using a neighbors wifi: is it stealing?

[Adrian II]

Man, I did a double take on the thread title, at first I read wifi as wife.

So did I, so I asked myself what the fuss was about. Then it turned out to be Wai-Fai, an electronic gadget. Now that's male territory, that's serious business.

Turns out I was wrong again, apparently. It seems a man was actually arrested for Wi-Fi piggybacking in Michigan in 2007. He was sentenced to a 400 buck fine or 40 hours of community nose-picking. This blog had a nice comment on it at the time:

If you buy a newspaper and read it whilst sitting on a train, very often people might look over your shoulder and have a look at the headlines. They are consuming information you just paid for - are they stealing? No, of course not.

Some people may have their wifi connection open and secured because they actually want people to share it. How can we tell what someone's intention is when they decide to transmit an open network?

In fact, it points to the opposite:

In actual fact, by broadcasting your connection details you are almost tampering with my laptop or wireless device. If someone set their wireless access point's SSID as the worst obscenity possible and caused that word to appear on your screen by broadcasting it to your Wifi equipment, are you in the wrong for receiving it, or are they in the wrong for sending it? Who is it that has committed the crime?

So I think it's not like stealing KukriKhan's car after all. Or his yak.