Bill In UK May Disallow Public Wi-Fi

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Good luck sorting this one out, short-sighted lawmakers. An upcoming piece of major legislation in the UK, called the Digital Economy Bill, would essentially force all public wi-fi points offline by requiring impossibly high levels of copyright protection by libraries and small businesses. The bill, which bears some similarity to the controversial DMCA here in the US, is ostensibly aimed at providing copyright holders the means of controlling their content online.

But while an ISP may detect a violation by one of its subscribers and send a nastygram to the appropriate party, it’s difficult to do that when your “subscriber” is a pub or café that offers free wi-fi to customers. If someone buys a cup of coffee, downloads a few songs, and then leaves and never returns, who is at fault? According to the Digital Economy Bill, the café.......

I see a flaw in their devious scheme: I blatantly infringe copyright quite often, but *my* ISP has never send me anything on the matter. If I can't use wireless internet at a café that's a shame, but it doesn't in any impede my downloading of copyrighted material in any way. It seems to me that one should put tighter regulation on ISPs first if you want to solve "piracy"...

*my* ISP has never send me anything on the matter. If I can't use wireless internet at a café that's a shame, but it doesn't in any impede my downloading of copyrighted material in any way. It seems to me that one should put tighter regulation on ISPs first if you want to solve "piracy"...