using a neighbors wifi: is it stealing?

[Adrian II]

It's stealing and it is wrong. Relatively minor, however.

I don't believe everyone who's got an open wi-fi is doing so intentionally. They hardly sell routers without wif-fi nowadays. People walk in to a store, buy a router, hook it up, get it working and then pay no more attention. They don't know or don't even think about the fact that their neighbors may start mooching. We here at this forum are quite different from the average person.

And for some people bandwidth can be a finite monthly resource.

CR

Um, there's a Lemur dangling above you. From branch 21 to be precise. Could you address some of the points he raises?

[Crazed Rabbit]

Well, I thought I partially had...

Look, it's 2009. Most people who do not apply WPA to their wifi are either (a) terminal tech idiots or (b) deliberately sharing.

I would disagree about the idiots thing; see my previous post.

I think the concerns you should feel about using open wifi points should be pragmatic, not moral.

I said the concern about theft and the moral issues was minor.

Disagree. If I take your car, you have no car. If you log onto my wifi, I still have my wifi. Your bandwidth changes my monthly bill not at all. Analogy fail.

Aren't some companies thinking about putting monthly bandwidth caps on?

CR

[Sasaki Kojiro]

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.

Sounds like nonsense to me. People who try to justify their position by analogy are usually rationalizing. How is this any better than the car analogy? Worrying over whether it is stealing or not is pointless.

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?

Being careful with assumptions is a basic rule of human interaction...

I believe that broadcasting an open network is an invitation to use it. People on the other side of the argument might say "If I leave my front door open, does that mean you can walk in?". And the answer is no, of course not - but if you leave your door open with a sign above it saying "Open House - Party Inside", don't be surprised if people come in.

And this is the most ridiculous statement of all. An invitation to use it? Pure ignorance.

If he'd spent more than 5 seconds thinking about his analogy, he'd realize that a more direct parallel would be a network called "free to use" vs a network called "943948ddbeude8".

[Lemur]

Agreed on this point -- someone who is deliberately sharing their wifi will have a custom name for their station. So "Bub's Wireless Funhouse" is likely someone sharing on purpose, whereas "linksys" is probably not.

Make me think that those who share wifi with the public ought to adopt a naming convention, just to make legitimate shares easier to identify.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

How legitimate is deliberately sharing wifi though? Sharing cable is illegal, yes?

[Lemur]

Very fuzzy legally. Yes, sharing cable TV is illegal, but inviting others over to watch it is not. Allowing others to copy your CDs is illegal, but having the neighbors listen to your thumpin' stereo isn't.

I suspect that sharing wifi without asking for money is legit, while attempting to resell would be verboten.

Many, many businesses now offer free wifi in their stores/hotels/car dealerships/restaurants. I would be interested to know if there are any legal hurdles they have to jump to clear themselves before they offer wifi to anyone in range.

[Fragony]

I use my neigbours wifi, just ask. Internet is pretty fast here an extra taker doesn't really hurt anyone.

[Lemur]

Yeah, actually my neighbor and I exchanged passwords so that either of us can log into the other's router if our connections go down for some reason. Won't help us if the whole neighborhood blacks out, but it will help if, say, raccoons decide to chew through my cable box.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

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]

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.

[Strike For The South]

A minor crime but a crime.

We stop people from stealing groceries all the time and we have plenty of those.

[pevergreen]

I think the original issue is fine, depending on how you are charged for internet.

Down under you are charged x amount for a month, in which you get y amount of usage at z speed.

For example, I pay $100 a month to get 25gb at ADSL2+ speeds, which, at the exchange, is 24MB/ps.
So down here, I'm against it, but in america (if I'm right, not sure) you just pay for internet and not the amount you use? which would make it ok.

(on an unrelated note, im trying to get to switch to a plan that gets 150gb a month for $80. Plus no line rental. Same speed)

[Crazed Rabbit]

Most ISP plans in the US just give a bandwidth limit. But somebody mooching a wi-fi would slow it down for the owners. It may not be as severe of an action as in Oz, but it isn't a victimless crime.

CR

[Duke of Gloucester]

I am not sure it is a crime. Theft is taking something with the intent to permanently deprive. Clearly the neighbour is not permanently deprived of anything. This is why there is a separate crime for taking a vehicle without the owner's consent. It was too easy for car theives to claim they had only borrowed the vehicle.

However I sure that it is wrong. Whilst taking your neighbour's car is not a good analogy, how about sitting in your neighbour's garden on his/her nice patio chair whilst he/she is at work without permission. This is bad manners and bad neighbourliness. Using the wifi without permission is the same and just as you can't argue that using the garden is ok because your neighbour doesn't close his back gate, you can't use the excuse that the wifi is unsecured for your wifi access.

In fact a really good neighbour would warn the person next door that their practice was insecure. Your friend might only be using it to avoid a punishment but someone else could be reading his hard disc and theiving his identity.

[HoreTore]

I'd just love to hear you expand on why stealing is fine.

It is wrong.

It destroys wealth.

It's antisocial.

It causes deprivation and hardship.

It rewards wrong doing.

Like the thread in the frontroom about the 'free' telly. Nothing except fresh air is 'free', neither should it be.

Yes, tell me your thoughts on this HoreTore, I'd really like to know.

I said "not all stealing is bad", I didn't say "stealing is bad". Like what I said in my first post in this thread; people might be stealing bandwidth from me all the time, but I won't notice it, and as such it's quite irrelevant. When people don't even notice it, I can't honestly say that there's a problem with amounts so small that nobody will notice. Bandwidth isn't like a normal item, it's limitless in supply. If you take my sweater when I'm not wearing it, I won't have it when I need it. If you take my bandwidth when I'm not using it, I will still have just as much when I need it.

As for justifying crime, well, there are plenty of examples. Like I won't consider it a bad thing if Starvin' Marvin nicks a slice of bread from Mugabe's plate. I would actually consider that a just action.

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?

If anyone is ever in Norway around my house and spots a network called "Lovernet", I hereby declare that you're all welcome to exploit it

[Fragony]

Bit of a difference between leeching and using an acces point. I have permission to use my neighbour's wifi for small stuff, e-mail, browser and the playstation. If I went on dowloading big files he probably wouldn't be very pleased for obvious reasons. There is always a free acces point lying around somewhere. If you don't secure it I will use it, that's pretty much the point of wifi.

[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?

[Beskar]

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]

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]

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.

[rory_20_uk]

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.

[Fragony]

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

[KukriKhan]

So we do all agree that using a neighbor's wifi connection is, in fact, stealing.

We're just trying to measure "how much" stealing it is, and whether it should be punished; and if so, how so.

I don't think I've seen anyone here suggest the OP's friend should be guilliotined, or imprisoned, or even arrested. Some think the theft should be ignored, as it's so small, and the harm done to the owner is hard to discern. Others think ignoring it would be a slippery slope, leading to bigger, badder stealing later. A "gateway" theft, as it were.

Lost in all this is the other thing that the young man is stealing: parental prerogative. He's not openly challenging his punishment for some unknown-to-us offense, he's just sneaking around behind his parents' back to obtain by theft, what his parents intend to deny him.

[Fragony]

So we do all agree that using a neighbor's wifi connection is, in fact, stealing.

No just rather impolite if you don't ask first, but open is open, if I am on a terras and someone doesn't have it secured, then I regard it as a public network, like we have in trainstations and airports and bars.

[KukriKhan]

if you don't ask first

If it's not stealing, why the need to ask?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Very fuzzy legally. Yes, sharing cable TV is illegal, but inviting others over to watch it is not. Allowing others to copy your CDs is illegal, but having the neighbors listen to your thumpin' stereo isn't.

I suspect that sharing wifi without asking for money is legit, while attempting to resell would be verboten.

Many, many businesses now offer free wifi in their stores/hotels/car dealerships/restaurants. I would be interested to know if there are any legal hurdles they have to jump to clear themselves before they offer wifi to anyone in range.

I don't see the fuzzy thing there.

YOU invite your neighbors to use YOUR equipment/service on an INVITATIONAL basis without seeking to use that equipment/service as a revenue generator for you. All very reasonable.

I agree that offering, on an INVITATIONAL basis, your wifi to a neighbor is directly analogous and would be covered under that same interpretation -- even if such an invitation were functionally open-ended (after all, your neighbor can, if you so allow, come over and camp out in your living room in front of your TV and watch cable 24-7).

I not only suspect re-selling would be verboten, but would have little or no sympathy for either the re-seller or the clients thereof. All would be and should be criminally/financially liable.

I also believe that anyone seeking to use your connection without receiving your invitation to do so is stealing and should be liable for prosecution/damages as appropriate.

And yes, I have told an individual reading my paper over my shoulder on the Washington Metro to "Go buy your own paper," and I have already gone to a neighbor to suggest they change their system name from linksys to something else.*

*I freely admit that that was just to get my own laptop from trying to connect to his service on its own -- it kept thinking I was installing a new router/wifi and would offer me the chance to set up the new connection. Once a new wifi system name was in place the issue ceased. I do not know if it ever was encrypted...haven't checked. After all, you see, it doesn't belong to me.....

[Fragony]

If it's not stealing, why the need to ask?

Because you are using his acces-point. If I can't ask wether or not I can use it, different story. Neighbour has protected network and I asked his password. Sure! If it wasn't protected I would have asked anyway it's my neighbour after all.

[Andres]

And yes, I have told an individual reading my paper over my shoulder on the Washington Metro to "Go buy your own paper,"

I guess the real message was "go take a shower" or "go brush your teeth" and I assume the individual was not a hot brunette in her twenties slightly touching your upper leg while smiling at you...

[rory_20_uk]

Look at what the WiFi says before connecting. It requests access which is granted. If the network was secured it would be denied

[Hooahguy]

rory and frag have a good point. if i hacked and got his password, THAT would definitly be stealing.