Posted on 05/31/2007 12:51:13 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
A Michigan man has been fined $400 and given 40 hours of community service for accessing an open wireless Internet connection outside a coffee shop.
Under a little known state law against computer hackers, Sam Peterson II, of Cedar Springs, Mich., faced a felony charge after cops found him on March 27 sitting in front of the Re-Union Street Café in Sparta, Mich., surfing the Web from his brand-new laptop.
Last week, Peterson chose the fine as part of a jail-diversion program.
"I think a lot of people should be shocked, because quite honestly, I still don't understand it myself," Peterson told FOXNews.com "I do not understand how this is illegal."
His troubles began in March, a couple of weeks after he had bought his first laptop computer.
Peterson, a 39-year-old tool maker, volunteer firefighter and secretary of a bagpipe band, wanted to use his 30-minute lunch hour to check e-mails for his bagpipe group.
He got on the Internet by tapping into the local coffee shop's wireless network, but instead of going inside the shop to use the free Wi-Fi offered to paying customers, he chose to remain in his car and piggyback off the network, which he said didn't require a password.
He used the system on his lunch breaks for more than a week, and then the police showed up.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Anything can be argued but the law is pretty clean an open door is not an invitation to steal.
You mean the bandwidth that the shop offered free to the public to use? Is that the bandwidth you mean?
Simple solution: charge the man with trespass. He’s on the premises & he’s not a customer. Tell him to leave (disconnect). If he doesn’t, call the cops.
This is a waste of the state’s legal resources.
The difference is that the coffee house is transmitting the signal outside the confines of its property.
Big difference from someone entering the confines of the property to steal something...
You are way off base here. You are out-thinking yourself big time. Your analogy about locking your house versus locking your access point is apples and oranges.
The coffee shop offers free access. If they want that locked down then they should lock it down. It is very simple. This person is not hacking. He is simply using free wireless access.
Granted he is a mooch but nothing more. To say this is the equivalent of stealing is ridiculous. Dont make such a big deal out of it.
Nope, I just bought this headset out of the box stood withing 500 feet of 133 Robinson st and viola! a dial tone.. I did nothing more than this guy..
The guy was wrong, but the penalty was too harsh.
He should have at least gone in and bought a coffee.
For the record they DIDNT complain.
Then you would be accessing a device with a security flaw, not an absence of security by design.
This guy was not merely looking, he was touching (transmitting over their frequency).
Its pretty clear that bandwidth is intended for customers..
They even said they would have been happy if he had come into the store to use the WiFi even without a purchase.
If you are too stupid to understand that it is not theft to avail ones self of a service offered free to the public then you are too stupid to discuss this with.
And no, you are not getting an apology. I save my apologies for when I am wrong.
You all appear to be “jack booted thugs” at heart. You are scary!
PS. I could be wrong in my analysis. It may be that y’all are too stupid to understand that taking something given away for free to the public is not stealing. And you may be too stupid to understand that is exactly what is being discussed on this thread. If this is what is going on then I apologize for calling you statists or near fascists. I replace those words with stupid. Either way you are SCARY!
This forces me to ask the question: "What then were the police doing there?" Who complained if not the store manager? It seems like the police were there to nail THAT guy. What did this stakeout cost?
Sounds like ‘the rest of the story’ is an overzealous prosecutor, especially if the shop owners wasn’t intersted in prosecuting. IF the shop owners were intent on nailing the guy, it’d be a different story.
You also gotta love this happening in Michigan, the most economically depressed state in the country right now. Their legislature has nothing better to do than make a high penalty crime of signing into someone’s free wifi.
Don’t most crimes involve a state of mind knowledge or intent to commit a crime? This sounds like an under-the-radar law that most people never heard of, not like burglary or rape or murder and other obvious crimes. Sounds like this guy still doesn’t understand how he came to break the law.
Another shop owner was concerned that the guy was stalking someone (parking in the same place everyday without getting out) so he inquired and the guy told him that he was using the coffee shop's internet.
No one has any right whatsoever to anything bought and paid for with the blood sweat and tears of another.
That is the bedrock on which free nations are built.
You need to stop and think a bit about the concept of private property being the total opposite of statism/totalitarianism and then you will realise how stupid your accusation of me having “statist, near fascist views” is.
Don’t be stupid. The EXACT opposite was proven in this case. Geez people... don’t stoop to lying on top of everything else.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.