Copyright Law has become a Virus
Consider the insanity of what's going in in the UK - open WiFi is being effectively banned, because all hotspot owners are going to be required to keep logs (as if they were ISPs) of all accesses. Right - because on the super-fast (cough) connections at the typical coffee shop, I'm sure that tons of pirating is going on:
"This is going to be a very unfortunate measure for small businesses, particularly in a recession, many of whom are using open free Wi-Fi very effectively as a way to get the punters in," Edwards said.
"Even if they password protect, they then have two options -- to pay someone like The Cloud to manage it for them, or take responsibility themselves for becoming an ISP effectively, and keep records for everyone they assign connections to, which is an impossible burden for a small cafe"
The stated goals - prevention of copyright infringement - just make no sense. The big pirating is simply not happening on open WiFi hotspots. What's next - a rule that all users of a hotspot (even a home one) need to be registered?
