Last week, TorrentFreak ran an interesting pair of posts offering opposing views on an issue that has become increasingly important with the rise of the copyright trolls: whether a person who runs an open wifi network can be held liable when others use the network for copyright infringement.
The problem with “online debates” like this is they can leave folks with the false impression that there are two equally valid approaches to a legal question. In this case, there aren’t. The truth is that no court has ever found that anyone is liable simply because another user of his or her open wifi committed some legal wrong. Every day cafes, airports, libraries, laundromats, schools and individuals operate open wifi routers, happily sharing their connection with neighbors and passers by. Sometimes people use those connections for bad acts, most of the time they don’t, the world gets a valuable public service, and the open wifi providers are not liable.
via Electronic Frontier Foundation – Open WiFi and Liability for Copyright Infringement: Setting the Record Straight. The line about “online debates” had me giggling.