I'm cracking wise at the expense of a business reporter in Greensboro, North Carolina: The reporter is clearly just representing what was told to him in good conscience by the owner of a cafe in that fine city that had its Internet service yanked when it was discovered that millions of pieces of spam were initiated from their network. The Green Bean's owner is paraphrase by the reporter saying, "the agency that monitors the Internet for spam violations temporarily closed off the Green Bean's wireless access early this week after the spammer's mass mailing." I think he meant "monitors the internets"--all of 'em.

However, I crack wise because it's a problem that's been widely suggested as a flaw in free and/or open Wi-Fi networks operating all over. The terrorists might use them. Spammers might use them. Child porn aficionados might use them (remember the wrong-way driving, pants-down Canadian?).

What's more likely to have happened here is not that millions of pieces of spam were sent over the Wi-Fi network, but that a spam push was tracked down to having been initiated from that network. Sending a million pieces of email over a 384 Kbps to 768 Kbps upstream connection would take an inordinate amount of time and be noticed. Still a little tricky to state precisely what happened.

The "agency that monitors the Internet" would most likely be the ISP from which Green Bean purchases its Internet access. Green Bean charges a dollar a day for access, and might switch to a time-delimited password system. The owner might also put in filtering software to restrict outbound email.