Finland mulls legalizing use of unsecured Wi-Fi

Brilliant

Now isnt that what free WiFi for all project was all about by the local Municipalities (started in USA)?

Or the Femto cells bogey intended the same?

Wonder which vested interests are behind no adoption of this policy citing security and terrorism!

Something stinks here.

Or Even...

..."man in the middle" attacks.

Makes sense to me....

After all, most router configurations nowadays only take a matter of minutes to set up properly. I don't see any reason why someone who wants their router to be secured wouldn't be able to secure it. If you want to leave it open, then that's like leaving your car parked with the windows rolled down and the keys in the ignition.

A freetard's wet dream?

It's an interesting approach, putting the onus on people to secure if they want protection and take the consequences if they don't.

A parallel is nipping out and on coming back finding you'd left your front door un-locked and now have someone in your house watching your TV and eating your biscuits. There's no 'breaking and entering' but there remains an issue of 'theft' in consumption (which equates to cost and thus harm).

The question then is what does de-criminalisation amount to and how consistent is that with other principles of law?

If 'connection' is allowed but not 'use' (which remains 'theft' through unauthorised consumption) then nothing much has changed. If unauthorised consumption is allowed then where does it leave 'theft' in the parallel example?

The laws on accessing unsecured networks are there to prevent a disparity in legal principles; how is eating someone else's biscuits really any different to using their electricity? Having a disparity helps no one.

A better approach IMO would be to keep the law fundamentally as it is is but add a means of identifying deliberately opened and public access points, perhaps by SSID naming convention. That allows an opt-in to sharing resources and a decent legal framework for potential users.

In a more innocent time ...

People used to graze their livestock on The Boston Common or in Central Park.

All the Finns have to do is make it illegal for anyone to re-sell identifying data. Tell Google and the Windfall Theory of Targeted Advertising they have no place on the Finnish Commons. All those Finns who are famous for being famous will need extra sympathy and Aquavit, of course.

You have to get the idea out of your head that the Commons is run for the benefit of the people when it is sufficient that it be run from the point of view of the calf.

Makes Sense

Makes sense really, if you can't be arsed spending 5mins when you set up your WAP you deserve to be leached off.

I wonder .....

how this would stand up in court if the owner of the net connection was accused of sharing copyright material. Would they then start trying to track mac addresses of the infringing pc's (or printers:)

If letting others use your connection is legal then you could use that as an easy excuse. I believe if you do it in the uk you are required to keep records of users etc.

A great idea

If only our own government was as sensible (read: not pandering to big business all the time) as the Finnish Gov. Hmm, maybe if EVERYONE is doing it and most people see no problem with it, then we should make it legal becuase it is WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS. remember that, UK/USAGOV? I know it's been a while but surely you can take to this concept eventually...

Unsecured Wi-Fi Standard Needed

A new required standard should be submitted as an Internet RFC and/or as part of the Wi-Fi alliance - in order to be certified "Wi-Fi" compliant.

The MANDATORY standard should require 2 additional SSIDs (in addition to the standard, secured, private network SSID) to be simultaneously available and active on ALL WiFI routers and access points. Both additional SSIDs would be enabled by default and optionally be disabled by the owner of the access point. A warning and opportunity to disable them should be presented during the initial configuration wizard.

#1: PUBLIC - this SSID would be open with no encryption or authentication of any kind, would only have access to the Internet (direct to the Internet on a router/firewall or via IPSEC/SSL tunnel to the router/firewall for access points/routers used internally), with no internal network access. By default the bandwidth would be limited to (for example) 512kbps or a amount specified by the owner. Times of day could also be configured (optional)

#2: GUEST: this SSID would be secured either with WPA and a guest key or open/no key and authentication via a login web page. It should be configurable for either internal & Internet or only Internet access (like PUBLIC). Also like PUBLIC it could be limited to a specific maximum bit rate and hours of operation by the owner.

This allows the OWNER to decide if they want to share their WiFi with friends and/or neighbors without impacting the internal network or business/family network access. This feature should be required in order to maintain WiFi alliance certification.

But the point is...

That the people then have a choice.

If they want to allow strangers to use their wifi then so be it. Truth is, the Finns are generally pretty decent and there wont be the alarmist reactions when someone uses a free wifi hot spot to download donkey porn.

Unlike here.... Someone think of the donkeys.

How forward thinking

Now if only they'd do the same everywhere

Fingering Net Criminals

If you have an open wireless network accessible to any passer by, how can you be held responsible for activity on that network?

Say for instance a recording company monitors your IP and downloads copyrighted material from your IP. What grounds would they have to demand unreasonable amounts of money from you if anyone could have been connected and performing said criminal act using that IP?

I think this has always been the reason for laws like this, rather than protecting bandwidth of unsecured WiFi networks.

Also it is possible to encrypt a WiFi signal but not use authentication, this article appears to confuse the two concepts in places.

common sense

it's only common sense and we should follow suit here, after all for every person who isn't clever enough to secure their network there's a person who's not clever enough to realise they are connected to an unsecured network without permission. why should one be a criminal and not the other?

My goodness

A government with common sense!

Who'd a thunk it?