A pub owner in the U.K. has been fined £8,000 (about $13,183) because someone unlawfully downloaded copyrighted material over its open Wi-Fi hotspot, according to the managing director of hotspot provider The Cloud.
Graham Cove told CNET sister site ZDNet UK on Friday he believes the case to be the first of its kind in the U.K. However, he would not identify the pub concerned, because its owner–a pub that is a client of The Cloud’s–had not yet given their permission for the case to be publicized.
If they can go after a pub owner for providing a wi-fi connection that was abused, I wonder how long it’ll take them to start suing the ISPs themselves for the same reason. Both approaches are equally illogical – you might as well charge a car rental when its vehicles are used in a crime. I suppose the problem is that, even thought the ISPs would be a more lucrative target, they’d also have much better legal representation. It’s really a shame that every government in the Western world seems to be in the pocket of these copyright nuts… one would hope that at least one of them would be willing to stand up for its citizenry and demand that a level of reason be applied.
This is madness! Maybe the government and local councils should start paying out to victims of crime that happen in open public areas. If someone gets mugged in the pub, does the pub have to pay out then too?
Perhaps I’m jumping the gun a little…
Wonder if the House of Commons has wifi. Maybe if it does some enterprising hacker will go show them what it’s like.
Lovely living in a fascist society. Can’t think why people fought against the Nazi’s when it was what they wanted all along.
I imagine this is the way of things to come – especially if Mandelson\’s anti-privacy plan goes through.
At a guess the pub\’s WiFi service provider had been snooping (deep packet inspection) to recover the details of such a download – something which is still illegal without a warrant.
I guess this just means torrent trackers will go HTTPS to make DPI harder or start using the \”dark web\” as mentioned in the guardian this week : http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/26/dark-side-internet-freenet
If the politics of commerce in the US and UK/Europe could acknowledge the opportunities of new business models for media and digital (downloadable) products they could make equally high profits (see spotify vs downloads+donations : http://torrentfreak.com/spotify-isnt-ripping-off-artists-the-labels-are-091123/ )
If the UK govt has it\’s way the owner could have had his/her broadband cut off :/ What exactly is the owner guilty of? A wireless router in itself cannot obtain illegal material, only a computer connected to it can. This is like charging BT for somone using a phonebox to hear copyrighted music sent over the phone just because they own the phone!
And it begins…
that’s utterly stupid!.
the pub also sells alcohol right?, does that mean they will get charged with manslaughter if a customer drinks and drives and ends up killing someone?
That’s ridiculous. All it’ll do is make places like that want to stop proving wi-fi all together. If someone is going to download something illegally and they can’t get wi-fi at a pub that’s not going to stop them.
Perhaps the record industry should re-think how they sell music, or how much they charge for music if illegal downloading is such a problem.
And maybe the goverment should be focusing more time and money on preventing or stopping crimes such as domestic violence or tax evasion by people who’re massively rich; surely these are more damaging to society?
It’s nearly as mental as Google having to apologise to Mrs Obama. Obama, you’ve gone way down in my already low expectation of you – wolf in sheep’s clothing.
So what about the person who downloaded the copyrighted material then? Have they got off scot-free?
LC x
Absolutely mad, and it ofcourse is going to lead to nowhere. ….Oh yes it is though, it keeps some bureaucrats working….
A shortwhile ago, someone i know was working for the government (tax oh yes) and they gave funding to people with rental homes. (a complete new system was integrated for it and everyone dealing with funding for homes was dragged into this mess). When problems started to arise seriously for these people, the government was saying among themselfs ´if we don´t problem cases to deal with, we´re out of work´…shameless just like that. No real solutions just more problems for the benefit of…?
This copyright work-system, is just going to be the same. Useless!
This is crazy ! England is going to do the same mistakes that France has with its HADOPI law…Freedom is in danger my friends…and all that because the Majors have money and therefore have their say in what the government decides.
Very worrying…
The pirate finder general strikes, first in a pub, next in a school. Cloak and dagger, people will start disappearring. Music will be forbidden, and we will turn to masked vigilantes to stand up for us. It’ll be alright in the end, the pirate finder general will be consumed by digitally enhanced fire and his minions will wilt away.
Really? Come on Derren I thought you could spot a hoax, sounds just about believable but with no real details, if it were true the pub landlord would have been all over the papers saying how hard done to he was. All court cases can be published they don’t need permission. This is blatant scare mongering from the anti piracy league.
sooner or later the production companies will realise that this is how people want to consume media and will start to distribute it online for free or minimal cost rather than let the likes of the big US TV networks control what they say and when and how they say it.
Things like this will just cause a lot of people to piggy back off of some poor unsuspecting person that doesn’t know how to properly secure their internet connection. On my street alone I could use the internet of around 8 people. Some have their connections password protected, but they are only the default BT/Virgin ones and a lot of the time it is their phone number. When my good friend and neighbour first signed upto their ISP they were sent a wireless router and set it up, within 30 mins of him setting it up I had connected to his internet and changed his password on his router and effectively locked him out of his internet!! I let him stew for a good 30 mins as he couldn’t work out why his internet had stopped so I owned up and changed it for him and told him how to change it all to stop others doing the same!
well…if you can do this it really is a matter of laziness…they dont want to track down the original downloader so they just went after the nxt best thing…hardly facilitation…the person may not have been even in the pub when they did it…you know those wireless waves go outside the buildings….
This is not even wrong. There is no such thing as illegal downloading of copyrighted material. It is only illegal to publish copyrighted material without permission. I’m going to guess that the money was extorted and never reached court which at least means no precedent was set.
What a load of piffle. Surely the suppliers of WiFi could state the claim that they are not responsible for actions of users in the same way car parks state that they are not responsible for any damage caused to cars parked in their premises. Although, there is bound to be software available to stop such illegal activity in such cases.
Even if you secure your wireless network, WEP and WPA wireless encryption isn’t at all difficult to crack so this could happen to virtually ANYBODY. They’d better start building bigger prisons – at this rate we’ll need them!