Open WiFi: A public good?

By at 8:05 am Friday, Sep 19

Crooked Timber is a new-ish group blog run by academics from around the world. Yesterday's posting included a piece about the notion of open WiFi as a public good. I believe that it is, natch, but take some exception to the author's notions that free-riding is a problem or that anonymity is undesirable.
The first problem arises from the fact that publicly available wifi hotspots could do away with the need for users to register or identify themselves in some way, tying their computer to a personal identity in meatspace. In some set-ups, users of hotspots will be able to act anonymously, making detection of abuse (DOS or other computer related crime, spam, harassment, etc.) much, much harder.
Link (via Many2Many)

Cory Doctorow

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