[MLB-WIRELESS] Commercial use of MW network

Ryan Abbenhuys sneeze at alphalink.com.au
Fri Mar 5 18:52:33 EST 2004


I was thinking more along the lines of it being obvious if there were say
several large corporate office buildings linking into the network.  Or a few
Bunnings warehouses, that sort of thing.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Craig Sanders" <cas at taz.net.au>
To: "'Melbourne Wireless'" <melbwireless at wireless.org.au>
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 4:36 PM
Subject: Re: [MLB-WIRELESS] Commercial use of MW network


> On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 09:07:04PM +1100, rick wrote:
> > from what i understand as well which has been coverd is if we let people
use
> > it and they are a profit making company, then we get fined a stupid
amount of
> > money or we get a carrier licence for 10k per year which we lose as soon
as
> > someone sends pirated files or goes to 4.01 watts
> >
> > im not putting cash towards a carrier licence and if a vpn tunnel went
thru
> > my link for a commercial gain company then i would start up a community
> > wireless group in melbourne like the one i thought i was already in
>
> while i certainly don't think that community networks should be open for
> exploitation by companies (or anyone else for that matter), there is
something
> quite disturbing about this extreme attitude.
>
> for one thing, how can you tell if any VPN traffic is commercial or not?
> without decrypting it, you can't.  that doesn't mean that VPN's should be
> prohibited from MW, though (if they are, then all my gear is for sale
> immediately - i want to be able to communicate securely with anyone on the
> network who is capable of decent encryption.  in particular, i want a
secure
> link to my friend's house through the MW network.  while i have no
particularly
> security-sensitive data, the thought of plain-text broadcast transmissions
of
> files, emails, chat, etc just horrifies me.  it's wrong)
>
>
> another disturbing thing about this attitude is that it reminds me of
exactly
> what was wrong with Fidonet and similar networks back in the 1980s and
early
> 90s.  instead of seeing the network-as-a-whole as a valuable entity in
itself,
> every node operator just thought of their own little node and enforced
whatever
> arbitrary policies he/she liked on the data that crossed their node (e.g.
many
> nodes explicitly reserved the "right" to read and/or censor any private
mail
> passing through their system).   this basically meant that there was no
private
> mail on the network, so a valuable facility went (mostly) unused.
>
>
>
> > Community wireless, lets keep it for the community
>
> yeah, but don't cut off your nose to spite your face.
>
> craig
>
>
> To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at wireless.org.au
> with "unsubscribe melbwireless" in the body of the message
>


To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at wireless.org.au
with "unsubscribe melbwireless" in the body of the message



More information about the Melbwireless mailing list