Man in Florida arrested who was using unauthorized Wi-Fi - Page 10

We're looking forward to hearing the result John. Keep us updated! (hope you win!)

Repeating XM Radio

Delphi's XM Signal Repeater: * Wirelessly retransmits the XM signal throughout your entire home – even through walls and floors

This should do a better job than your twoCB's and would be legal, even if your neighbor also picked up the signal.

i dont see why they cant make accessing a publicly available signal illegal.. american companies regularly go into 3rd world countries and privatize things like water.. making it nearly impossible for people to get water unless they can afford the fee..

the government also approves patents on genetically modified grain that will not reproduce (farmers must buy new seeds each year) and which will when cross polinated with your neighbours non genetically modified grain cause his grain to become infertile as well..

better yet.. if your neighbour happens to be one of monsanto's coorporate farms (monsanto is the company that invented this wonderfull non reproducing grain) they can sue you and take your crop once their grain crosses with yours because now your growing a patented product.. even though you did nothing wrong and stole nothing.. they essentially convert your crop to theirs without your knowledge and then get mad at you because this happened.

Isnt that just awsome....

anyway my point is our legal system.. well.. north america's legal system.. i cant speak on the rest of the world.. lets companies have control over whatever they want.. they just have to ask for it..

you know how people go to stores and fall in the isles on purpose in order to sue the store.. (i recently found out that i know somebody that does this) anyway a store could probably set up an internet connection and then monitor it and sue every person that logs on.. (somebody may have already posted this thought.. i havent read this thread in a while.. sorry if i just plagerized)

hell you could open two stores.. have one with a legitimate free connection for all.. and post "free internet" on the front of this store.. and then have the adjacent store have an internet connection that you are to ignorant to protect and sue people for mistakenly logging onto your "personal" connection.

Once again, his points prove: money = power. EOF.

If your on public property!

I think if your on public property "NO-ONE" should be able to get arrested for ignorance. Wireless means no wires, so if the assumed victome is ignorant to the fact that anyone in a certain radious can pick up the signal just by driving by and if the lappy is set up to "AUTOMATICALLY" see this open network and connect, how can this be a crime. I agree if the neighbor drops water on my lawn that it would be ridiculous to be able to get charged for that water. The same should go with the signal. What next? "Bill for being able to smell that turkey in the offen". John brown is in court for being able to and without permision enjoying the smell of the neigbors turkey. IF YOU HAVE A WIRELESS NETWORK, that person is RESPONSIBLE to keep it secure. And that is final in my book. If it is anyones fault, then the manufacturers should have a big red lable stating a warning that anyone may be able to access the network unless you take precautions. MCDonalds had to put a label on their hot coffee. Who want to sue Linksys?

One day, in a land far away, there was a little boy at play.
He skipped, danced and even ran along his local roadside way,
And then he stopped as he heard two loud voices though they were far away,
And those two voices told the secrets of how to fly, and so the boy did,
he flew right by.

They saw this of course and immediately tried to sue him for all hes worth,
To the Judge they said, "he stole our secret" but the boy only responded..
"What secret is that? I heard these two yelling about how to fly from far away while on that public road i did stay", and those two huffed and puffed and never took responsibility.

The moral of this story is that if you want a secret to be a secret, dont broadcast it through a mic, bullhorn..ect rather keep it to those you wish to share your secret. You can build walls, or even whisper, or use coded language to keep your secret safe, but to yell it in a public place and claim theft.. only then are you the fool.


Add: unfortunately laws today are so mixed up in every sort of way, that they forget that the law itself isnt supposed to protect us from being stupid, rather its supposed to protect us FROM the stupid.

itsa bunch of bs. if he wants his wifi protected he shoul have encrypted it. seriously though, i dont want somebody on my 3mbps connection, so i use wpa/wep, mac filtering and i dont brodcast my ssid. what a n00b its like that lady that sued bk for the coffee spilling on her in the car while she was drinking it while driving.

RabenWolf, I don't think anyone here could have said it better. You are right on the money!

yup. basically dont brodcast ur signal if u dont wnt it heard.(w00t for turing off ssid broadcasting!)

disabling ssid broadcasting isnt all that its cracked up to be... A good packet sniffer will still find the ssid in data. Not to mention that it doesnt keep your signal from being found. My card just tells me "No ssid broadcast", so i still know its there

i know that. im saying that combined with many other security features such as wpa, wep, and mac filtering. anybody who really knows what they are doing could get in, but im always monitoring and checking the netowrk for loopholes. yeah damn those packet sniffers and their cisco and orinoco wireless cards. they are so damn expensive, but if you compile airsnort, it is soo easy to crack wep. wep is garbage, byut is a good deterent for those pspers and casual wardrivers who dont know what they are doing. good point though. ssid hiding is just another detrerent.

lol hadn't been here in quite a while... still see some are intent to justify stealing no matter what...

yep the the radio part is public but not the cable... it's privately licensed and anyone else using it and not following the agreement w/ the cable cpy and/or w/o permission of the licensee is a thief...

why don't ya'll compare it to accessing your HDD and reading your data while they're on your network... or even better, deleting your data by writing his new data there temp for a DVD burn?

gee, bet you'd agree that would be stealin'/trepassin'/etc...

course you wouldn't mind if they copied your address books while they were on your network either i guess and maybe deleted all your entries too lol...

can't get around it, it's wrong, it's stealing/destructive/limiting PRIVATELY PAID FOR BANDWIDTH...

once again folks, what the law says - if you know it's not yours or you don't have specific permission, then you have NO rights concerning it... no court in the country gives a damn what you "think"... they will assume your intention by your actions... the law is not stupid and all the arguments made that it's ok will be laughed at...

geez lil kids even understand that...

hehe, you sound quite childish yourself. Not to mention stuck up, egotistical, and narrowminded.

You stated you dont agree with most of the people here, and you have done so numerous times. I think we heard you the first time, so if you dont like what we believe, agree with, or our opinions, then dont read them or better yet, dont post. Your like a broken record, sing your tune once and stop saying the same stuff over and over again. Geez lil kids can understand that... why cant you?

if you want your wifi to not be used, then lcok it up. if there isn't any sedurity there, its like taking your money out of a safe and putting it on a plate with a sign that says free cash im not using it.

I agree its common sense

hehe narrowminded... only as far as law is concerned... the law is the law and you have to operate within its parameters - if that makes me narrowminded then so be it...

never said i agreed or not with ppl on here, only those advocating stealing and trying to justify it... only said i was speaking from the point of view as an IT pro and someone educated in law, not lay opinions which are meaningless as far as the law is concerned...

many of the opinons offered here are so far away from law as to be totally silly... thought some might be interested in how courts view things... several ppl have contacted me because they were more interested in a legal point i had raised...

sorry, i didn't mean to confuse things with the facts lol

not at all... if you offer something for free, then ppl are free to take it...

if you leave your property in a public area it is not an offer for others to take it, if they do they will be considered the thieves they are...

and thats why i said that the laws are a bit messed up right now. They are unclear in some regards. By your logic, people would be stealing eachothers air whever they breath. It would also be considered stealing if Someone were to pick up a candy wrapper i threw on the side walk, right? I mean i threw it there, does that give someone the right to pick it up? Or how about I spends hours thinking of a cool movie idea and then i go to hollywood and Yell it out at the top of my lungs, then is it theft when someone that heard me uses that idea to create a movie? It would be if i copywrote it. The same goes for Wireless signals, if you want it protected.. you protect it. By that your saying, This needs permission to be used.

New Orleans will be getting a city wide wireless internet. The city is going to be full of thieves whenever someone picks up another signal from nearby and thinks its part of the free city wide one.

Laws need to adapt. I believe they are supposed to protect us from the stupid, not from being stupid. By not encrypting a wireless signal in a public place then thats the same as saying its free. If your in a resedential neighborhood, then chances are its not.

No sir, you are not educating people sharing their opinions, you are degrading them by saying how stupid they are. We are obviously aware of the laws stance on this, thus the NAME OF THE THREAD, we dont need you to tell us in an insulting manner. If you look at what most people are saying they are giving their opinion as to why they think its wrong, or how stupid it is, or the way it should be. No one says we are ignorant of the law, some of us just dont care. Thats the whole point of the discussion.

I had a friend once who cared about the law, he got pulled over for making a wrong turn he didnt know about, the police officer asked him to turn off his music, then sprayed him with mace then shot him 3 times. The trigger happy cop is still a police officer and my friend is dead. Yeah the law makes a lot of sense now dont it?

Every thing that comes out of your mouth is law this thief that.. good for you. If we want to say "he should have protected/encrypted his wi-fi" then by gods he probably should. Why do you have to keep saying its against the law everytime we say the owner should use common sense? WE heard you once, now let people continue with their beliefs as far as why we think this is right or wrong.

Law is always gonna be behind technology but the basis of law, property rights, ownership, etc. don't chg often and they will be used as the basis for new law... that's what you learn in law school... i.e. there are diff between a cart and horses and a truck, however the basic function and motion of each is very similiar therefore courts will use "case law" or "common law" (precedent, stare decisis "let the decision stand", law that has already been established by prior decisions) as oppossed to statutes (laws defined by legislatures and given a specific definition) as the foundation to start from when establishing new law...
i realize you are being facetious but you are not entirely wrong... when you own "real property" (land and all things attached) you own it from the center of the earth to the heavens above... there have been many actions won where very tall buildings "steal" the sunshine from adjoining land...

you have broken the law when you discarded the candy wrapper, it has no inate value anyway, so you have no rights to it whatsoever...

yes if you give away a great idea before copyrighting it, anyone is free to use it...
totally wrong as i pointed out before... if i leave my laptop in a public place (stupid i grant you) that does not give anyone the "right" to steal it, it is still my property to which you have no rights whatsoever unless i give them to you... i have no obligation to protect my property... on the contrary, i have every right to expect that no one will mess with it and if they do, they will be committing a crime...

by the same token, if you steal something, the owner has no responsibility to prosecute you (there are exceptions)...

ignorance of the law or of your law breaking is no excuse and no court has ever held that it is... it is assumed that all people know all laws, although we all know it's not true...

lol the Chief Justice of the NC Supreme Court was convicted of illegal recording of a phone call - chit happens to us all...

of course they do and it happens all the time...
wrong, laws are to protect the ignorant as well as everyone else... if this wasn't so, con artists and other frauds would be rewarded...
again, leaving your car in a public place with the door open and the keys in the ignition is NOT "the same as saying its free"...

well unless you lied when you said you read my other posts, then you saw where i've said several times
ALL WIRELESS HARDWARE SHOULD COME FROM THE MANUFACTURER WITH ENCRYPTION TURNED ON...
prolly 90+% of users don't have a clue about it so let's protect if for them... the way it is now is like cars coming w/ hidden locks and not tellin' ppl about them...

this should all be academic in a few years anyway because of new technology coming out or so my friends tell me... i'm a software guy so my knowledge of hardware is limited, damn limited lol

please don't get so upset over this stuff, it's just talk... we all see the probs and hopefully they will be fixed... i just enjoy a good debate and sharing what little knowledge i possess... this is not personal with me at all... hell i haven't even been here in several mons i don't think...

Thats funny, heres a concept for you. You say That if i drop a candy wrapper that is mine on the ground, I am breaking the law and teh person who picks it up is also stealing?

You say that candy wrapper has no value, so then its ok?

Your contradicting yourself. Your logic says that if i set an empty soda can on the sidewalk, and someone takes it then they are stealing from me. Even if i am not there.

Then

You say I am breaking the law, so then its not stealing to take something that is mine.

Then you say its because the wraper, or Can has no value... well guess what. everything has value.

So then lets use your logic once more, If i toss a soda can on the sidewalk and someone picks it up and recycles it and gets 5 cents for it. But it was my 5 cents... so they are a thief (your logic #1). Your contradictory logic then states that i am the criminal for putting on the side walk to begin with.

How is this different from sending out wireless signals ONTO public property. The ower is sending out a signal non encrypted (throwing a soda can) and somone walking by uses it to send an email from their electronic device using tiny bit of bandwith (recycles can for 5 cents) . Your logic states that because the wrapper or can was worth so little its not stealing AND that the person who threw it onto the public property is breaking the law.


You see there is a flaw in your logic along with contradictions.

Its also interesting that you use the "leave keys in car" analogy to prove your point, considering you were laughing at that as being a horrible example earlier when it was brought up. And now your using it. lol

And by the way there is no difference in the analogy of leaving a soda can out on the side walk and leaving a laptop or money out on the side walk. The can or money is still yours, but putting it there would be against the law (your own example). If someone takes it it is also against the law... but wait its not unless its worth a lot right? i mean this is your logic here. So then its only illegal to use if its worth a lot.. i mean cops wont go after someone who took a soda can worth 5 cents, but they will go after someone who sends an email on a wireless network... which probably cost the owner .001 cents to send.

Geez budy make up your mind and your logic.

no one is justifying stealing, they are justifying their beliefs based on something thats illogical and often unclear.

Like a parent is held responsible for their children, so too is the Wireless network admin for his network/signal. This is what i believe. By many forms of philosophy, what we believe can often be considered Law, though not upholdable in any american court thats for sure.