Is this a common practice in Europe /US? It seems ridiculous that the WiFi provider would be held liable for such a thing. Why stop there, should make the ISP liable too!
Germany is particularly notorious when it comes to useless, ridiculous and downright detrimental laws regarding anything that has to do with the Internet, notable examples being the so-called 'Leistungsschutzrecht' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht ) and the 'Impressumspflicht' (legal notice requirements for websites)
[1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressumspflicht#Geschichte
There have been several attempts to sue Freifunk (basically a public mesh WiFi using tunnelled connections) participants this way too, luckily so far that hasn't resulted in a single "victory" yet.
It is quite silly, of course, and is generally a little hassle with your hotel.
Ohhhh, they have a wifi hotspot portal: "Enter your cell phone number to get an SMS with a 30 minute code". You want me to turn on my cell-phone and potentially incur roaming charges now?
I hear things have gotten better in Frankfurt and you only have to provide an email address. How did they skirt this law?
By being run by companies that claim to be ISPs. What exactly counts as an ISP is at the core of the entire issue, because ISPs are protected from this. A company which only exists to provide internet access has a better standing (and better lawyers) to argue that it is an ISP, compared to a private person or a coffee shop owner.
Most coffee shops I use Wifi in thus have access points provided by such companies. They offer AP/captive portal etc as a package and send the traffic through their systems, taking responsibility for it. (for good measure, some of them probably send the traffic out to the internet in other countries, to make it harder to harass them over it)
Typically people just disable "data roaming" when travelling internationally, at least until one reaches and can lock to a "friendly" 3G/4G network. Thus there are no charges for IP traffic including MMS, and SMS reception is always free because you cannot turn it off.
(I still agree that WLAN at German airports is abysmal and at restaurants practically non-existent. Another downside of Germany is the unavailability of Google Street View.)
Welcome to Canada... (It's not as pricey as it used to be, but who knows how many SMSs you might have queued up)
You just need to log in via a website, where you have to press "yes, I read the ToC".
China, Russia and the US all require that.
Citizens and everyone else with a residence permit don't have to register temporary whereabouts ("for a few nights").
On the other end, the US is pretty unique in that you don't have to notify the government that you're leaving the country. I believe recent laws actually authorize an exit-tracking system, so that might be coming to an end unfortunately.
This is as opposed to Russia and China, where foreigners are required to notify the government of every address they ever stay at.