Open WiFi Owners Off the Hook In Germany 215
ulash writes "Ars Technica reports that a court in Germany ruled in favor of an open WiFi network owner stating that if other users use your open WiFi network without your consent and download copyrighted material, you cannot be automatically held responsible for their actions. This does not carry much (if any) weight in the US but here is to hoping that it will at least have a positive impact in the EU as starters."
Nice loophole (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 1:get wifi router and leave it open
step 2:use other people's wifi
step 3:instant immunity for all
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
You forgot to add (Score:5, Insightful)
one interesting fact. You are only off-hook if you didn't know that your wifi can be used by someone else (this was the case here). If you are offering wireless LAN access to people for free, you still can and WILL be hold responsible when anyone of your users commits a crime. You don't have rights like ISPs have.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it makes sense, otherwise all the ISP's become responsible for the child pornography flowing over their pipes. Unless there are different rules for corporations than for individual citizens. There aren't, right?
Anyway, rulings like this is why the MPAA and RIAA are busy trying to get governments around the world to remove any kind of 'safe harbour/transport' provisions from their laws, both under the guise of saving the children as well as saving that small band/filmmaker at home, whose work is being mercilessly pirated by every Tom, Dick and Harriet around the world.
A rape in my house (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally some common sense from the courts. If I leave my doors unlocked, as I often do, and someone comes into my house and commits a rape there, why should I be held responsbile?
In the US the lobby's are so powerful that common snese goes out the window. If something could be used as an excuse, it doesn't matter if the excuse is valid or not, the excuse itself must be removed.
At least Germnay is showing some sense here.
Re:Nice loophole (Score:5, Insightful)
So if I borrow your ladder, use it to get into someone's house, you should be held partly accountable. Don't be silly.
This might make it easier to do "bad things" and not get caught,but that fact alone cannot make the owner of the open router liable. That's just silly!
Re:Law nightmare (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got two words for you:
"Computer Forensics"
(I would remind you that you need to use a computer to access the WiFi, and that your misdeeds will leave evidence there)
Re:Precedent (Score:3, Insightful)
Same argument. The nature of the crime doesn't affect the legal argument.
Re:Precedent (Score:3, Insightful)
Thinking about this more deeply, if the law want to see using an open WiFi (without express permission) as "trespass" you cannot then hold the owner of the WiFi responsible for any subsequent crime committed.
If someone trespasses on my land and does something illegal (say dog fighting as an example) then I'm not responsible for that. Essentially I didn't do it, I didn't know it was happening, I cannot have reasonably have known it would happen.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is likely that I know the person in the photo who was driving my car.
It is not likely I know who connected to my wireless router.
Re:1 sentence (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, everyone? Or do you really believe that you're the only person in the world that would think of doing bad things using a "hidden" computer?
Next you'll be telling me that people who commit fraud use fake names and addresses and the police have no idea and absolutely no way of tracking them down.
Re:1 sentence (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, so the cops DON'T conduct a search - and they expect to catch you...
Does this sound likely? (clearly if the cops are dribbling morons...)
And also you keep your laptop hidden in a good place (I'm assuming under the floor boards - that kind of thing). How exactly am I supposed to "enjoy" my stolen Britney Spears collection?
Not really very practical is it? I might as well buy the damn CDs, rather than go to all the expense of a 2nd laptop, trick floor boards and still being afraid to listen to "Oops I did it again" for fear the cops will catch me.
Let's be realistic here, I download something I want reasonable access to the files I downloaded, and as soon as I do that - well the cops will find it (and I'm not so sure about your idea of hiding the laptop).
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should the opertor of the network be forced to enforce the law? They should cooperate with law enforcement officers, help them when possible and implement guidelines, but policing the network is not something I would like to trust a private company wit.
We have public officials in charge of airport security and police on private roads, why should Internet traffic be different?
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
but why should i ?
that's a sharing. sharing some resource, some knowledge or whatever.
i'd compare this to hitchhiking. if you take a hitchhiker who happens to be in the posession of something illegal, should you be held responsible ?
Re:1 sentence (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not totally impractical. If I wanted to do something like this, (which I certainly don't!) I'd use a spare network card. (I've got several PCMCIA cards kicking around the house already.) Rebuild the PC each time, or run from a DVD, any data involved kept on external storage. That way all you need to conceal is a network adapter and a flash drive; maybe the DVD.
Re:Precedent (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless it's terrorism ;-)
Re:But they still have to foot the bandwidth bill (Score:3, Insightful)
I quite agree! All the anti-copying adverts referring to it as theft and piracy really tick me off.
Copyright is a privilege granted by us to the copyright holders. They seem all too willing to abuse that privilege.
Re:Nice loophole (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if I tell you what I'm doing with the ladder.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
The usual analogy collision between cars and the digital world.
Your car is a costly, potentially lethal piece of machinery. That's why you lock the doors and have a anti-theft device installed. If it gets stolen it is gone and you probably know that it's missing within a few days.
Your Internet connection is a cheap commodity and you may never knew if someone used your connection without your consent. Sure it may "kill music!!!11eleven" and you gotta "think of the children" but it's not terribly dangerous to leave the router open. That's why many people do.
Most cheap routers have a fixed log size or don't keep the logs when powered off. You have no chance at all to prove it was someone else using your connection just as the court has no chance at all to prove it was you. As long as the courts honor "In dubio pro reo", you're pretty much safe unless of course you have plenty of knowledge of networks or a PhD in computer science. Then you're hosed because you surely knew what you were doing...
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Tripping over a cobblestone would be more like if my wifi was set to some weird frequency which knocked out the pacemakers of passers by. sure then I'd probably be liable. and rightly so.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a bit of a stretch! Firearms are, by definition, dangerous weapons. Their purpose is to be dangerous - they have no other sensible use. The reasons why anyone should ever need a firearm of their own or why it is considered sensible for a common civilian to have one is another matter, though.
A more sensible comparison is either an external mail box, a cordless phone left in the garden, or similar communication measures. Someone can start using your mail box and picking things up before you do just because it's easily accessible, but does that make you responsible for what they might get delivered to your house? Or someone sees you've left your cordless phone for your landline in the garden. If they call some terrorist friends (since they're the "hot group" of the last seven years to scare people with) and organise some terrorist event then how responsible are you, legally, that they saw an opportunity and took it?
As for logging stuff, try getting your standard Netgear router to log a sufficient level of detail. Yes, it might log connections and attempts on blocked ports, but no-where near what the police would require to be useful to meet the regulations.
Re:Because paying tax dollars is not a threat... (Score:3, Insightful)
Fixed that for you.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, this is certainly a sensible decision... let's hope similar precedents are set everywhere, or we're not going to have much free wi-fi around.
This might not increase the free wi-fi. According to the summary, "if other users use your open WiFi network without your consent and download copyrighted material ...". This ruling seems to only apply to people who have left their routers in a default state, and don't even know what an open access point is.
On the other hand, anyone providing wi-fi can just claim that they weren't actually giving consent, as long as they don't name their access point something like, "FreeWiFi", and don't give people a welcome page with rules and such.
Re:Free for all (Score:1, Insightful)
It baffles me why people would want to have open networks in the first place.
Some people like the idea of sharing. And it's a two way deal. Every time another open network is set up, that's one more place to get internet access for one self too.
If you can't control who accesses your network what chance do you stand of any type of network/pc/laptop administration?
What administration? You administrate your own systems, and let other people take care of their own devices. It's not like you suddenly are a network administrator in charge of running Windows Update on every system connected.
And who would want to use their own equipment on an unsecured 'unknown' wireless network?
The same people who would want to use their own equipment on an unsecured internet... The threats of connecting to a wireless network is no worse than the threats of connecting to the internet.
Free for all wireless networks send shivers down my spine.
That's YOUR problem. Not ours.
Re:Spoof the MAC adress (Score:3, Insightful)
Well if they investigate you and find your truecrypt container(s), they could ask for the keys.
In some countries (UK and my country) you can be forced to give up the keys.
Not so in Germany...for now at least.
If you only give the decoy keys, they could decide to create a huge file and fill up the decoy container and thus overwrite the data in the hidden partition.
And do what? Destroy the data they're so desperately searching for? Well, not even that actually because every forensics expert in the universe should always do a backup and never (if possible) tamper with the original.
Always remember: If law enforcement is looking at your hard drive them destroying the evidence is actually what you should be hoping for...it's not really a deterrent.
Re:1 sentence (Score:3, Insightful)
That's true, but it brings us back to Jezza's point -- anything that's too inconvenient is pretty much worthless. Maybe if you're doing something really illegal like child porn you might consistently go to the effort to hide it, but are you seriously going to reboot your machine off of a USB drive every single time you want to listen to a downloaded mp3 or watch a downloaded movie, etc? And then immediately reboot back to your "legitimate" drive the moment you're done? Every single time?
No way. Either you're going to end up getting lazy and leaving the device attached to your PC (after all, what are the odds of you being raided tonight?) so it's not such a hassle, or you're going to end up never using your PC for anything because there's nothing useful on it. So even in the unlikely event that your secret drive is hidden away when the cops come a knockin', it's gonna look pretty suspicious when they take a look at your drive and see that you never actually use it for anything. Especially if they do some further investigation and determine that your computer is actually on pretty regularly, yet the evidence on the HDD suggests you barely use the computer at all.
But yes, there are ways and means of making sure that you don't get caught, but for them to be effective you have to be very diligent about covering your tracks and never leaving your secret drive (or whatever) out of its hiding place for any longer than is strictly necessary. This goes completely counter to the reason most people download things they're not meant to in the first place -- convenience. Also remember that you don't have the luxury of knowing when the police are going to turn up at your door, or even IF they're going to turn up -- so you have to have a procedure that you follow 100% of the time.
As Jezza said, it's way easier just to buy everything you want.
Re:Data laundering (Score:3, Insightful)
Mobs have been laundering money thanks to ignorant loopholes like this for over a century!
Ignorant loopholes? In America, that "loophole" would be that the Constitution doesn't give the federal government the power to force me to lock my doors.
some countries much more free (Score:3, Insightful)