That’s a you and your hardware problem, not a public library IT problem. You need to purchase hardware that is adequately supported by your chosen Operating System.

Forcing people to buy more hardware is yet another variation of discrimination against the poor. Imposed needless consumerism is also reckless from an environmental standpoint. If you choose not to step your competency up to the level needed to serve the public without costing them more money, you’re only getting off the hook in the view of right-wing conservatives.

Not being “your problem” is simply a problem of an ill-defined contract that allows irresponsible policy.

This is a you and your hardware problem. Buy hardware that is adequately supported by your chosen Operating System.

It’s not a hardware problem. It’s an ethics problem, and the problem is on your part whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. If you lack the higher level of competency needed to support ethical consumers, you should either gain the competency our leave your line of work.

This one is a semi-serious complaint however I’ve never seen a portal system where the Librarian’s didn’t have the ability to issue a day pass for use.

Not a single public library in my area has that option as an alternative authentication. If you have no phone, they are helpless.

Aside from that you sound like someone who should be technically able to stand up an ephemeral phone number for the purpose of receiving SMS.

I’ve not heard a burner phone called that before, but there is no way to get a phone nor an active SIM chip gratis in my area. You can get a pinger number online, but it only works if you’re already online. Apart from that, your suggestion is absurd as an official policy in response to public complaint about phoneless people being officially excluded.

Same as above.

It fails here too, for the same reason.

What an absolutely petty complaint.

What an absolutely pathetic failure to support a claim to the contrary.

I’d bet that as soon as you enter a code your VPN stops being blocked. They’re not trying to block VPN they are preventing you from sidestepping their ToS.

This is not a /me/ problem. You are responding to a list of demographics of people who are being excluded by a public service. If not every single person has a gratis VPN, this is a broken argument.

I’ve dealt with Patrons like you before and the instant someone starts yammering at me about ClearNet / Tor I know exactly what kind of person I’m dealing with.

You selected your path for whatever reasons you chose and the inconveniences that come with that path are yours to deal with. Suck it up buttercup, you weren’t promised that a privacy respecting internet lifestyle would be easy or convenient.

Inconveniences are borne out of the kind of incompetent infosec that you’re peddling. A competent tech firm can do this job without violating the GDPR and without violating human rights.

BTW if you’d plugged your laptop into one of my systems you’d have gotten vlan’d into the same Captive Portal System that the WiFi has which is precisely how any publicly available Ethernet port should function. Your little length of wires coated in vinyl with plastic shoved on the ends still wouldn’t have gotten you where you wanted to go.

And that would still be violating peoples’ Article 21 rights to equal access. Imposing a mobile phone is among the injustices I’ve mentioned. I would still favor the ethernet regardless of the captive portal for many of the reasons I’ve mentioned. I avoids discriminating against people without functioning wifi h/w.