Man Charged With Stealing Wi-Fi Signal.

arnisador

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050707/ap_on_hi_te/techbits_wi_fi_theft

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Police have arrested a man for using someone else's wireless Internet network in one of the first criminal cases involving this fairly common practice.
Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pretrial hearing this month following his April arrest on charges of unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony.
It's about time, I say!
 
Probably so.

I have two neighbors who's wi-fi is available to me, were I to choose to piggyback on their pipes. One of them is at least smart enough to turn off their router/base station (whatever the proper term is) when he is not using it.

I usually have my wireless connection disabled. I only enable it at hotels that don't have cat5 hookups.

It's a bit sad that people don't seem to be aware that they are making this bandwidth available. But then again, I don't know how a telephone works.
 
If you broadcast on public airwaves, have your network periodically invite computers to connect, and have your network give an IP address to anybody who comes along, then you've authorized that access.

Many computers will just simply connect to any available wireless network without any prompting. You buy it from the store, and if you turn it on as you're walking out to the car you might have already connected to somebody's network.

The whole concept of the Internet is based around a default policy of openness and connectivity. By reading this website, you've sent and received information through many different computer networks you can have no knowledge about unless you make an effort which most people aren't capable. If one of those networks disappears, the information just gets routed through someplace else.

It is assumed that we have permission to access anything connected to the Internet and that assumption is only revoked by layering an authentication and security system on top.
 
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