using a neighbors wifi: is it stealing?

[Adrian II]

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?