Well actually the wireless signal was picked up on public property on HIS laptop. If you found a dollar on the roadside, with no markings to say who the owner was, it's up for grabs. If you found a car on the road side, or a wallet, there are ownership markings all over, and that would be theft. Open WiFi is open for a reason... :lol:
If you found a dollar on the roadside that is its total value, one dollar and it is clearly marked as a public medium of exchange. Your analogy of the car and wallet falls apart as when you are using their Internet bandwidth that they pay a monthly fee for, you are also using their identity in the form of their IP address. What you are describing is exactly what spammers and distributors of malware do on a regular basis. If you don’t know, identity theft is both a crime and problem in this country.
For example, let’s just say you are a gay male and are sitting out there in the dark enjoying a heated chat session with a ‘friend’. Everyone, fill in the blanks as to this activity as I don’t even want to consider it. Now, let’s assume the bandwidth you are stealing belongs to a heterosexual man with a six year old son. His son has just joined the Cub Scouts and dad has signed up to be a den leader. Due to the problems of sexual predators, the BSA investigates all new, potential leaders to make sure they meet BSA standards for youth protection. Even after you clean the mess from your session out of the interior of your Teg, you have left tracks you cannot erase at all of the web sites you found so interesting while ‘chatting’ with your special friends. Enter the BSA investigative firm, and a routine check of this dad shows he (you) visits websites that the BSA finds not appropriate in their adult leaders. Best case scenario, they deny his application and he never knows why. Worst case scenario they decide he represents a threat to his son and they turn it over to the police and he gets a visit from DFCS.
Be a man, buy your own Internet access and quit stealing or go to McDonalds or Starbucks or some other location that has declared their Internet access open. Just because someone does not keep their money locked in a safe doesn’t mean you can take it without their permission. In the same vein, just because someone has not secured their WiFi doesn’t mean you can take it without their permission.
Next you will be telling me that violating copyright law is not really stealing because everyone does it.
