The United Kingdom Parliament is considering passing a bill called the Digital Economy Bill that will supposedly ban open wifi hot spots in the country. Although the main purpose of the bill is to put a stop to copyright infringement, many are questioning whether the open wifi ban is a practical measure.

What would this mean? Well, it would mean that homeowners, businesses, and other places that sometimes have unsecured networks would have to start protecting their networks. A problem, however, is that many internet users do not have that kind of knowledge to do something like that. To make things worse, under the new bill, users that violate this tenant will be fined.

“This is going to be a very unfortunate measure for small businesses, particularly in a recession, many of whom are using open free Wi-Fi very effectively as a way to get the punters in,” Lilian Edwards, professor of internet law at Sheffield University, said.

“Even if they password protect, they then have two options — to pay someone like The Cloud to manage it for them, or take responsibility themselves for becoming an ISP effectively, and keep records for everyone they assign connections to, which is an impossible burden for a small café.”

What do you think? A good idea?

Source: ZDNet