Posts by Daniel Smith

Broadbandit nabbed in Wi-Fi bust

*Chucks another analogy into the mix (and ducks)

(from Slashdot) Reader 4e617474 fired the next volley in this battle of analogies:

>> So the router is "visible," with an option to make it invisible. Big deal. My garden is visible from the street, but I can put a tarp around it to obscure its existence. What you are saying is that, unless I put a tarp up around my garden, everyone has a right to use it.

No, actually we're saying that if your garden pelts us with carrots and peas as we walk past on the public street, we're at liberty to catch them and consume them. Only if you place anti-vegetable-flight netting around your garden (or stop planting vegetables that lend themselves to comparison to an unsecured WAP) does it become incumbent upon us to behave as good citizens.

Hey! Analogies are fun! Somebody compare Internet privacy law to hunting and fishing licenses!

Not so fast, goes an argument exemplified in another comment from R2.0:

(again, via slashdot around this time last year... http://backslash.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/28/187219 )

Yes, the computer is "asking" the router "permission," and the router is "granting permission" — the only problem is, the words we use to describe these actions may appear to be descriptive of thinking and volition, but they really mean neither. Computers and routers simply CANNOT give "permission" in any legal or moral sense.

To use the yard analogy that seems to be popular for these threads, lets supposed your neighbor's massively retarded child asks your massively retarded child for permission for his Daddy to use your yard, and your child agrees. Neighbor then comes over and stages a cookout on your lawn, or for that matter just walks across it.

When you confront him, he says "But my kid asked your kid, and he said yes." This is binding? Common sense and the law would say no, yet you would allow devices with an order of magnitude less analytical power than a retarded child to give and receive similar permissions.

Repeat after me folks: devices cannot give and receive permission for human actions without those permissions expressly being granted via some other means.

A traffic light doesn't give you permission to cross the street; the government (that you studied to get your license) gives you permission to cross the intersection when a light is green, and denies it when red.

Your ID badge doesn't ask permission to enter your building, and the security system doesn't grant permission; YOU ask for permission by presenting the badge, and your employer grants it by programming said system to accept your request.

While I'm here I'll post another slashdot gem from the same era :)

Re:Enough with the analogies!

(Score:5, Funny)

by PCM2 (4486) on Friday July 28, @03:57PM (#15801475)

(http://neilmcallister.com/)

Your analogy misses the point entirely.

The situation the GP was describing is a more like trying to sell yak's milk in a Bavarian beer garden. You can bring as many Nepalese sherpas as you want, each with their own entry visas, and the yak might clear customs, but unless the milk is pasteurized you're still going to run into problems. And who's to say the Germans have a taste for yak's milk anyway? It's shortsighted thinking like this that leads to posts like yours.