"The Cloud" is a company based in the UK that provides wireless internet in pubs across the UK. The managing director of the company mentioned recently that a pub owner was recently fined £8,000 due to one of the people logging in to the wi-fi service downloaded copyrighted material.
It's an interesting case which I wont go fully in to here, but it's certainly an eye opener for those offering a Wi-fi service as part of their business in that they need to be more vigilant in keeping track of who logs in and what they do.
The regulations state that any public communications service must keep a record of all network activity (including IP addresses, sites accessed etc) for a period of 12 months but only if they are specifically asked to by the Government and due to this clause only the top six ISPs actually do it.
The reason the pub are being tracked down and fined is due to them not being able to provide details of who did the download.
It would be good to get some clarification on an issue like this as I am sure a number of people are concerned that a user could get them in to trouble if not being careful.
Via: Zath
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I’ve been waiting for this to happen for a while (not that i want people to be fined for downloads). Ive often wondered as many hotels I’ve stayed at have just given a communal password to access their wifi and then there are all the free ones. Thats before people bypass any security measures, its going to get interesting.