using a neighbors wifi: is it stealing?

**Sasaki Kojiro** · 05-25-2009, 05:27

Yes, I see what you mean. I imagine that restaurants and such that offer free wifi have to pay based on bandwidth.

It would seem that when you pay for wifi, they are nominally providing it just for your house...but you can't restrict it like you can cable. I guess it's pragmatically moral.

**Lemur** · 05-25-2009, 05:45

Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

Yes, I see what you mean. I imagine that restaurants and such that offer free wifi have to pay based on bandwidth.

I know exactly one hotel manager, and I'm pretty sure this is not the case. He pays for a "business" connection, which does cost more, but he's not aware of any bandwidth meter or restriction.

But then again, I live in the sticks.

**Adrian II** · 05-25-2009, 10:53

It might be piggy-backing, but where's the pig, whose pig is it, who feeds it? If it's leeching, then what, in this analogy, is the blood?

Seriously, the Interwebs give rise to new legal issues all the time and some of them are very intricate. Take for instance virtual property; there has been an ongoing debate about its nature or status, and it is still unclear what the duck test says, in other words: to what extent virtual property is real property.

So can we establish some basics here? Wi-Fi is a wireless datanetwork using radio frequencies, usually in the 5.0 or 2.4 GHz band. So far so good. In order to establish what's what, we need some more legal and technical expertise on radio signals and their effects, on jurisprudence about bandwidth licenses, public access, that sort of stuff.

Any volunteers?

**Beskar** · 05-25-2009, 11:38

The thing is, the problem with the anti-piracy adverts if that they compared getting illegit copies as comparison to stealing a handbag or stealing a car. It isn't the same thing at all.

It would only be the same if you can go up to a car, right click, copy and paste, then drive off in the copied car. Ultimately, no one would care as they still got their car, etc. So copying the model isn't a problem to them.

If anything, if you could copy and paste things like cars, also do delete, the whole world would be a very economically viable, it would get rid of things such as selfishness and greed and envy and all sorts of things. You could copy and paste food into Africa, and clean water supplies. Even factories and good housing. The facilities and economical develop would occur over night.

**Fragony** · 05-25-2009, 11:55

Originally Posted by Beskar

It would only be the same if you can go up to a car, right click, copy and paste, then drive off in the copied car. Ultimately, no one would care as they still got their car, etc. So copying the model isn't a problem to them.

But you wouldn't buy a new car since you already own one. Piracy is different, I consider it to be stealing-light, a lot of people have worked on these products, if the copy-nostra wouldn't be such pricks I would have sympathised with them.

**Beskar** · 05-25-2009, 12:05

The thing I hate is how they punish legitimate consumers. You ever bought a DVD and had to wait through 10 minutes of "STEALING IS WRONG" ? I own plenty of DVD's like that and it drives me insane. I feel like getting a copy of it through privacy just so I can watch the thing when I want to watch it, opposed to having adverts and various other crap forced onto you

Then there were games like Spore by EA. They put so much protection on, you need a degree in Computers just to install it correctly and have the programme working for you. Obviously, the pirate copies come out the next day without all the nonsense which then again, could convince legitimate consumers to go through other paths.

The best anti-piracy measure would be to just have the games work from Steam. Steam being the only programme per se as other programs of similar nature would just upset everyone or making a co-operative joint venture based on the same system and actually sell people games on prices they are worth opposed to the default $60 price tag as you see in the shops and $30 for movies.

**Fragony** · 05-25-2009, 12:15

Originally Posted by Beskar

The thing I hate is how they punish legitimate consumers. You ever bought a DVD and had to wait through 10 minutes of "STEALING IS WRONG" ? I own plenty of DVD's like that and it drives me insane. I feel like getting a copy of it through privacy just so I can watch the thing when I want to watch it, opposed to having adverts and various other crap forced onto you

You and me buddy, drives me insane as well, especially the unskippable ones should be punishable by death. That's why I don't mind piracy, just not something I would do myselve. But we were talking wifi

**rory_20_uk** · 05-25-2009, 12:14

Originally Posted by Fragony

But you wouldn't buy a new car since you already own one. Piracy is different, I consider it to be stealing-light, a lot of people have worked on these products, if the copy-nostra wouldn't be such pricks I would have sympathised with them.

I agree, but since the anti-copying adverts make an incorrect comparison this correct reasons that stealing isn't great are neglected.

First with DVDs it was the fact that the quality is rubbish, or the DVD you're getting isn't the one you wanted, when in fact they can often be better as the movie starts straight away without the 10 minutes of rubbish first. Next it was the "stealing is bad" which is inaccurate. Now there's the more vague don't be a "knock off Nigel"

Why is windows so successful? Because everyone uses it. I am sure Microsoft is aware that many Uni students will copy 7, but they are OK with that so when they go for their jobs they are up to date with the latest windows OS, and there are not thousands who are telling their employers that in fact they've years of experience with Ubuntu, and to increase the corporate pressure to upgrade and not use XP for another decade.