George W. Bush to head new RIAA unit?

p2pnet exclusive| RIAA News:- With US elections close and almost ex-US president George W. Bush about to move back into the corporate sector, p2pnet has learned he probably won’t be vanishing from public view.

Bush’s administration has been conspicuous in its support of the corporate entertainment cartels and if our information is correct, his unswerving devotion is about to pay off.

A little while back, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA and IFPI came close to being merged, and it was probably just as well the plan didn’t come off.

Recording Industry Association of America International Federation of Phonographic Industry would have been a bit of a mouthful.

But the Big 4 have come up with a solution.

Until now, they’ve been using the services of MediaSentry to do their sleuthing.

However, the company has been sliding down the greasy slope for quite some time, witness its failure to protect China’s online offerings during the recent Beijing Olympics.

Thus, “The RIAA has decided not to waste any more money,” says our source.

“Instead, they’re setting up their own faux private investigation unit with George W. Bush mooted as its chairman and chief executive officer.”

Called Associated Security Section, Homeland Operations Local Enterprise Services, funding will be provided by major entertainment industry interests and a private company headquartered in Saudi Arabia, we understand.

Employees, drawn from enforcement agency retirees from around the world, will be bonded and licensed as private investigators in the US and elsewhere.

Donald ‘Al Quaeda’ Runsfeld will run the interrogation section.

‘We’ll cooperate with, and assist, national and international police in their quests to halt copyright crime,” says a spokeswoman, who preferred not to be named.

Staff will be seconded to the new unit from the RIAA, IFPI, BPI, Apple, Microsoft and the SPCA, she goes on.

Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper has been approached to become Bush’s deputy if, as is expected, his Conservative government is ousted during the upcoming Canadian federal elections, she adds.

that Man Bush ....Ehh olympics in china the online links were blocked by the country for other reason the country is not a democratic country you know so the government controls such things and dont want the people in to such idea ...see majority of the people want china to be china..... may be leaving out the youth or so, the political emotion is different in china

may not relate much with your post but just an light...u no

Any new about the internet is welcome.

Two major UK ISPs have been ordered by the High Court to hand over the identities of several thousand alleged file-sharers. BT has confirmed it is involved while Virgin Media was less direct in admitting that lawyers Davenport Lyons, working with Topwear Inc., are about to start threatening thousands more people.

US game developer Topware Interactive, the people behind the now infamous %u2018Dream Pinball%u2018 affair, are about to turn up the heat. Operating through London lawyers Davenport Lyons, they have managed to convince the High Court to send out an order demanding that ISPs in the UK start to hand over the details of %u201Cseveral thousand%u201D alleged pirates.

According to Samknows, BT, one of the UK%u2019s largest ISPs and like many, currently caught up in the middle of a Davenport Lyons versus P2P battle, confirmed it had been ordered to hand over details of alleged copyright infringing file-sharers. It could not confirm whether they had already handed over the details or not. However, BT was surprised at the %u201Cstrong arm%u201D tactics being employed by the games industry, in contrast to the fairly civilized warnings currently touted by the BPI, which were toned-down under duress.

%u201CIt does seem a much more strong arm approach compared to the music industry,%u201D said the BT spokesman. %u201CHowever, it is only one company pursuing a limited number of miscreants at the moment. I doubt the music industry will follow suit as the potential numbers are too great, but who knows.%u201D

Virgin Media was a little more slippery in its response but reading between the lines it seems obvious they are involved too. While noting that they take the privacy of their customers very seriously, if faced with a court order to hand over names and addresses, they simply have to comply. Virgin Media also indicated that it prefers the %u2018educational%u2019 approach, i.e the compromise reached between ISPs and the BPI recently. Virgin media spokesman told Samknows:

%u201CWe certainly prefer the education route we pioneered with the BPI because you can%u2019t assume people are guilty of anything, so we don%u2019t, we let them know of what might have happened and give information on how to ensure they enjoy legal downloads. This would definitely seem to be a very different approach from a different industry.%u201D

I%u2019m sure it%u2019s just a slip by the Virgin spokesman but the entire %u2018games industry%u2019 isn%u2019t taking this aggressive approach against alleged file-sharers. It is actually just Topware Interactive, and in the other active cases, Atari, Codemasters, Techland and Reality Pump, just a handful of developers.

As a gamer of more than 25 years I agree with the boss of EA Sports, Peter Moore, that it%u2019s not particularly clever to start taking legal action against your customers. In a superb article, Rob Fahey over at GamesIndustry.biz says that he believes the losses claimed by the industry are a %u2018complete crock%u2018 and he%u2019s not on his own.

In any event, if you take a look at the games being %u2018protected%u2019 in these actions, with the possible exception of Codemasters titles, they%u2019re mostly second rate and didn%u2019t sell many anyway. The developers would have everyone believe this is due to file-sharing but people know otherwise. The suspicion in the file-sharing community is that this isn%u2019t about protection of copyright at all, but a way to make poor games pay. Any revenue stream in a storm, eh?



Quote:

http://torrentfreak.com/isps-hand-over-details-of-several-thousand-pirates-
080904/

Well, they are finally putting into effect their 250gigs a month limit that they have been thinking about. Starting Oct. 1, 2008 Comcast will notify any users going over the limit and then this startling comment, "Customers who top 250 GB in a month twice in a six-month timeframe could have service terminated for a year."

Here is a link.

hxxp://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080829/wr_nm/comcast_internet_dc_1

250 gb a months limits, man even if i only could download half the amounts i will be blesso

nice info keep posting saves time from searching similar news on the net.

250 gigs that's a lot

The UK%u2019s Performing Rights Society (PRS) is a non-profit organization, setup to ensure that the music industry continues to make plenty more profits on an on-going regular basis. For years now, they have collected license fees from companies that use music as part of their businesses, such as pubs, clubs and restaurants. Some might argue that these type of companies benefit commercially from playing music to the public, so a license fee, although not particular popular, can be absorbed as a legitimate business expense.

However, recently the PRS has been getting more and more aggressive in its quest to funnel cash to its paymasters. It now sees every UK organization - commercial or otherwise - as a legitimate target to intimidate with threats of legal action, should they dare to play a radio, TV or DVD within earshot of the public without a license. Small businesses playing the radio for personal entertainment to pass the working day, charities, tea rooms, corner shops and even community centers are being targeted by this outfit. Bizarrely, they are currently going after the British police, who have been refusing to pay. It%u2019s clear, they care about just one thing - money

Frederick Lane, newsfactor.com Wed Oct 8, 4:47 PM ET

Internet and Web browser security experts are sounding the alarm about a new type of malicious attack called "clickjacking," a technique that can be used to dupe Web surfers into revealing confidential information while clicking on seemingly innocuous Web pages. Among other things, a clickjacking attack can be used to take control of a computer's Webcam and microphone without the knowledge of the user.
ADVERTISEMENT

Clickjacking has been identified as a vulnerability for the Adobe Flash player, as well as for every major browser, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and even the newly released Google Chrome.

"It is a very serious problem," said Giorgio Maone, the author of a widely praised free Firefox extension called NoScript, which blocks potentially malicious scripts from running in the Firefox browser.

"Clickjacking is a very simple attack to build, and now that the details are out, any script kid can try it successfully," Maone warned. "There's no estimate to the number of trap sites, and it's unlikely that we will see any credible report about the number of sites using this technique, because there are literally infinite ways to implement such an attack, therefore no signature-based scanning can detect it automatically."

Unauthorized Access to Information

The growing severity of the clickjacking problem was identified by Robert Hansen, CEO of SecTheory, and Jeremiah Grossman, CTO of WhiteHat Security. The two were scheduled to speak publicly about their discovery last month at the Open Web Application Security Project NYC AppSec conference in New York, but postponed their talk in order to give Adobe and browser companies a chance to come up with a solution.

Reacting quickly to the announcement, Adobe released a security advisory Tuesday, describing the threat as "critical" and instructing users on how to turn off Flash access to cameras and microphones.

"We have just posted a Security Advisory for Flash Player," wrote David Lenoe, Adobe's security program manager, on the Adobe security blog, "in response to recently published reports of a 'clickjacking' issue in multiple Web browsers that could allow an attacker to lure a Web browser user into unknowingly clicking on a link or dialog. This potential 'clickjacking' browser issue affects Adobe Flash Player's microphone and camera access dialog." Lenoe said a patch for Flash would be ready by the end of October.

Unfortunately, as Hansen and other researchers have pointed out repeatedly, Flash clickjacking is only one of the variants of this problem. In a lengthy blog posting about the issue, Hansen said that "there are multiple variants of clickjacking. Some of it requires cross-domain access, some don't. Some overlay entire pages over a page, some use iframes to get you to click on one spot. Some require JavaScript, some don't. Some variants use CSRF to preload data in forms, some don't. Clickjacking does not cover any one of these use cases, but rather all of them."

A Structural Problem of the Web

Hansen warned that it will be challenging to come up with a comprehensive solution to prevent the clickjack threat because of the nature of the code that underlies the Internet.

Maone agreed. "This problem comes from features which are integral to the modern Web as we know it," he said, "and especially from the ability of Web pages to embed arbitrary content from different sites, or to host little applications (applets) through plug-ins like Adobe Flash, Java or Microsoft Silverlight."

Maone predicted that a general browser fix won't be developed any time soon, since the real solution lies in developing a general consensus about changing existing Web standards in the various Internet standardization groups.

Well, they are finally putting into effect their 250gigs a month limit that they have been thinking about. Starting Oct. 1, 2008 Comcast will notify any users going over the limit and then this startling comment, "Customers who top 250 GB in a month twice in a six-month timeframe could have service terminated for a year."

Here is a link.

hxxp://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080829/wr_nm/comcast_internet_dc_1

I have Qwest. I don't know if there is a limit. I seem to be able to download as much as I like.

I have to say I'm sick of these private tracker sites. I was signed up with that All4Nothin site, and for like three months I've been signed up right, and I've gotten a few things and seeded well just so I wouldn't get kicked, and just now I try to sign in and oh guess what, I can't. lol and I KNOW my username and pass were right, and I know I had a fine ratio, and I know I've been on there several times in the last three months, and no I haven't posted anything that breaks any rules. Then there was the Ghost Hunters Live which I figured surely would show up on IPt first but nooo this time it shows up on Demonoid and ISO first. LOL well, I'll let them leech off me awhile but if I have any more problems with private trackers I'll go off them and they can leech off me on public trackers once again.

Did not know anything about that one , i just find the news and copy and paste (just for you and you know who u r )

UK government wants Net spy boxes

p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P| Politics:- The British government as taken one incredible step further in its slow transition to a hard-core Big Brother totalitarian regime of the like only seen in China and the US.

It%u2019s already infamous as the country with the largest number of closed-circuit TV cameras, spying on citizens 24/7.

Now it wants to snoop on Net traffic, listen in on phone calls and read emails.

Raw data, %u201Cwould be collected and stored by the black boxes before being transferred to a giant central database,%u201D says The Telegraph, going on:

%u201CThe vision was outlined at a meeting between officials from the Home Office and Internet Service Providers earlier this week.%u201D

Earlier in the week, BT, AOL Europe, O2 and BSkyB were, %u201Cgiven a presentation of the issues and the technology surrounding the Government%u2019s Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), the name given by the Home Office to the database proposal,%u201D says the story, continuing:

Security and intelligence agencies want the data to help fight serious crime and terrorism, they were told.

What isn%u2019t clear is, %u201Cwhat the Home Secretary, GCHQ and the security services intend to do with all this information in the future,%u201D a source close to the meeting told The Independent, adding;

%u201CThey said they only wanted to return to a position they were in before the emergence of internet communication, when they were able to monitor all correspondence with a police suspect.

The difference here is they will be in a much better position to spy on many more people on the basis of their internet behaviour.

%u201CAlso there%u2019s a grey area between what is content and what is traffic. Is what is said in a chat room content or just traffic?%u201D

Says the story:

%u201CA spokesman for the Home Office said that Monday%u2019s meeting provided a %u2018chance to engage with small communication service providers%u2019 ahead of the formal public consultation next year.%u201D

Hey Odo Do you Realised As you Step out Of your house you Might be one of them Being watch by NASA Spy Telescope Which has the ability to View down earth And Transmitt Vedio image

Also let me tell You Heard Of Google Earth Well similar Technology was used to map the earth 3D Image Well This Gov People Would Do any thing. Privacy are at stake you know.

Watch out

LOL um well yes we are all being watched, very closely, think it's called Echelon? They can read each and every one of our emails, they can see everything we do on our pc, hear every phone call. Of course they have a 'key words' search they use so they don't have to waste time looking through stuff they don't need to, but still, it all gets recorded and they could see every thing any time if they wanted to.

Fanedits are fan-created versions of officially available movies. Fans spend huge amounts of time with sophisticated software to add, cut or alter scenes to improve the original or simply create different versions of a movie. Fanedit. is the largest such community in the world and the MPAA has, in the words of the admin, just %u2018castrated%u2019 the site.

Faneditors consider what they do to be an artform. Taking famous movies as a base, faneditors spend huge amounts of time editing with sophisticated software in order to create improved or just plain different versions of existing movies. Most of the time, faneditors try to improve what is wrong or bad with a movie, using advanced techniques to create a new piece of art based on the original. Of course, faneditors love to share their work with others in the community, something the movie industry wants to bring to an end.

please note that this is an old article...

On September 13th, 2005, the RIAA on behalf of its member companies sent several cease and desist letters to various leading P2P developers. The letter demanded the recipient developers stop the infringing activities of their users. Developers could avoid litigation, the letter contended, if actions were immediately taken to curtail the perceived illegal activity.

P2P developers reacted to this in various ways. MetaMachine's Sam Yagan conceded defeat. Additionally, he will "throw in the towel%u201D by distributing a DRM friendly eDonkey. FrontCode (WinMX) folded up and vanished. FreePeers (BearShare) closed their forums and released their developers. Ares Galaxy's Alberto Treves told the RIAA where to go and how to get there by releasing the source code.

And LimeWire? Like eDonkey, it faces staggering odds and very few alternatives. To stay alive, LimeWire decided to throw in the towel and began work on a DRM client.

LimeWire's DRM client, although not yet operational, is designed to block unlicensed material from infiltrating the Gnutella network. If the client is released, it will equate to millions of individuals who will find themselves adrift on a network without resources. Unless they've already made the switch to FrostWire.

FrostWire is fork of the LimeWire project. Unlike other closed source clients whose years of hard work will go for naught, LimeWire intelligently designed an open source client. This allowed a community of developers over the years to participate in the evolution of this client. The development team of FrostWire was part of this community.

Even if LimeWire either ceases operations or releases thier DRM client, the core product will continue to live on. Considering the amount of attention and press given to FrostWire so far, it's possible this client may become the popular successor to the Gnutella crown.

FrostWire has made the first important step towards this goal today by releasing their first beta client. Based on LimeWire 4.9.33, this release is basically a "clean" version - no pop-ups, no nag screens, no inhibiting features. Like LimeWire, it%u2019s a simplistic client that gets the job done.

The great challenge confronting FrostWire will be the maintenance of the innovative features that LimeWire brought about. Will FrostWire become stagnant or will the open source community pull through and continue LimeWire%u2019s strides? Only time will tell, but smart money is betting on the latter.

Thanks Odo

All your info above ably explains why this site's Administrator
no longer wishes this site to host Torrents or gives links to
the sites that do.

(This does not apply to members 'chatting' about torrents or giving out the URLs for same of course)

What do the companies Davenport Lyons, DigiProtect and Evil Angel have in common? They appear to be members of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the public.

Here%u2019s how it works. Evil Angel, also known as %u201CThe Evil Empire%u201D and John Stagliano Inc, are a California based company making porn films, founded by John Allen Stagliano, a porn movie actor. Evil Angel contracted with German company DigiProtect for DigiProtect to upload 800 of their films onto P2P networks, including (IVE HAD TO EDIT OUT TRACKERS)

So far, so legal %u2014 it%u2019s perfectly legal for a copyright holder to copy and distribute their works. However, if you read the contract (available here) it%u2019s more sinister than that. Here%u2019s the first two paragraphs:

1. Object of the agreement
LICENSOR is a film maker and a proprietor of the rights of use and enjoymrent and exploitation of pornographic movies. Licensor suffers economic damageas as a result of the illegal exploitation of the movies on so-called peer-2-peer networds. The object of the agreement is the appointment of DigiProtect by licensor to implement suitable measurres to prevent the economic disadvantage licensor is suffereing.

2. Granting of rights
To achieve the purpose outlined in clause 1, LICENSOR grants DIGIPROTECT the exclusive right to make the movies listed in Appendix 1 worldwide available to the public via remote computer networks, so-called peer-2-peer and internet file sharing networks such as (EDITED OUT TRACKER NAMES). for the duration of this agreement. The parties agree that additional movies can be added to Appendix 1 with a written supplemental agrreement.

So DigiProtect get the films and put them on P2P networks, harvesting the IP addresses of everyone who downloads them. Then they pass on the IP addresses to Davenport Lyons, a UK-based law firm. Davenport Lyons then send threatening letters to members of the public, accusing them of illegal downloading and threatening to sue them unless they pay �500. Davenport Lyons then share the proceeds with DigiProtect. This is looks like fraud to me because:

(i) if the work was put online by the copyright holder for the then any copying is legal
(ii) Davenport Lyons are claiming it was illegal copying
(iii) this is a lie; Davenport Lyons are therefore comitting Fraud under section (2) of the Fraud Act 2006.

Futher

Davenport Lyons have been duped.

The UK consumer show 'Watchdog' has highlighted this to Davenport Lyons and they say they will, in future be more careful about how they conduct their business and be more sure of the grounding of any claims for copyright infringement before they pursue them.

It's a step in the right direction.

At least six of the United Kingdom%u2019s main Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have implemented monitoring and filtering mechanisms that are causing major problems for UK contributors on websites operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, amongst up to 1200 other websites. Some ISPs have blocked customers from accessing some Wikimedia websites including the free, online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, altogether. The filters appear to be applied because Wikimedia sites are hosting a Scorpions album cover which some call child pornography. The Scorpions are a German rock band who have used several controversial album covers and are perhaps best known for their song, %u201CRock You Like a Hurricane%u201D. The measures applied redirect traffic for a significant portion of the UK%u2019s Internet population through six servers which can log and filter the content that is available to the end user.

The filtering is in response to the Internet Watch Foundation%u2019s list of websites that host or contain content that have been reported to contain inappropriate images of naked children, under the age of 18. The IWF considers those images child pornography. However, in the United States (where the websites of the Wikimedia Foundation are hosted), it is not considered obscene under the criteria of the Miller test, which requires that an obscene work lack %u201Cserious literary, artistic, political or scientific value%u201D (as album art is used to %u201Cbrand%u201D the album, it is considered to be artistic). Contributors or individuals attempting to view an affected image or file, depending on their ISP, may get a warning saying, %u201Cwe have blocked this page because, according to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), it contains indecent images of children or pointers to them; you could be breaking UK law if you viewed the page.%u201D. Other ISPs provide blank pages, 404 errors, or other means of blocking the content.

Source: Wikinews

Computer hackers suspected of working from Russia successfully penetrated Pentagon computer systems in one of the most severe cyber attacks on US military networks. The electronic attack was so serious that Adm Michael Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, briefed President George W Bush and Robert Gates, the defence secretary. Defence officials told the Los Angeles Times that the attack struck computers within the US Central Command, which oversees Iraq and Afghanistan, and involved malicious software - known as %u201Cmalware%u201D - that permeates a network. %u201CThis one was significant, this one got our attention,%u201D said an official, speaking anonymously.

Officials did not disclose the extent of the damage and would not elaborate on the reasons for believing the assault originated in Russia. The Pentagon and other US government departments face repeated cyber attacks, especially from Russia and China, either from individuals or indirectly from those countries%u2019 governments. Within the past 18 months Russia has been accused of orchestrating major electronic attacks on neighbours Estonia and Georgia

thanks guess some of this is new too me .

Well this site is mostly about control now even if he has no power

sad but true

it always feels like the same old admonishments pop up in the forum

I get frustrated by it

hear that old shit gets put behide lies and smoke.

December 19th 2008 - The government finally realizes that pressing charges against people who use peer to peer file sharing as a source of getting music, movies and software is useless. Now they have a new plan. From now on, the government will be on a close watch for file sharers and if they notice that they are p2ping movie titles, music tunes or software etc, they will contact your ISP with a letter telling your IP Address and what you have been doing and what action to take.

The new approach is to contact your ISP and ask them to cut your bandwidth speed in half. Also a email will be sent to you via your ISP asking you to stop using peer to peer file sharing. You will then be monitored for 1 week. If you continue to download p2p, the government will order your ISP to disconnect your line and send you your final bill. You will no longer be able to get internet access from that company again.

RIAA Stops Lawsuits, But Not the Threats

Written by Ernesto on December 19, 2008

For years the RIAA has been filing lawsuits against thousands of individuals who allegedly shared copyrighted music. Following recent court setbacks, the lobby group has announced it will stop mass lawsuits. Instead, it will focus on cutting deals with ISPs to disconnect %u2018IP-addresses%u2019 that repeatedly share .

Ironically, the decision by the RIAA to stop their mass lawsuits is followed by a proposal to target an even larger group of Internet users. The music industry lobbyists state that they are in the process of cutting deals with ISPs to target Internet subscribers that repeatedly infringe on the copyright of the major record labels - the so called three-strikes approach.

This means that millions of people will receive warning emails from their Internet service provider, based on %u2018evidence%u2018 gathered by a third party with a vested interest in the outcome. This will also mean, however, that thousands of individuals will receive emails in error, as the evidence gathering techniques are not as solid as the anti-piracy outfits say. There have been a lot of false accusations already, and this was recently confirmed in mainstream media by the BBC show Watchdog.

The move from individual lawsuits to controlling piracy at the ISP level seems to be the new trend this year. Many countries have looked into the possibility of disconnecting file-sharers from the Internet, often gently pushed by anti-piracy lobbyists. France was the first to present their %u201Cthree-strikes%u201D law earlier this year, which would allow anti-piracy outfits to police the Internet. The IFPI now plans to implement this worldwide, with or without legislation.

It wont stop there though, if the RIAA gets its way ISPs will also have to pro-actively check for copyrighted content on their network. In their list of suggestions for the controversial ACTA proposal, the RIAA wants ISPs to spy on the files that are transferred by their customers, and check them against a reference database of %u201Ccopyrighted files%u201D.

ISPs worldwide are not looking forward to policing their networks, but they might find themselves with no other option. Adding further pressure, the RIAA wants ISPs to be held liable for the copyright infringement that takes place on their network, as their proposal suggests %u201C%u2026in the absence of proof to the contrary, an Internet service provider shall be considered as knowing that the content it stores is infringing or illegal, and thus subject to liability for copyright infringement%u2026%u201D

So, while dropping the mass-lawsuits might be considered to be a step forward by some, the change in tactics might very well result in a virtual police state where consumers (and ISPs) are guilty until proven innocent. The RIAA has lost some major battles in court, but if they gain control over ISPs, the future might be even darker than the past.

ISP Disconnects Customers with Open WiFi

Open wireless networks have served as a successful defense strategy for several alleged filesharers, as it is often impossible for content owners to prove that the person they accuse, has actually distributed the files they claim they did. Unfortunately, for the customers of the UK ISP Karoo, running open WiFi might also get them disconnected - even if it's unintentional.

karooOpen wireless networks can be found on every street corner. Some people leave their network open, simply because they are clueless about how to secure it. Others don't mind that others use their network to access the Internet, or use a router that enables them to share Internet access safely with others.

In copyright infringement cases, having an unsecured wireless router creates plausible deniability. In recent months, we have seen several cases where accused filesharers have successfully argued that someone else may have used their WiFi to share copyrighted material. Because anyone could have accessed the network, it is impossible to prove that the defendant was the one who shared files illegally.

Not all ISPs are happy with customers who have open WiFi, however, and some even threaten to disconnect those who do. In the September 2008 terms and conditions of UK ISP Karoo, we read:

"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."

Should an ISP be entitled to demand this? Karoo leaves its customers no choice, and simply forbids them to leave their network unsecured, or use a FON router, despite the fact that this will be practically impossible for them to enforce. Not only that, people who have no idea about router security are now wide open to summary disconnection by this ISP. UK lawyers Davenport Lyons are actively encouraging that service providers of various types enforce their own terms and conditions against copyright infringers, so if you're with Karoo and get a complaint, you can forget about 3 strikes. Even if you did nothing illegal, it's one strike and you're out.

Some would argue that having an open wireless network is the right thing to do. Earlier this year, security expert Bruce Schneier wrote an extensive essay on why it's a good thing. Some of his key arguments were that it is basic kindness, and that the risk of running into abusers is extremely low. Also, when someone abuses the open WiFi to do something illegal, it is easy to defend yourself.

Schneier's post led to a flood of responses, and most of them agreed with the security expert. Of course, there are pro's and con's to having an unsecured network, and whether it really is a wise choice can be debated. But, disconnecting your users simply because they, knowingly or not, have an open wireless network is a bit too strict for our taste. Nevertheless, Karoo thinks otherwise.