I know that this issue was brought up in another thread about charging for wi-fi, but, this is a different issue. I called a campground to inquire about space,price, and of course wi-fi.

When I got to the last question about wi-fi, the answer caught me off guard.

Me: Do you have wi-fi?

CG: Yes, for now.

Me: umm, what do you mean? I was thinking that they can't pay their bills or ________.

CG: We've been having problems with illegal downloads of music and sometimes movies. We might have to cancel or restrict sites.

Me: Oh, I got it.


Ok , so why am I posting this thread. I really would hate to see campgrounds start cancelling wi-fi because of this unspoken (hush hush) problem.


Some people might reply and say something like, I don't think the CG will want to lose customers. Well that might be true, but, they are business owners that don't want problems either.



This is only a FYI thread ( nothing more!!)


We know that this issue will continue for many years, I'm only saying that if people want to do this, then they should at least protect the park.

What do I mean? seeing that this is an open forum, I don't think I should give out the program (solution). Unless I'm requested to do so. ( or maybe by PM)

How do I know about this? My son was doing this at his mothers house, she got a {not so nice threat letter} from the internet service. I always wondered how he got 1,900 songs on his Ipod with no job or credit card. lol,lol He lied at first and said he got them from his friend down the street. Lol, well your friend has no job either.

I researched this issue for about 2 days, and I found out what he did wrong. He was not protecting his IP address while downloading. Hint!

I know this is a sensitive post, but, it's happening every day in every CG.

Some parents might ask- Are their warning signs I should look out for? Yes, but let's wait and see if this post goes anywhere.

Um..... you can also "rip" those songs directly off your buddy's CD and put them on your IPOD. I did this with my ITUNES. I "ripped" (that's the term used when you use CD copying software) songs from CD's I owned and put them on my ITUNES.

And, how does one "hide" one's IP address?

Yes your correct- ripping is legal and very common. That's not what he was doing.


Itunes- is also legal and very common. My son or his friend never had a Itunes accounts.



Hiding IP address is only used for these music & movie sites. If you still want the solution, PM me and let me know. It wont work on general surfing.

Hiding your IP on general surfing is a whole another thread, not for this forum.

What he did wrong was the illegal activity (theft). IMO, advocating a workaround so you do not get caught and trying to justify it because it is "happening every day" is just plain wrong.

When DS #1 was 14, his mother found a bunch of CDs in his room that he could not afford to buy. She found out he and some friends had stolen them. She called the store and the police. Our son (who is now the Colonel) tells us that was a life turning point for him.

As far as people watching movies on the campground's dime, it is very hard to regulate and technology progresses. As things become possible, owners need to keep up with expanding technology the same as their customers. I remember some years back having owner say, we were not allowed to view short news videos and that sort of thing. I believe that WiFi is going to go the way of the 8 track at some point and things will be pretty much cellular. When we were in the lodging business and were one of the first to put in WiFi, neighboring businesses would ask my guests what the password was and then give it out to their patrons. I would even have them complain to me when I changed it. I have been on both sides of this issue. I think simple passwords and the ability of the campground to frequently change them will stop 99% of the non camper theft.

Hi,

Wifi in campgrounds is going to be hard pressed. It is not uncommon for folks to have 3 or 4 devices--so what was once a system for convenience and email, is now overloaded. For example if "patch Tuesday" happens and there are 300 devices a huge amount of bandwidth is going to have to be paid for. We can't expect the campground to "swallow" these costs--so they will be "built in" to the cost of a site.

You can imagine how unpopular a campground owner might be if he all of a sudden limited electrical use to just 15 amps.

Copying is a gray area.

"U.S. copyright law (Title 17 of the United States Code) generally says that making a copy of an original work, if conducted without the consent of the copyright owner, is infringement. The law makes no explicit grant or denial of a right to make a "personal use" copy of another's copyrighted content on one's own digital media and devices. For example, space shifting, by making a copy of a personally-owned audio CD for transfer to an MP3 player for that person's personal use, is not explicitly allowed or forbidden."

Not sure if this is true for commercial bandwidth, but I know personal bandwidth has come down drastically in price. I am still hoping that the old rumor that Wal-Mart will put towers on top of each of their stores with a 30 mile radius and have one stop shopping for internet access. Over 90% of the people in the US would be able to get it (not the area, but the population). I think campground owners welcome the small loss of income and the big loss of headaches.

From what I've heard from campground owners and managers, a serious issue is that away from big cities it may be impossible for the CG to obtain an internet connection with sufficient bandwidth to meet the desires of its customers. In rural areas neither DSL nor cable may be available and multiple T1 connections can be costly and still may not provide the desired bandwidth.

For those interested, this article from RV Business describes issues with internet at a Texas RV Park that, according to the article, "parks have bought a ‘commercial’ service for their parks thinking that covers them regarding Wi-Fi in their parks. But the fine print says they cannot distribute Internet in their parks. Almost every park in the USA has or will have this problem.”

Be interesting to see how this plays outl

RV Park internet issues

Re-reading the article a couple of times, I think there are two sorts of things they are after, one is CG owners who pay for residential wifi accounts and then share them at the CG. The other is copyright violations resulting from illegal downloading by customers at the CG.

As for the first issue, I think it's likely that overall wifi performance at CG's would be significantly improved if CG owners paid for commercial accounts rather than trying to bootleg on residential ones. Although it would result in higher costs that would get passed along to customers, it might reduce or end some of the complaints people have about CG wifi.

With respect to copyright infringement by illegal downloads, it will force CG owners to invest in the necessary hardware/software to prevent people from accessing known piracy sites. This also will probably improve everyone else's wifi experience because the folks doing downloads are probably extremely heavy users who slow down the system for everyone else.

Or, the threat of liability, coupled with the higher costs will be the straw that breaks the camel's back and force parks to quit providing Wifi. While not due to liability, parks have already gone away from any public phones. With many options for guests to provide their own internet connections, at their own costs, I can easily see where parks would not be willing to invest more money into wifi systems. It will be very easy for them to justify that decision by saying if a person wants internet access, they can get a data plan from a wireless carrier. That was not the case 5 years ago, but is is now. Wireless communication evolution may soon render the campground wifi extinct.

I"ll have to research some more on the WI-FI downloading, but, so far all I can find is this.
If you got 20 people at a CG, and your signal is about 4 bars

I dont think it matters because you can only use what ya got

Ex: 5 people downloading
5 people streaming movies
5 people checking email, banking, social sites
3 kids playing Online Playstation
2 people writing parks reviews

So it going to slow down. Unless it 3 AM

Even though you can only use the bandwidth you have, from the ISP's perspective a commercial customer is going to have far greater average bandwidth usage on a 27/7 basis than will a residential customer. Therefore, when the ISP is planning how many customers it can support on a particular internet pipe, if those customers purchase residential service but then use it commercially, it is quite possible that the ISP's entire network will be overloaded and everyone will suffer. Remember that the issue of sharing a campground wifi is no different in concept than everyone in a community sharing a cable company's internet connection. It has to be sized appropriately for the anticipated load.

Also, don't forget that the number of bars on the device is how well your device is receiving the transmission from the wifi source. It has nothing to do with how well the wifi device is receiving your transmission. Wifi is a two way radio communication. It is a well establishec fact that device makers have significantly reduced the transmitting power of the radio inside the devices in order to increase battery life. For a wifi connection to work, the wifi souce has to receive the data and requests that are sent from your device before it can send the webpage to you. Many times it becomes a "can you hear me now"moment where your device can hear the wifi source clearly since they are generally powered to the maximum amount allowed by the FCC, but the wifi source cannot hear your computer's transmissions because it is lower powered, so nothing happens. Computer wifi systems are designed to continually repeat that transmission until it is answered, hence why that little circle keeps rotating until something finally pops up. It may not be a problem at all with the wifi system or bandwidth, it may just be your device isn't transmitting with enough power to be heard by the wifi system. This can be tested by moving closer to the wifi source. If you were seeing 4 or 5 bars when the system wasn't working before and you have moved closer and suddenly your system starts working much better, the problem is your devices radio transmitter, not the lack of bandwidth from the wifi source

This is exactly why many "serious RVers" own wifi amplifiers with external antennas such as those made by WiFiRanger and Cradlepoint. With output power in excess of 600 mW the WiFiRanger Mobile system can connect to virtually any campground access point you are likely to encounter.

I was talking to a campground owner and I think campgrounds are going to quit offering free (open) wifi and offer a paid service soon.

The reason is when you put up your credit card to buy wifi, then there is a way to track your use of the internet. So if your kids are downloading music or someone is sending Kiddy porn, the campground is not the one who gets in trouble. It changes the “end” user from the campground to the camper. Why would any campground want to face the legal trouble to offer free wifi? Just think of all the bad press if some pervert start downloading kiddy porn at the campground, the campground have a free open system and has no way of knowing who is downloading what. So the cops show up and bust the campground owner for the kiddy porn downloaded at his IP address.

Now why would any owner want to have that type of problem? If he gets hit with a $100,000 find, how many camp sites will he have to rent at $30 per night just to pay the fine? And you won’t want to camp there any more because the campground was in the local paper for kiddy porn. Can you blame them for not offering FREE wifi?

I think the scenario you are painting is a bit of a red herring. I'm not a lawyer, nor do I profess to have an in depth knowledge of our legal systems but I strongly suspect that you must be in possession of said kiddie porn not just down loading it to be charged. I doubt any law enforcement officer with a lick of sense would ever consider laying such a charge against an RV Park knowing that they are just provide free internet service. Further, there are just too many other businesses such as Hotels, Motels, Librarys, Coffee Shops etc that provide free internet and I doubt that they would be exposing themselves to such a risk.

Free internet is a marketing tool. If a business chooses not to provide the service, they are just making it that much easier for their competition to take over their market.

Darrell

I agree; this topic has been racing around RV forums for the past week because IMHO RVers tend to react preemptively to perceived "threats" most of which never materialize. With Wi-Fi being a marketing item for many CG's, I seriously doubt that many of them are going to stop providing it because of some undefined legal issue.

However, I think that some CG owners are in a quandary over whether or not to spend the $$ necessary to bring extremely broadband internet to their sites (if they are even in a location where this is possible) in order to support the insatiable desire of customers to use more and more bandwidth for for streaming. A CG owner may get to the point at which he decides it isn't worth providing any free internet access because no one will be happy with it unless it has bandwidth he can't afford.

I can envision future scenarios in which CG owners provide low-bandwidth internet access for free and a broadband access for an additional fee. Of course, this presumes that the CG is located where broadband access is available, but T1 and T3 (or fractional T3) lines are available in most locations. A CG owner would need to do a cost-benefit analysis of installing such a line with an assumption of how many customers would need to use it at what price in order to make it viable for his business.

For example, if you owned a 200 site CG in a year-round location and assumed that 20% of the sites were occupied by customers that were willing to pay for bandwidth capable of streaming HD video. For a month that would work out to 1200 "site-days" of usage so a $15,000 T3 line cost could be absorbed if customers were willing to pay $12.50/day for broadband usage. That's probably a bit steep if your sites rent for ~$30-40/night, but if you could get a "half-T3" line for less money, maybe the cost would be affordable.

Obviously, this example is pure speculation, but I don't think the scenario is that unrealistic. Some "urban" CG's are already in locations where Verizon FIOS could be installed which would significantly reduce the costs from my T3 example.

A T1 only provides 1.5MB up and down, so that would not be of much use in today's WiFi user environment. A T3 or OC1 would be a better choice if the CG can support the cost. We have a CG in our area that is working with a local manufacturing business on setting up a "shared OC1" system, where the factory will have the use of about 2/3 of the bandwidth during weekdays, and the CG has the balance, and on nights and weekends the ratio reverses, with the CG getting the bulk of the bandwidth. I don't know how the costs are split, but it does seem to be a viable option for keeping the costs down for both.