Bypassing Gogo’s Inflight Internet Authentication • Hacker News Board

Re: Bypassing Gogo’s Inflight Internet Authentication

#51

Post by klawed » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 12:22 PM UTC

jonafato wrote: post #42

kleiba wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(This will be my last post on this thread because I think I've now gotten into a mode where everyone's just downvoting whatever I say.) I would just like to point out that I said more than once that I am not trying to justify the behavior described in the original article. Maybe I just didn't make myself clear enough, or people really just disagree. But all I've been trying to say that this illegal behavior does not…

I don't normally take sides in these arguments, but I think you're misunderstanding the economics of this situation. This isn't analogous to file sharing, because file sharing doesn't affect the availability of the original file. Consider these numbers (made up, but probably not wildly inaccurate): - Access costs $10 - Total bandwidth available is 5Mbps - 10 users purchase access for an average of .5Mbps per user If…

>>This isn't really about taking from the big, bad corporations. It's about taking from your neighbor. It would be great if we had in-air broadband, but until that day, we'll have to find some way to regulate the use of a limited resource to prevent it from becoming over-saturated. If GoGo allows this to continue, it's also about them not prioritizing their customer experience very highly. I've long felt that they should be tuning their firewall to eliminate or minimize unneccessary traffic. I'm not sure what their SLAs are but I've flown enough to know that on any full daytime flight, the intertubes feel very full. If, for example, 1/4 of the passengers forget to put their mobile devices in airplane mode and their devices are conversing google services the entire flight (even though they never purchased or activated GoGo) that alone will likely gobble up a noticeable portion of bandwidth.

Re: Bypassing Gogo’s Inflight Internet Authentication

#52

Post by betterunix » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 2:14 PM UTC

burnstek wrote: post #33

kleiba wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you steal something from someone then you'll have the item in question in your possession afterwards while the original owner does not have it any more. Access to the internet is nothing you can steal. Of course that is no justification for using the provided service without paying for it, but it's fundamentally different from theft.

You obviously don't fly much. This is you stealing access from me when you're on a platform meant to have just a handful of paying users.

Your access would be affected just as badly if I were to pay for access. It's hard to say that any other people on the plane are negatively affected by this particular act when they would have been affected just as much if someone were paying.

No, the real issue here is that GoGo wants to have it all -- they want to have Wifi and they also want to charge individual users. A better plan would be to rent either wired access or to rent a "mifi"-style device that would require payment for N devices to access the Internet. It would be a bit more infrastructure to deploy, but if GoGo were really concerned about this sort of theft then this would be obvious.

I think the reality is that GoGo does not really care about the service provided to their customers, and that as long as most fliers remain ignorant about ways to evade the payment system GoGo will continue to provide their service.

Re: Bypassing Gogo’s Inflight Internet Authentication

#53

Post by bjustin » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 3:43 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #28

vtail wrote: post #7

I'm amazed by some of the comments like "Wow great article. I knew there must be a way to avoid paying." and by author's apparent believe that contacting the support several times via twitter and not getting a response morally justifies sharing his recipe with other people and wishing them "Happy “free” surfing, for now anyway". Stealing is stealing, no matter what "justification" one may have about high prices. edit…

I fly virgin a lot. The gogo internet used to be $8 bux. Then $15 - last week it was now $20... for three hours. You claim stealing is stealing, well to you, I say gouging is gouging and fuck them.

They should charge whatever makes them the most money per flight. Unless a competitor to GoGo comes along, or using cellular devices is allowed on planes, it is likely a good decision short term and long term.

jonafato mentioned in another comment that they could use the price to control usage rates, increasing the price to keep the number of users down and the bandwidth:user ratio up.

Re: Bypassing Gogo’s Inflight Internet Authentication

#54

Post by EliRivers » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:13 PM UTC

vtail wrote: post #7

I'm amazed by some of the comments like "Wow great article. I knew there must be a way to avoid paying." and by author's apparent believe that contacting the support several times via twitter and not getting a response morally justifies sharing his recipe with other people and wishing them "Happy “free” surfing, for now anyway". Stealing is stealing, no matter what "justification" one may have about high prices. edit…

Stealing is indeed stealing, but this isn't stealing. It's unauthorised use of a computer service. The unauthorised user isn't permanently (and unlawfully, without permission) depriving someone of something they own, so it isn't theft.

"Stealing" carries meaning and emotional reactions than are not applicable in this case. Yes, it's wrong; no, it isn't theft.

Re: Bypassing Gogo’s Inflight Internet Authentication

#55

Post by bsimpson » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 4:37 PM UTC

kleiba wrote: post #29

gfodor wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with it, exactly?

If you steal something from someone then you'll have the item in question in your possession afterwards while the original owner does not have it any more. Access to the internet is nothing you can steal. Of course that is no justification for using the provided service without paying for it, but it's fundamentally different from theft.

I wish more people understood this argument. Hollywood lobbyists have brainwashes a lot of people to equate piracy and stealing. When people like you or I try to disentangle them , there's often a knee-jerk accusation that we're somehow endorsing piracy.

Re: Bypassing Gogo’s Inflight Internet Authentication

#56

Post by saurik » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 5:12 PM UTC

bsimpson wrote: post #55

kleiba wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you steal something from someone then you'll have the item in question in your possession afterwards while the original owner does not have it any more. Access to the internet is nothing you can steal. Of course that is no justification for using the provided service without paying for it, but it's fundamentally different from theft.

I wish more people understood this argument. Hollywood lobbyists have brainwashes a lot of people to equate piracy and stealing. When people like you or I try to disentangle them , there's often a knee-jerk accusation that we're somehow endorsing piracy.

Copying information means you have two copies; sharing a public good means there is less to go around. Even if the piracy case is somehow justified by the "I can't steal something if you never know I took it" argument, that simply isn't the case with something like Internet access. As a demonstration: shared Internet access is subject to tragedy of the commons in a very clear and direct way that music piracy is not (especially if you take into account "enforcing the laws against pirates doesn't cause most pirates to pay, they just consume less or not at all").

Re: Bypassing Gogo’s Inflight Internet Authentication

#57

Post by jonafato » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 5:44 PM UTC

Zombieball wrote: post #48

jonafato wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't normally take sides in these arguments, but I think you're misunderstanding the economics of this situation. This isn't analogous to file sharing, because file sharing doesn't affect the availability of the original file. Consider these numbers (made up, but probably not wildly inaccurate): - Access costs $10 - Total bandwidth available is 5Mbps - 10 users purchase access for an average of .5Mbps per user If…

I like your scenario. I am curious though, lets say this issue went to court and the airline was charging the wifi 'thief' with stealing. The case would only pertain to the single flight the thief stole internet access on. And on that particular flight, regardless of whether or not the thief paid or didn't pay he would be reducing the available bandwidth to other customers. Sure in the long run the airline can play w…

IANAL, so take the legality of this with a grain of salt:

The airline would not have the right to charge the "thief" because the airline is not the victim. The only people able to charge the polluter (sticking with my other analogy) are those who paid for access to the network or someone representing them. They wouldn't do this because 1) it's kind of a ridiculous thing to do, and 2) the damages are far smaller than the cost of taking action.

The sensible way to do this (if stopping the practice outright was impractical) would be to grant some authority (the airline) the power to issue citations related to the pollution. It's then carried out similarly to regulating noise pollution. This is problematic, of course, because it requires identifying offenders. If we can identify offenders, we can simply stop the offense, so issuing any kind of ticket no longer makes sense.

This brings me back to a point I made above: the airlines will stop this practice. It's solvable, profitable, and generally beneficial to those who want it enough to pay.