On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 01:07:59PM +0000, Mike Richardson wrote:
> I'm hoping that someone with a bit of legal knowledge (Andrew!) can comment
> on this story:
>
> http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2009/11/28/public-uk-wi-fi-hotspot-owner-fined-8000gbp-for-users-illegal-download.html
>
> The implication is that the wireless provider can be held responsible for
> the actions of the users of someone else's service.
>
> We have The Cloud on campus and the above implies that if a Cloud user does
> something naughty the University could be liable.
>
> Now as a Uni we accept responsibility for the actions of our users on our
> network but, I for one, never thought that if we're offering a service such
> as The Cloud that we'd be responsible for their users.
>
> Also, what about eduroam? Where does the responsibility lie for that?
/armchair lawyer mode on
This seems to be a pretty landmark case, but one that will surely be
contested/appealed?
The article implies that the pub owner was fined because he couldn't
identify individuals who were performing the illegal action when a civil
case was brought against him by whoever the copyright owner was.
It doesn't say how that particular Cloud site made access available,
or why the individual wasn't accessable. It hints that NAT was to blame.
In the case of eduroam, it should be possible to link a specific activity
to a specific authenticated user? And any Tier 3 site will have one
global IP per user (and IPv6 available!).
But as Mike says it is a concern for universities if they offer Cloud
access via their infrastructure.
--
Tim
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