[general_re]

Bad analogy, because in the one case you lose your car, in the other case you lose nothing.

Sure you do - time, if nothing else. If you and I are splitting my bandwidth, my online activities now take twice as long as they would have otherwise. As well, your garden-variety wardriver is almost certainly not an authorized user of the ISP's resources, and hence is receiving a service he is not entitled to receive.

[Physicist]

If you and I are splitting my bandwidth, my online activities now take twice as long as they would have otherwise.

Almost nobody saturates their bandwidth like that. Unless both the wardriver and you are continuously transferring large files, you're unlikely to notice any performance hit.

As well, your garden-variety wardriver is almost certainly not an authorized user of the ISP's resources, and hence is receiving a service he is not entitled to receive.

That's the real issue. It's similar to the Napster argument: for each person who puts 1000 albums on his laptop, a record company claims a $20,000 loss, because that's what it would have cost to buy all that music at retail prices. But that's not quite right, either, because most of the music available on the internet is clearly stolen, whereas many of the "promiscuous" wireless ports are intended for use by the public, and there's no way to distinguish public from private.

[rwfromkansas]

I share the same connection with 3 other computers when at school. There is no noticeable slowdown unless we are all downloading files, which almost never happens. Normal websurfing doesn't slow down noticeably.