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The original was posted on /r/piracy by /u/Chieftah on 2024-10-30 18:11:11+00:00.

Not planning to pirate but I am genuinely interested. I encountered an open public WiFi network that has a captive portal (just “press to login”, no email entry) to allow users in.

In Germany, although public WiFi providers are no longer responsible for their users’ illegal network activity, that does not mean they cannot send any fines or legal mail to whoever actually pirated content on their network.

Question is, how can they actually find who did it? I walked around the area a bit and the public network extends for maybe close a 100 meters across, and it also covers a busy intersection and a full transport interchange station, as well as numerous shops and cafes nearby. Practically hundreds of people can be logged in at any given time.

Now, I get that the network could just have P2P traffic blocked entirely, but if we are assuming that it doesn’t, how can a large public network actually hunt some guy who is downloading Bee Movie while waiting for his tram somewhere within this busy area? I get that they can track the IP (as well as see the traffic) but all it allows them to do is terminate the connection if they see suspicious traffic. Let us assume the network owner gets a hefty fine for piracy conducted on their network - what steps can a network owner take to find who did it?

And again, this is assuming that we are talking about a busy area with lots of passersby, and an open (unprotected) WiFi network with a captive page that only asks to press a button (no email, no phone number etc.).

How do public networks survive in a country like Germany with a setup like this?