We could get all high and mighty here but let’s be real: even if you haven’t downloaded a movie or three off the interweb, you’ve definitely borrowed your mate’s hard drive and pillaged some illegally obtained entertainment.

Whilst the debate over copyright and piracy issues rages on for torrent sites like PirateBay most of us still engage in a spot of downloading from the comfort of our own homes. The problem the city of Cape Town is experiencing is that their free wi-fi, currently available in 69 hotspots around the city, is being gobbled up by people getting their hands on Hollywood’s latest blockbusters. This from Fin24:

Cape Town further says that the most used application on its free Wi-Fi networks is BitTorrent, which has experienced 1.4TB of downloads in January 2015, followed by YouTube which racked up 546.56GB.

Now for the less clued-up, that amounts to around 2 terabytes, which is  2 000 gigabytes. The city has spoken about plans to curb the problem, although they remain wary of interfering with what content the users of the free wi-fi are able to access. City of Cape Town spokesperson Emma Powell had this to say to Fin24:

We’re obviously not in a position where we want to regulate the private behaviour of individuals, but at the same time we do need to make sure that our services are not being used to conduct illegal activities…

We’re going to be engaging with the professionals and our legal professionals on the matter and going forward perhaps drafting some form of usage policy.

The city hopes to roll out another 61 areas before June of this year so they best have some plan in action pretty soon. I suppose we should maybe pat ourselves on the back that the wi-fi hasn’t been used up by horny teenagers watching sordid skin-flicks, which shows there might be hope for us as a society.

[source:fin24]