If somebody sent out a wireless data connection signal without requiring a log-on with notification that it would incur a charge, that's their problem and they need to eat the costs.
(If this guy can be proven to have deliberately cracked into a pay-per-use data channel, then by all means throw the book at him. The key words are "proven" and "deliberately".)
If you subscribe to interntional roaming on your cellphone, you aren’t charged international rates until you start using the phone on a foreign signal. Perhaps in this article, the data card picked up the ship’s satellite-to-wireless signals.