Here's the email reply, per your request:

> Re: your mail to Cam, Re: wireless AP's and liability, you wrote...
>
>> When you provide bandwidth to others (provided you do so within the
>> AUP of your ISP), you are an ISP under the law.
>
> I'm assuming AUP = Acceptable Use Policy, and I think it's dangerous to
> assume any ISP's acceptable use includes sharing bandwidth/connectivity
> (you know about the Time Warner crackdown). Are the rest of your
> comments are based on a 'sharing is cool' policy?

Yup -- in fact, we've started a master list of ISPs in the USA that have
"open wireless friendly" or "open wireless neutral" policies, including
Earthlink.

> Even is sharing is cool with your ISP, and even if "the Communications
> Decency Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act indemnify you from
> liability" this doesn't mean you are protected from being targeted by a
> 'victim' of someone that might have been using your network to "utter
> death threats, traffick in child-porn, or illegally trade copyrighted
> works."

Right. Nutters and jerks can send you intimidating or harrassing email
even if they don't have a legally sound basis for doing so.

> "Targeted" could be as simple as an email, or a cease and desist letter,
> or any other form of "you are guilty, now prove yourself innocent"
> situation. I think your vision of a connected humanity ignores the fact
> that there are a lot of assholes out there.

Nope. I work for EFF. When someone gets a letter like that, chances are,
we see it. We have clinics full of legal volunteers slavering for
the opportunity to respond to these letters. Moreover, to the extent
that we promulgate the idea that providing open wireless access
indemnifies you from liability, we chill the efforts of those who would
send out nastygrams. When you meet a harrassing panhandler on the
subway, you don't send a letter to the transit authority seeking
damages. However, if the news was full of (dis)information promoting the
idea that transit authorities should be liable for activity on their
premises, you might.

> My advice for normal average joe's with a new Linksys AP? At least turn
> on the WEP, even if it is weak. It forces people to *try* to get themselves
> on to your network which does two things; pushes those who want to use
> an open access point elsewhere (which is probably everyone/anyone) and
> makes them clearly in the wrong for using your network.

Well, you're welcome to hold that opinion, of course. But I have
benefitted from the generosity of hundreds of total strangers who've
left their APs open, and I've run four open APs simultaneously for the
past three years without any negative consequences. Turning on WEP won't
do a thing to deter malefactors, it will only restrict access to
law-abiding citizens who might learn from your lesson and go home and
open up their APs, making the world a more connected and better place,
so if you offer that advice in public, you can expect me to come along
and offer the reverse advice, based on a cumulative 12 years' worth of
offering public, anonymous Internet access.

I'm not sure why you'd want someone to "be in the wrong for using your
network." When I notice the lights flashing on my router in the middle
of the night when I get up to get a glass of water, I always smile to
myself and think that I've just helped someone get online and do
something good, and contributed to a culture of cooperativism and mutual
aid.

-Posted by Cory Doctorow on August 16, 2002 08:57 PM

> I'm not sure why you'd want someone to "be in the wrong for using your
> network."

I'd wager that the folks I mentioned above, the not so clueful ones (read: potential jury members), would be better able to see that someone broke into my network and abused it rather than me leaving the keys in the car (per Cam's original analogy).

FWIW, this subject showed up on Forwarding Address: OS X recently...

http://saladwithsteve.com/osx/

-Posted by dan on August 16, 2002 10:17 PM