Hi!

So I posted that ticket on our wlan slovenija Trac some time ago, but I
am also writing now here because maybe there are some people who would
be also interested in more lawish approach to open networks.

So the idea I have is that what we are doing now with community wireless
networks, how we grow them and connect them is all very similar to how
Internet was build in the beginning. Mostly it all works because of the
trust and because we share similar values.

But as we will grow, we will face issues. For example, can our networks
be used for commercial uses. Can we filter some traffic we object to?
Will you transit traffic over your network from some other network with
which rules you do not agree on? In general, we will face net neutrality
issues. And instead of waiting that we get to the stage when things will
be hard to change, I was thinking that we should learn from Internet and
make one change: organic growing and interconnecting of networks is
great, but let us all have a common base of things we agree on, and let
us have a legal backing of that. Internet has no law regulating it, but
we should use law to regulate our networks so that we assure that they
are open and neutral forever. It is like using copyright to defend the
commons. :-)

(Of course we should also try to make it technologically ensured to be
so, but why not have one line of defense more? And sometimes it is good
to write things down, just so that everybody involved knows what to expect.)

We could have something similar to GPL which in short would require from
you net neutrality, if you are connecting to the network, and that
others who will connect to you, will adhere to the same agreement
(peerleft? :-) ).

I am not a lawyer, so I am not sure if "licensing" can be used in this
way. What is a difference between license and agreement? Can you give a
license to somebody that he or she is allowed to connect to your network
and spread it further under this and this conditions. And if they break
those conditions, they are lost their right to connect and are thus illegal.

Concrete proposal is here:

http://grow.wlan-si.net/ticket/1258

When drafting this idea I read many other such agreements/licenses
listed here:

http://interop.wlan-si.net/wiki/Legal/Licenses

Is there any lawyer around who would be interested in drafting such a
peerleft (beerleft?) license? Do you know about some other similar
licenses I missed?

So, this is something which is probably for you very down along the
road, initially this is probably overkill, but maybe some are interested
also in this aspects.

(For all who are maybe not familiar with peering agreements. So the idea
is that you make some type of agreement between nodes connecting, or
even networks as whole connect, about how you will transit their traffic
over your node or network. Inside one community wireless networks this
is often not a problem, but maybe you will get a person who will want to
filter all porn going over his or her node because it will be morally
objecting. How to deal with this? One way is to ignore it. Another is to
have some organization with ruling power over all nodes. The other is to
try to technically assure that this is impossible to do (which might not
be viable or even moral). And there is the thing which I am proposing
which is that all nodes are seen as individual entities which adhere to
the same license. Whoever is deploying this nodes. You don't care. If
they adhere to the license. And if they don't, you have a right to cut
them off.)


Mitar
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