why not??

1. Its on my property
2. Its not secure
3. If the guy doesn’t know how to secure it, he will not know.

What the hell, if there is any other computers on it, try to ip-address and log-in with administrator and no password, maybe they have some goodies!

My analogy for using someone’s open wifi connection for small tasks is no different then cutting a corner by walking through someone’s front yard who doesn’t have a fence. It’s quite common in both the city and country to cut a corner by crossing through someone’s yard given you don’t mess anything up or do it all the time (as to not create a path per say). You are technically disallowing them from using that piece of the properly for which they own for the moment you are standing on it, but they’re not using it at that moment anyway. Also turning around on a street by pulling into someone else’s driveway and backing out.
I see these as the exact same thing as using a bit of someone’s wifi. Just as if someone doesn’t want me to cut through their yard they’ll put up a fence or sign, if they don’t want me to use their wifi they can enable encryption. And likewise I’d never use someone’s wifi connection to download torrents or anything just as I’d never pitch a tent in someone’s yard.
FWIW —
Sam

Back in the 80s and 90s, one used to read of the “but they just left it lying around!” excuse for active attempts to crack into networks. That didn’t wash.

There’s little one can reasonably expect anyone to do to stop the signal propagating beyond their walls (lead-lined bunkers count as “unreasonable”). What Mike seems not to be seeing is that whatever bandwidth the piggy-backer hogs is unavailable to the owner. It’s entirely tangible, too – point iptraf or similar at your outgoing connection and see the bandwidth being used. That makes it theft of resources: when a finite quantity is used by another at the expense of the “provider”/owner.

More pertinently, I would not call myself an ethicist unless I’d weighed-up all the pros & cons: so as a provider of free WiFi, you get to feel good that you’ve allowed some pauper to connect, and as said pauper you get free (to you) connectivity; however, you also introduce major security risks in both directions too: do you trust machines running on networks accesssible by free wifi connections? Should boxes on those networks trust you, as an intruder, not to launch viruses or UBE attacks through that connection?

IMO, unless the free-wifi is set up with a license to permit connection (“copyleft”-style), the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, therefore it is a bad moral choice to leech off someone’s insecure wifi.

So that means if I hack you box on my WiFi connections there is nothing wrong? After all you crossed back over onto my property to get out. Any hole I use that is publicly disclosed is your problem because you did not properly protect it.

This is simple, if it is not yours, and you don’t know if you are allowed to use it, do not. There is no grey area here. You can rationalize why you should be allowed to all day long, it is just more of the me, me, me I deserver whatever I can get attitude.

No analogy will do this situation justice because kindergarten concepts of right and wrong only apply to simple, physical resources like apple trees and hoses.

What we are dealing with in the 20th/21st centuries is a whole new idea of ownership. We now own intangible things like intellectual property, digital rights, and options. Stealing has always been considered an evil, not because you were getting something you didn’t pay for, but because you were depriving someone else of a possession. That kind of logic does not apply to the realm of information.

To illustrate… You and I both have one apple each. I give you my apple and you give me your apple. How many apples do you have? How many do I have? The answer to both questions: 1. Now let’s say you and I both have an idea. I give you my idea and you give me yours. Now how many ideas do you have? How many do I have? The answer to both: 2. For physical goods, 1 + 1 – 1 = 1. For digital goods, 1 + 1 – 1 = 2. Not the same thing.

To put it simply, we as a society need to and are in the process of creating new definitions of what is stealing. Unfortunately, most people discussing this issue are just trying to push whatever social agenda helps them economically, rather than thinking and discussing the issue from a neutral, third party point of view.

As to the issue of WiFi, the crux of the problem is the inability of society to properly separate public goods and private goods. WiFi is based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Is the EMS something that you create? Is it something that your ISP create? No. Man did not create the EMS. It is a naturally occurring resource, and as such, it should be treated as a public good, not a private good.

The theory behind the Federal Communications Commission, before it became utterly evil, was that since the EMS is a public good, a government agency should be created for the sole purpose of ensuring that the EMS is most efficiently used and is available for the benefit of the entire public regardless of political, economic, or social status.

Although the FCC fails to do this because it’s too busy trying to censor content, the principle itself is good. The WiFi spectrum, which is just a small subset of the EMS, should be a public good.

As a public good, the best use of this resource is to create a nation-wide public WiFi system. An “information highway system” if you will. Such a system would generate the most bang for the public at the smallest cost since no money is lost to marketing, business waste, and corporate profits.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that ISPs and other companies should make lots of profits for providing private resources and services. I just don’t think that a company should make money by selling public goods, which is essentially the situation we have right now. That would be like a private company selling pieces of Yellowstone National Park as timeshares.

The key point is that public goods should be owned, controlled, and used by the public whereas private goods can be bought, sold, and rented by companies and individuals.

All of the disagreements presented in this thread are fundamentally a disagreement over whether or not radio waves that propagate through your residence are public or private goods.

I would suggest that it is in society’s best long term interest to consider all naturally occurring phenomenons to be a public good.

Now before someone jumps to a wrong conclusion… I’m talking about the EMS spectrum, not the actual data being transmitted. Just because you ftp a file over a WiFi link doesn’t make the file a public good any more than driving your car on a public highway makes your car a public good.