this news article came out of the Seattle Post
on Tuesday, September 4,2001
sorry no pictures
Digital activist want to share the Internet's wealth - er, bandwidth
by Jim Krane the Associated Press
NEW YORK-As a summer breeze rustles the leaves in Manhattan's Washington Square Park, Terry Schmitdt pops open
his laptop computer and fires up his Web browser.
Schmidt's fingers race across the keyboard as he surfs the Internet wirelessly and without owing anyone a cent.
The 25 year old programmer belongs to budding group of digital activist in North America and Europe who are
providing the public with pockets of free wireless Internet access.
Bucking the trend toward commercialization of the Internet, these "free wireless" advocates are urging people with
high-speed connections to share the wealth.
"You can't store bandwidth," said Schmidt, bearded and in a ribbed T-shirt. "If you don't use it, it goes to waste."
Internet service providers are not warming to the idea, however. Contracted by The Associated Press, two major
providers said retransmission of their bandwidth run counter to user agreement.
Enabling the "free wireless" movement is the increasingly popular Wi-Fi, or 802.11b, wireless networking
standards and the relatively cheap hardware that uses it. Powering Schmidt''s online experience is a transmitter
behind a window in a building adjacent the park.
Advocates of Internet-sharing exude a do-it-yourself camaraderie reminiscent of the 1960s. They urge construction
of of homemade antennas. They transmit from discarded computers refitted with the free Linux operating system. Their
Web sites proffer plans to erect rooftop transmitting "nodes" for as little as $300.00.
Depending on the Quality of the Net connection, access can be very snappy. Internet throughput in the
Manhattan Park - obtained via a $100.00 network card - clocks in at 4 megabits per second, about 70
time the speed of a typical dial-up connection.
Overall, the activist seek to shunt bandwidth from rich to poor.
"The question should be, how should we distribute this resource to the people who don't have it?"
asked James Stevens, 39, co-founder of London's Consume.net. "If you've got a 2-megabit (-per second) DSL line
in your business and everybody knocks off at five, that line is available. It can set aside for public use."
In Seattle, such zones of connectivity - otherwise invisible - are demarcated by orange stickers reading
"SeattleWireless."
One such "cloud" hovers around a bus stop on Bellevue Avenue East, where commuters rev up
their laptops while waiting for the downtown bus, said Matt Westervelt, 29, of the SeattleWireless group.
Farther down Bellevue, coffee drinkers at BitStar Cafe get free bandwidth from Westervelt via an
antenna made from a Pringles Potato chip can.
The movement in Seattle and London go beyond providing free Internet access. Activist in those cities are
struggling to build point-to-point public wireless networks that tie together homes, schools, business -
and coffee shops and parks.
The budding network use line-of-site communications that link individual computers across cities in a
daisy-chainlike sequence. Users who tap into the free network wind up spreading it, helping it grow
The eventual goal, say activist like Adam Shand of Portland's Personal Telco Project, is a parallel
public Internet.
"We're trying to bring the Internet back to the way it was in the old days, before commercial interest
took over," he said.
Where activists see waste, Internet service providers see profit.
One Internet service provider, AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Road Runner cable service, forbids retransmission
in its user agreement.
The terms of service of digital subscriber line customers of another large Internet service provider, Verizon
Corp.,do not explicitly prohibit sharing bandwidth. The agreement states that "DSL customers may connect
multiple PC's within a single location to their DSL line."
But Verizon, like most ISPs, oversubscribes customers, counting on them not to use every available bit of bandwidth.
Monthly service ranges from $49.94 to $204.95 and delivers top connection speeds from 7868 kilobits to
7.1 megabits per second.
???If customers use more bandwidth than is typical, connection speeds might suffer, Verizon spokeswoman
Bobbi Hennessey said.
Perhaps more troubling, Hennessey said, is the specter of a user commutingg a crime - like spreading a virus
of child pornography - while logged in on borrowed bandwidth.
"if you're allowing others to use it, you can't control what they do with it," Hennessey said. "if we were able to
verify that someone was using the service to do something illegal, we'd be within our bounds to terminate that service.
Aware of these issues, Schmidt and others are drafting an acceptable use policy of their own, requiring users to
click an "I agree" button before accessing the Internet.
The Pair asked that the names of their Internet providers not be mentioned.
"We're opening ourselves to a lot of liability here," Townsend said. "It'll come down to a test case.
Someone's going to wind up in court."
linking web-sites:
NYC Wireless
Personal Telco
Consume
SeattleWireless
