[oclug] The Feds can own your WLAN too

[Adrian Irving-Beer]

On Tue, Apr 05, 2005 at 11:06:07AM -0400, Kevin Everets wrote:

> Hoarding one's internet connection (even when it's unmetered and
> running idle for the most part) seems to be the status quo these
> days, which I find sad.

Bandwidth usage isn't what's important to me.  Certainly I'd want to put
my traffic at a much higher priority than someone else using my link.
Other than that, if I had unmetered bandwidth, could legally share my
connection, and had no other concerns, I might do it.

> Viewing people who share their internet connection as negligent or
> incompetent hurts the sharing culture which I'm a part of.  The
> internet was built on shared connections between peers and has been
> gradually transforming into an entirely different thing based on
> services provided by large organizations and consumers of those
> services.

The problem is, IMO, the Internet back then was inhabited by people
with a more benign attitude.  These days, many people see the Internet
as just a means to make easy money, or to perform illegal or morally
wrong acts -- often both at the same time.

For example, the latest trend among child pornography uploaders and
downloaders is to wardrive for open wireless points they can use.  By
the time the police come knocking on your door to arrest you, the
actual criminal is long gone and untraceable.

I suspect the number of wardriving spammers is less, but I sure
wouldn't want to be responsible for that kind of Internet trash being
spewed via my wireless, let alone ending up on some spam blacklist.

> This is a trend I'd like to see reverse, and will do what I can to
> help that happen.

I appreciate that, and I do find myself sometimes yearning for certain
aspects of the older Internet.  But there are some things I recognise
as gone and unrecoverable due to what the Internet has become today.
Anonymous Internet access is one of those.

On the other hand, your words made me think.  If I ever find myself on
an ISP with unlimited bandwidth and no sharing issues (and can
overcome the routing and security issues), I may consider at least
account-based, audited, free shared wireless access.
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