Do you have an open wireless network? Well if you do, you should be glad you're not living in the BDR. Following a recent case where an accused "pirate" pointed out that since his wireless was open for anyone to use, the supposed "proof" that he was downloading - his IP - proved nothing - the court summarily declared that to be illegal, and now the cops are supposedly going to be war-driving your neighborhood, and writing tickets for unsecured wirelesses.

After the musician failed to convince the court it was totally not his fault the court was being hasseled by a bunch of whiney naybobs, the court decided that in Germany at least, it is your duty to make sure that the rights of major, multi-national IP giant's rights (profits and attorneys) are protected by securing your wireless. From MSNBC's report:

“Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation,” the court said. Internet users can be fined up to euro 100 ($126) if a third party takes advantage of their unprotected WLAN connection.”

It's a sad statement on modern society when one can - without much difficulty - see how law enforcement is really only about providing the most protection to those with the most property. It's worse when a rational society decides that the rights of corporations are of higher caliber than those of human citizens.

Think of it this way: citizens have a right to their own life, and that entails choices about when to do things as well as what things to do. When a corporation is allowed to dicate the trivial matters of a person's life in order to limit the increasingly trivial bridging of the corporation's profit stream, then the rules, norms and laws of the society are being used against society, stifling it's growth to expand the profits of a few.

Now I'm well aware that ostensibly, this is what society does. I'm pointing out however that this is only beneficial to a society to a finite degree.

When a farmer grows crops, he sells them at a price they will fetch and everybody's happy; he gets money for his labor, and people eat. When there are many farmers, the benefit to society is obvious, choices increase and competition drives value. The police are basically only around to keep people from stealing food from the farmer, and occasionally - to a lesser degree - to stop the people from stealing from each other. Ask any cop, it's natural to steal from those with the most to steal.

When it becomes completely trivial for all people to - in this example - grow food themselves, especially to the point that the farmer's farm and it's expenses become unweildy, the farmer is suddenly in need of the police. In this case however, the police have to come up with new ways to protect the farmers.

In human history, numerous generations have witnessed what happens when a status quo is usurpted by a new technology which renders their business model obsolete. It happened in with Guetenberg. It happened with the phonograph. It happened with audio tape. It happened and is still happening with digitalization of media.