Karoo is threatening to disconnect UK punters who have a publicly available WiFi access point connected to their systems, regardless of whether or not they realise that it's not secured.
Insecure wireless networks that don't require a user ID or password to access are practically everywhere nowadays. Some older and cheaper WiFi routers come from the factory wide open by default, such that anyone having a WiFi card within signal range can piggyback on the wireless owner's Internet connection. Other WiFi users don't even look at instructions, don't care if others share their ISP connections, or use a router that isolates their own PCs.
But when an ISP customer is accused of copyright infringement, they can sometimes beat the rap if they have an open WiFi access point, because that creates plausible deniability. In several cases, users who allegedly trafficked in copyrighted media files have successfully established reasonable doubt of their culpability by arguing that someone else might have used their WiFi network. Since anyone else could have borrowed their ISP connection, it's impossible to prove that they did any filesharing that may have occurred.
Apparently due to pressure applied by the Big Media's MAFIAA lawyers, Karoo states in its September 2008 Terms and Conditions:
"We shall be entitled to terminate the Service immediately if We discover that you have permitted (whether knowingly or not) a third party (or third parties) to access the Service using a wireless connection over Your Communications Line."
The ISP can't believe it can detect open WiFi networks to enforce such a draconian policy. Even if it could discover customers who had open WiFi access points, why ever wouldn't it prefer to educate and if necessary help them, rather than lose them as paying customers?
As long as it's not an unsecured WiFi device that belongs to Karoo itself, that it installed and configured, where's its potential liability and why should it care? Reading that, we would be tempted to tell Karoo where it can stick Its Communications Line, and go find another ISP.
Story source:
theinquirer.net.
