London Wants To Offer Full WiFi Coverage... But How Will That Work With The Digital Economy Act?

from the questions... dept

Tue, May 18th 2010 11:20pm — Mike Masnick

Rik was the first of a few of you to send in the news that the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is claiming that London will be fully covered by WiFi in time for the 2012 Olympic games. Of course, considering that the UK Parliament just passed the Digital Economy Act, which calls for carefully limiting access to the internet for people accused (not convicted) of infringement online, it makes you wonder how that's going to work. Even if Ofcom has said that the DEA rules won't initially apply to wireless providers, it does seem a bit odd to have the government offering a service like this. Once again, we're seeing how the government has these two competing issues that don't play well together: getting more broadband availability, while looking to help out the entertainment industry by kicking people off the internet at the same time. Who will be the first Olympic athlete kicked offline for downloading some music during the games?

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Filed Under: london, olympics, wifi

12 Comments

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Mike Read (profile), 18 May 2010 @ 11:57pm

It's a bit difficult to take Boris Johnson's claims seriously. He's a bit... Special.
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Shadzzy, 18 May 2010 @ 11:59pm

Way to catch pirates
Mabye just a sneaky way to catch pirates by monitoring all traffic across the network then using the fancy cctv to locate pirate and catch them in the act.
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Felix Pleșoianu, 19 May 2010 @ 12:01am

The answers are contained in your questions. The Digital Economy Act is absurd and it will blow up, one way or another. It's that simple.
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Carl, 19 May 2010 @ 1:00am

New Governement
Ah well let us not forget that since the Digital Economy Bill was rush through Parliment we have had a change in Government in the UK. So we have a rushed through bill that was provided by one party and we now have a Government of their opposition (which is Boris's party as well).

All in all a complete mess lol
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Alatar, 19 May 2010 @ 1:01am

What if someone downloads copyrighted content?
Will Sony sue again and have London stop its municipal Wifi coverage?
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Richard (profile), 19 May 2010 @ 2:19am

Re: New Governement
There is a good chance that the new govenrment will change this law.

The Lib dems were pledged to repealing it - and I suspect the Tory leadership will go along with that too...

There is likely to be a call to the public to nominate laws that they would like to see repealed

See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8690882.stm

I guess the DEA will be high on the list.
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ComputerAddict (profile), 19 May 2010 @ 5:34am

I think that the accused wont be able to access the network, but then again neither will anyone else.

I have serious doubts about the government being able to setup a city-wide WiFi network that can handle the traffic during the Olympics. If it does work I'd bet on 28.8kbps speeds.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 May 2010 @ 7:03am

i have to laugh. as is pretty normal, mike, you forget the simple concept: access control. wifi doesnt mean entirely open access, it could still require that users log in to access the network. further, i have to laugh even more, because city wide wifi has been tried and pretty much discarded in the past, and i seem to remember some tech guru mocking the efforts. but hey, dont let that get in the way of slamming the uk some more.
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crade (profile), 19 May 2010 @ 7:35am

Re:
It would be pretty pointless to have wifi everywhere if you need to jump through hoops to use it.
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Killer_Tofu (profile), 19 May 2010 @ 8:11am

Who will?
Who will be the first Olympic athlete kicked offline for downloading some music during the games?

Michael Phelps. =)
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Anonymous Coward, 19 May 2010 @ 10:14am

Re: Re:
Yeah, that great thing sounds great until you hear all the restrictions placed upon it then it doesn't sound so great.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 May 2010 @ 10:33am

Re: Re:
not really. most major airports have wireless hotspots that are paid, it wouldnt be really far off to say that users would be required to actually sign up for service, and perhaps they could log mac addresses and such to see who is using what. that would satisfy the (somewhat pointless) urge for free while also providing some sense of responsilbity.
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