Illinois Man Fined For Piggybacking On Wi-Fi Service - Yahoo! News
This is asinine. I believe that if you leave your wireless router open, then you can not charge somebody with stealing. Dvorak has the best article about this issue.
My boss ran into a case a couple of months ago where she discovered that she was actually connecting to her neighbors wireless access point instead of her own. Her access point had stopped working without her knowing it, but she was still connecting to the internet with her laptop via her neighbor's wireless signal. She never knew it. She was worried about "stealing."
I explained it like this. If you are sitting on your backporch as evening approaches and your neighbor turns on his outside lights and you can use that light to read your book, are you stealing his electricity? No! He is broadcasting his light into your house...that's not stealing to use it.
Anyway, maybe my brother can change this law when he gets elected Governor of Illinois.
1 comment:
My one thing that I thought when I first read this is I don't know if Yahoo is being semantically irresponsibile. Was he jusr wardriving the signal, or was he actually "Hacking" their computer through their wirless signal.
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