[Ninux-day] A law question

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Hi!

> Although I assume that every community network has the aim of being
> public, legally if that network isn't formally public, is a "private"
> network of those who are enjoying it.

Yes, this was one idea I got. To write on our captive portal (which is
there just to inform people who connect to the network about the idea)
that this is network only for everybody participating in the project
(like we interconnect and form our network) and by entering you are
confirming that you are in some way connected (not in technological
sense) to the project (like being a part of a family of somebody
participating in the project, a big big family). So we are not public
network and we just have lousy enforcement of access to it. And if
somebody does not like to lie he/she can always join our project in
multiple ways, like just registering on our web page.

The drawback is that we would really like to advocate free access to
Internet as a basic access right for everybody (like air, water, love
...). But maybe it is not yet time to do it like this. Let us first
grow. :-)

I have also not found anywhere definition of "public". Like how
secure/closed should a network be, to not be public? If I say to my
grandma to connect to it she will not know how to do it - so there is
already some "closeness" - technical barrier (sadly). If we add some
encryption and write password into SSID? Is this open or closed? If we
use weak encryption? Hidden SSID?

> Might be differences between states regarding to this, how do you
> register, fees/taxes etc.

Problem is also that by running a "public telecommunication network" and
registering it you also have to retain traffic logs about your
customers. But this could be an interesting question as we do not have
"customers". How do you log then? Let me check what is written.

So it is written that you should log IP, connect and disconnect time,
name and surname of a costumer or registered user who made traffic. So
if we use NAT everybody will have the same IP. :-) And when exactly user
connects to the ad-hoc network? I think it just starts transmitting. :-)
But the interesting thing is that there is nowhere written that we
should enforce our users to be registered. Probably for commercial
networks this is normal as they want to get money, but for us ... So if
the user is not costumer and not registered we do not have to produce
name and surname? So we just log that somebody started transmitting at
that time and then stopped. OK, we are planning to do this already for
statistics. :-)

So you become a part of our network by registering on our web page but
you do not need to login or anything to our network so there is no
username connected to your session. So whichever interpretation somebody
would take we would be safe. What do you think?

> If in Slovenia you pay a fee, that might be a problem depending on
> the amount and needs to be reasonable/proportional, because don't
> have to be something which blocks new players into competition.

We are also not formal organization. So everybody participating should
register? And everybody should pay? Eghm...

I have been searching now for an hour but could not find any document
about how they calculate how much you have to pay. They calculate some
points and every point is 1+ EUR, but there was no concrete formula what
counts. Maybe it is really something very low if you do not collect any
money.

> Also, in order be a considered as a public, thre has to be no doubt that
> we do provide connectivity services to the public, i.e. not to just our
> friends, and describe how is managed etc, so the "Commons" here becomes
> a key piece on that, and those days we were very busy reworking on that,
> we have now an almost finished a much more detailed revision (but still
> the same), by now only in Catalan.

Yes. Maybe we could rename/present ourselves as "common wireless
network" and not "open wireless network". "community" is also a good
word, but has closeness connotation.

> In short, formally, everyone have to choose between become public or
> not. If you don't go public, is private regardless if you feel the
> opposite...

The question is how our regulatory agency feels, not how we feel. I
think this is the problem. In law there is nothing useful written. So it
is left to its interpretation. And there could be some day some other
interests which would like to block us. And if we do not have ourselves
covered...

> Again, for us there is no choice: We have to become public, if not we
> might be blocked to deploy NgN, access to the interchange, etc... I
> understand that might be other point of views on that, i.e. in Slovenia
> if you already have a good FTTH, don't know, maybe is not a priority for
> you now, in my opinion if we want to grow as an alternative and develop
> new, alternative, fair, sustainable and user friendly networks to keep
> the network neutrality etc, there is no doubt that community networks
> must be also public networks at all effects.

Yes. At some point in the future for sure. But for now I think such
administration and bureaucracy could just take too much time and energy
from very limited number of people actively participating. You are much
further in this. Good luck.

If you will need any help like writing letters of support from abroad,
tell us. At least in Slovenia officials magically change their attitude
when they see that issue is bigger then they though and that people from
abroad are following.

I have just this days noticed that although so many of us have 20/20 (or
more) Mbit/s fiber at our homes there was only one experimental Tor node
running from whole Slovenia. This is very sad. Because running relay
nodes has really no risk. And is quite simple. People really do not know
how could all this bandwidth be useful.

I have setup now two nodes to rise this number a little bit.

There is so many ways how we could cooperate.


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