Re: [tlug] Wifi hotspot access in Tokyo

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Benjamin Tayehanpour writes:

 > I usually go for the "they would probably give me the answer I was
 > looking for if they were cognizant enough to understand the question"
 > stance. Bypassing quaint but annoying firewalls when trying to SSH
 > home is a good example.

If they had a clue what they were doing, you probably would be given
the answer that no, you're not allowed to use SSH from their network.
(Script kiddies banging on every advertised sshd port on the Internet,
yes?)  If I were them, in many cases I would forbid it too.

Clue is sadly lacking.  My university has a stated policy of not
allowing use of peer-to-peer networking software.  Excuse me, but WTF?
What is the Internet if not a peer-to-peer network?  They "clarified"
that by saying "file-sharing" software.  What is any store-and-forward
network but file-sharing software?  How about Word?[1]  This is also
the same university that dealt with the Ping o' Death by firewalling
all ICMP.

So I really don't know what the ethical thing to do is.  The people
who make the rules on the one hand forbid perfectly harmless, even
socially beneficial activities because of the name of the software
used.  On the other hand, they permit really dangerous behavior (eg,
use of Windows :-) because everybody does it.  When the rules make no
sense, should you revise them in your head and obey the rules you
think "they" meant?  Or snicker and do whatever-you-please because
contradictory rules ain't really rules at all?

Footnotes: 
[1]  In practice, what they really mean is "software that communicates
on the default ports used by Bittorrent, Xunlai, and friends".