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Comment by rprospero | Hacker News Reader

I'm just curious: are you arguing from that it's a stupid law from a moral perspective or a pragmatic one? I might disagree with these policies philosophically, but I've never seen evidence that they were anything but ruthlessly efficient at achieving their desired ends.

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I mean...if your desired end is to prevent free wifi availability nationwide (and the various benefits that provides, access to information and job listings and community and such), regardless of socio-economic strata, and to ensure that any security issue (weak passwords, out of date firmware, a zero day) makes an end user legally culpable, all to help protect a content industry predominantly located outside your nation, then sure, chalk that up as a success?

> to ensure that any security issue (weak passwords, out of date firmware, a zero day) makes an end user legally culpable

That might actually be a good idea.

Yes, let's make non tech savvy people liable for keeping track of zero day exploits. While it might make some people more aware, I think in large part it would just push people off of the internet.

Yeah so that my Grandma who had Comcast install her router should definitely be legally culpable when there is a firmware issue with the router, or when the installer sets up a weak password (or none at all). I think you are probably speaking from a tech support perspective where you have had to fix systems that haven't been patched for years and that caused issues. Well, most of the population would be screwed by laws like this thru no fault of their own.

> Grandma ... should definitely be ... culpable

Not downvoting just suggesting that the sarcasm might detract from comprehensibility for English learners. It detracts nothing from the point by just saying plainly that she should not be.

Some ISPs here in Germany don't even allow third party routers.

I would argue both.

In order to make copyright infringement marginally harder, you take away the utility of broadly available, free or low cost wifi.

An entire nation has to lose a utility or pay a "copyright tax"... For what benefit?

until wifi access is declared a right?

I would say its more of a lazy law than just plain stupid as lazy law writing is far worse at times

From a pragmatic perspective, if the law has enough unintended and undesired consequences, it has failed.

I mostly find it offensive that between the company selling access, and people giving access away for free, it's the latter that would be liable for what their users do.

There are moral and pragmatic reasons against liability, but they are not nearly as glaring as that inequality.

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