi hotspots–report

#11

Post by mseebach »

pjc50 wrote: post #6
codecamper wrote: post #5

I think there should be a law that would disallow passwords for public wifi. passwords are soooo annoying (is that a 1, l, or I?) & if everyone had open wifi, then it could be utilized much more, lowering everyone's wireless carrier usage. also, you wouldn't need to worry about someone using too much bandwidth -- it would happen, but i doubt more frequently than with the passwords. Well, wifi could be throttled if it…

If it's got a password, it's not really public wifi. Isn't it usually complementary wifi for patrons of a particular business?

Public doesn't mean free to everybody, it means available to everybody. A public house (as opposed to a private club), aka a pub, is not a place you can hang out whenever, they have hours (they are not "public" at night) and you're supposed to buy stuff when you're in there.

There's nothing about password protected wifi that makes it inherently non-public.

Re: Germany plans to remove owner liability for piracy on open Wi-Fi hotspots–report

#12

Post by DasIch »

BjoernKW wrote: post #4
abhi3 wrote: post #2

Is this a common practice in Europe /US? It seems ridiculous that the WiFi provider would be held liable for such a thing. Why stop there, should make the ISP liable too!

No, it's just Germany that has this stupid rule. Yes, it's ridiculous but has that ever kept politicians from implementing legislation? Germany is particularly notorious when it comes to useless, ridiculous and downright detrimental laws regarding anything that has to do with the Internet, notable examples being the so-called 'Leistungsschutzrecht' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht ) and the 'Impre…

I don't think the law actually explicitly affects wifi, that's just a consequence. The concept of Störerhaftung precedes wifi by quite a bit.

Re: Germany plans to remove owner liability for piracy on open Wi-Fi hotspots–report

#13

Post by DasIch »

germanier wrote: post #8

The wording of the proposed law is not published yet and there are good reasons (including statements by the involved ministries) to believe that it does not really have the effect they claim.

Just politically it doesn't make any sense to me to believe the change will have that effect.

Why would after such a long time the CDU suddenly drop the pro-Störerhaftung position? It seems much more likely that SPD and CDU have reached a compromise that eliminates the Störerhaftung only partially.

I expect the outcome will just create legal uncertainty. So that there won't be any positive effect.

Re: Germany plans to remove owner liability for piracy on open Wi-Fi hotspots–report

#14

Post by pluma »

DasIch wrote: post #12
BjoernKW wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's just Germany that has this stupid rule. Yes, it's ridiculous but has that ever kept politicians from implementing legislation? Germany is particularly notorious when it comes to useless, ridiculous and downright detrimental laws regarding anything that has to do with the Internet, notable examples being the so-called 'Leistungsschutzrecht' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht ) and the 'Impre…

I don't think the law actually explicitly affects wifi, that's just a consequence. The concept of Störerhaftung precedes wifi by quite a bit.

It's a "happy accident" for the content industry, though. Can't figure out who fileshared your mp3? Just sue the person running the public WiFi.

There have been several attempts to sue Freifunk (basically a public mesh WiFi using tunnelled connections) participants this way too, luckily so far that hasn't resulted in a single "victory" yet.

Re: Germany plans to remove owner liability for piracy on open Wi-Fi hotspots–report

#15

Post by mseebach »

jackvalentine wrote: post #7
pjc50 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's got a password, it's not really public wifi. Isn't it usually complementary wifi for patrons of a particular business?

I think he might be referring to "public" but not public wifi, like coffee shops etc. I've long thought that if your business is using public unlicensed spectrum then you should be required to let the public in. A very large national phone carrier in my country is blanketing the cities with wifi reserved for their customers - using a public resource and clogging up the unlicensed spectrum for private gain. They've al…

Large scale public wifi generally doesn't have passwords, that clearly doesn't scale, they have fancy enterprise auth things or captive portals. Shared password only works for small places like coffee shops.

Anecdotes: 1: on London Underground, my phone authenticates using the SIM somehow (it still shows a captive portal screen, just with an ad, yay). 2: in the Turkish lounge in Istanbul airport, the shared password was clearly a marketing channel, InvestInTK2016 or some such. It struck me as pretty clever.

> if your business is using public unlicensed spectrum then you should be required to let the public in

"Unlicensed" isn't really "unlicensed", as much as specifically licensed for anyone to do with as they please. But to take your idea just one step further, once you've opened up all wifi for the general publics consumption (what a renaissance for wired networking!), would people using it be allowed to use it for private gain? Why is it wrong to use unlicensed spectrum for private gain, but not to use a service provided over the same spectrum for private gain? Also, as a business, under this doctrine, are you allowed to enable wifi access to a closed non-internet LAN, with only locked-down non-public servers on it?

Re: Germany plans to remove owner liability for piracy on open Wi-Fi hotspots–report

#16

Post by kpcyrd »

BjoernKW wrote: post #4
abhi3 wrote: post #2

Is this a common practice in Europe /US? It seems ridiculous that the WiFi provider would be held liable for such a thing. Why stop there, should make the ISP liable too!

No, it's just Germany that has this stupid rule. Yes, it's ridiculous but has that ever kept politicians from implementing legislation? Germany is particularly notorious when it comes to useless, ridiculous and downright detrimental laws regarding anything that has to do with the Internet, notable examples being the so-called 'Leistungsschutzrecht' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht ) and the 'Impre…

The Impressumpflicht that is applied to websites now, is based on a law from 1530[1]

[1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressumspflicht#Geschichte

Re: Germany plans to remove owner liability for piracy on open Wi-Fi hotspots–report

#18

Post by revelation »

codecamper wrote: post #5

I think there should be a law that would disallow passwords for public wifi. passwords are soooo annoying (is that a 1, l, or I?) & if everyone had open wifi, then it could be utilized much more, lowering everyone's wireless carrier usage. also, you wouldn't need to worry about someone using too much bandwidth -- it would happen, but i doubt more frequently than with the passwords. Well, wifi could be throttled if it…

If I remember correctly, the problem with open WiFis is that all data is transmitted as plaintext.

If you set a password (even if it's just "password") and therefore enable e.g. WPA2-PSK, data is properly encrypted with a per-client session key.

Re: Germany plans to remove owner liability for piracy on open Wi-Fi hotspots–report

#19

Post by george20 »

You guys surprise me, how is this news? Western societies are supposed to be liberal, how exactly would one be responsible of what other guys do? How about open Wifi in hotels or restaurants?

I am not surprised provided what I hear you say, that Bulgaria (where I live in) has the best internet connection in the world. If you think I am joking - Google it. What the title says is sheer stupidity and makes absolutely no sense - and insult to intelligence.

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