CNET is reporting that a UK pub owner is being fined about $13K for someone using his pub’s open wifi network to download some copyrighted material. This may be the first time anything like this has happened in the UK.

I understand that this may be the law in the UK, that no matter who was downloading the content that it is still the wifi hotspots owner’s responsibility for the crime. It sounds to me that the laws need updated for this type of crime.

Some are saying that they should just encrypt the wifi signal. Problem solved, except not at all. Even if you made customers pay for a key to your wifi hotspot, who is to say they will not download illegal content?

The only logical thing to do in this situation is to log who is on the wifi and then when there is some sort of infringement, turn that information over to the authorities.

Is the way that the authorities in the UK are handling this seem odd to anyone else? Is there a better way to handle this copyright infringement?