I found this story both interesting and quite disturbing. Seems lawmakers in Utah want to make it a crime to have an open wireless network. "State Lawmakers Want To Limit Internet Porn Access SALT LAKE CITY State lawmakers are considering a proposal that would force Utahns to limit access to their wireless networks with a password. It’s all in an effort to keep teens with laptops from driving around in search of a wireless Internet connection to look at pornography. The proposal comes from an Internet law professor at BYU. Cheryl Preston has developed several proposals designed to keep kids from seeing porn on the Web. Today, legislators began considering Preston’s proposals. Under her proposal, anyone who unintentionally failed to block access to their network would be fined. While, intentionally leaving a network open to minors would be considered the same as publishing pornography. Preston’s proposals will be studied throughout the summer." http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_108212704.html What a strange world we live in.. Are there really teenagers war driving to download porn? Come on... Seems to me they should have banned "National Geographic" from the library in Catholic grade school... That's how we use get our porn... (yeah, that was sarcasm).... I love it... Leaving your network opened is the "same as publishing pornography" according to the article... People could be fined for doing so, either unintentionally or intentionally.. This has to be a mormon thing.
maybe it is a mormon thing...then again, maybe its just the govt trying to figure out another way to make citizens give more $$ to the govt.
Some politicians are morons. That is among the stupidest proposals I have every heard. Lets ban cigarettes by telling people they have to have locks on their lighters.
I like what Milton Friedman wrote in Free to Choose: What would you think of someone who said, "I would like to have a cat provided it barked"? Yet your statement that you favor a government provided it behaves as you believe desirable is precisely equivalent. The biological laws that specify the characteristics of cats are no more rigid than the political laws that specify the behavior of government agencies once they are established. The way the government behaves and the adverse consequences are not an accident, not a result of some easily corrected human mistake, but a consequence of its constitution in precisely the same way that a meow is related to the constitution of a cat.
Nah, I don't buy that. Sometimes politicians bark when the law says they're supposed to meow. Cat's can't decide to break the rules set up by their constitution and suddenly bark.
Anyway, people who are too stupid to encrypt their wireless network shouldn't be running any kind of network.
Friedman wasn't referring to any sort of a man made law, he was referring to the inviolable laws of nature. I know quite a few people who run open access points as a public service. All are quite competent network engineers.
I got a kick out of what Roger Whitaker said in concert years (many years) ago: "Politicians are like bananas. They're hang in bunches, they're all yellow, and there's not a straight one among them."
so I am now sitting at a public restaurant in the city I live in...am I now publishing porn from my computer? Does that mean that the restaurant will get in trouble? Their beer is already too expensive...hate for them to have a lawsuit.
No idea.. All I know is that when I got home last night, after cutting the grass, weed whacking, etc., I bar-b-qued up some of the most fantastic Pork Rib Center Cuts... YUMMY! Sucked down some Coronas and watched the sun go down!