Hello, "The Doctor"! Do you have a The
Name? :) I do remember reading about Byzantium when I was doing
initial research for HamWAN, so welcome to the mailing list!
You make an interesting, but scary point about laws banning public
networks. I'm not so much worried about ISP policies; ISPs can be
changed. I've surfed through the link you provided and while it
makes claims that laws have been passed, I can't seem to find any
direct link to state legislature legal websites which publish the
ratified laws.
Worryingly, it seems Washington state is affected. Are you able
to find anything official on the books for WA you can point us to?
The short blurb of laws cited at the top of
this page
only seems to require that any public network give explicit
authorization to the general public for connections. This seems
like a reasonable policy and should not kill intentional public
networks. In our case, we're not an open public network, and do
require user registrations. Since we're using spectrum reserved
for hams, we just have to make sure each user is a ham. It's not
hard to become a ham, either. So we're just 1 step removed from
being fully open to the general public. :)
The laws on the main page look to be concerned with local
GOVERNMENTS offering free networks and stomping out free
enterprise competition. This also seems reasonable to me. I'd
rather get my free WiFi from an NPO than a government. Let the
government donate to an NPO if they want to setup such things in
their community.
Let the berating of my opinions begin! :)
--Bart
On 02/22/2013 02:20 PM, Benjamin Krueger wrote: