“In London today a gang war broke out over a territorial dispute. However, the territory was not physical space, but a wireless cloud of bandwidth. The dispute erupted when a Wi-fi user of a local free network connection accused another of dropping in on his wave. “Not only did this newbie drop in, he launched a p2p flood.”, said one of the local Wibos.
Several laptops were broken in the fight, and one Wibo was taken to hospital for the removal of a PCMCIA Card. Residents of the casual cafe strip expressed some distress at the increase chalk markings that have appeared, and the rise of threatening looking white bespeckled males.”
OK. Maybe not. But I think it’s worth while setting some ground rules for the use of the Wi-fi freenets that are popping up, especially with the increased profile via warchalking.
- Do not drop in. Don’t jump on a network and hog the bandwidth. Sure fire ways of annoying other Wibos is launching a file sharing client (like dc++), or starting an FTP session to download large files.
- No spamming. Don’t use a freenet to send unsolicited email.
- Acknowledge other Wibos. Lets make it a community rather than just a technology.
- Give respect to gain respect.
Concept borrowed from The Tribal Law Surfriders code of ethics by Robert Conneeley.
Any other suggestions, most welcome.
3 Comments
Maybe you should use the law “freedom of public meetings”
(in Germany it’s called “Versammlungsfreiheit”. The meaning is that public meetings are legal without breaking any other law)
@Do not drop in: Well what are big downloads? What is big? What is too big? Maybe you (the Mag-address) should habe a limit (per day?)
@Spam: what about ‘serious ads’? Banning spam makes companies turn their back on the “Wi-Fi” which might put in some money.
These ground rules aren’t so much “RULES” as they are friendly suggestions, it seems. Hence, I don’t think it would be necessary to lay out a specific point where you are using too much bandwidth, or a file size thats too big. People know when they are hogging bandwidth, and if its layed out as an expectation in the beginning that people respect the bandwidth they are borrowing, then people will be pretty good about it I think.
If the ‘culture’ develops with a certain ettiquite (which can be established now, as the culture is young), then people will obey later, out of respect for the ettiquite. “Don’t hog bandwidth” seems like a nice rule of thumb.
As far as spam goes, I think the ‘No spamming’ rule should be there. Saying “Don’t use my free node for mass advertising” is not an unreasonable expectation, and I don’t think companies would be offended by that. If a company wants to employ direct mailing, either ruthless spam, or even legit mailing list broadcasts, they can use their own server. Its not unreasonable to expect that. Companies won’t stop supporting wireless technology just because people don’t want their free nodes being used for other people’s commercial gain.
Acknowledging nodes is good, too. Even little things like dropping an email to say “Thanks for letting me check my mail on the street corner” really make people happy. People who run free wireless networks aren’t in it for money (obviously), they are in it because they like to be nice, and people who like to be nice like getting feedback from the people they are nice to.
Is there a way to present people who connect to a network with a server message, similar to how you get a login message when you connect to an FTP server? Because that would be very useful to see a little message “Hi, you’ve connected to BillyNet, please do not hog bandwidth, don’t send spam, and send me an email if you like what I’ve done here.” whenever you connect to a network.
Anyway, good thoughts, i need to go buy some chalk
Hmmm…I’d tend to agree with what everyone is saying.
The Message idea that Sam has is a great one. Also, besides rules, why not list the bandwidth? You could gauge how much is too much by that, a lot easier than “don’t hog bandwidth.” Also point out how much time you think is acceptable before you start kicking off users.
Maybe you could use Squid on a cheap router box (maybe from the donations?), and limit the Wireless Users on your public network; this would be nominally beneficial to businesses.
I’d also suggest this:
-Try to limit your time on any one single network per day, to a reasonable amount. Roam some and find another network, warchalk it, sit down for another 20 minutes and read some gutenberg or such. This may not apply if you have a network account that is made by the admin.