Untold thousands of people either leave their WiFi networks open or have no idea how to secure them. Inevitably this means they can be used to share illicit files. But what happens when the owner of the network gets blamed for infringing copyright?
Over on TorrentFreak we often get emails from people who have received letters from lawyers who claim that they have been caught infringing copyright by sharing illicit files on the Internet.
The majority of the time these are emails from account holders who did not infringe copyright but are the victim of mistaken identity. Sometimes the anti-piracy tracking company gets it completely wrong and sometimes they trace the correct IP address but blame the wrong guy.
This weekend we received an email which throws up an interesting moral dilemma.
A BitTorrent user from the US visiting his girlfriend who lives in Europe used a neighbor’s open WiFi network in order to download some media. Unfortunately the neighbor received a letter demanding a payment of several hundred euros for copyright infringement.
Clearly the neighbor is 100% innocent and could argue his/her case quite honestly. Unfortunately, as pointed out by the UK Lords recently in a discussion about the proposed Digital Economy Bill, it is impossible to prove your innocence in these cases.
In this case the infringer told us that he’s going to admit to the infringement and hand over his details so that the law firm pursues him instead, which is pretty admirable. But many people wouldn’t be so forthcoming.
If anyone has any intelligent advice for this guy, feel free to post in the comments, but in addition we’re interested to hear what you would do in his situation.
Is it OK for bill payers to take responsibility for everything that happens on their connection? Should WiFi network operators be responsible for securing their networks from intrusions?
Should people really be using other peoples’ networks to infringe copyright or with the introduction of more and more draconian copyright laws, will this be the way of the future?
Article from: FreakBits