Here’s some answers:

1) We actually aren’t doing anything with rooftop-to-rooftop mesh networks. We spend some time on it earlier (our first year), but we’ve been pulled away to our hotspot and locative media projects. Instead of mesh I would say our secondary goal is to use our technology to help create community.

2) “who is liable for malicious usage of the service?” Tough one. We take steps to protect our partners (they are safer with us than with a simply open hotspot which is the alternative. Videotron and Starbucks as well as many other’s operate this way. At least in our system the owner has the ability to show that he is not soley responsable for anything illegal which may have happened.

And I think a lot of the volunteers also value anonymity and it’s place in society.

3) “stark contrast between the haves and have nots” You are perfectly right. Luckily, there are groups like Communautique in Montreal which are fighting the good fight against the digital divide and have been for 10 years. We’ve been hoping to implicate ourselves more in this area, but it is hard to do on a volunteer basis since projects like this (getting marginalized pop online) need training and follow up. Hopefully we’ll have some good news to report on it this fall.

Thanks for the writeup! We just had a mapping presentation at our last meeting. This fall we will definitely be launching into the collaborative mapping / counter mapping / community mapping world. maybe we’ll run into people from your dep. at that point.

mike