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 ...
Good point. Not all Free access are equal, just some more equal than others.....
You are scary.
That is silly. All you need is to give the customer a simple key. If customers are too stupid to figure out how to enter the key, they shouldn’t be using a computer anyway. I often stop and go in to a Taco Bell, McDonalds, etc and they have free service all the time. No one complains. It is a service, and they gain customers from it. This coffee shop will probably look like a tightwad to his *paying* customers now.
The coffee shop never told him it was free he saw an open network and started using it. This is stealing as the coffee shop pays for bandwidth.
I have seen business advertise free wifi. These busnesses can’t have it both ways now can they?
Yes because its for their customers!
I don't see how a judge would proceed with the case. The coffee shop offered free wifi. They "authorized" the public to use their service in that simple act. This was not unauthorized access.
If the coffee shop had hired a band to entertain their customers, and the perp was observed to have been standing outside on the sidewalk and listening to the music, is that “theft of services” also?
Was the ssid being broadcast ‘free wifi’? are you privy to facts I am not.
It's amazing that they won't even consider charging someone with trespass, but they will go thru the gyrations of creating this inane law.
EXACTLY!!! They want it both ways. Give it away and then take it back??
Unless there was a sign clearly posted on the business which indicated that its WiFi service was authorized only for paying customers, I'd argue that the open security parameters and wide signal area of the service constituted a de facto grant of access authorization to the public.
In addition, the actual value of the bandwidth used by this man was minuscule and he clearly lacked any malicious intent. Those facts should have factored heavily in his favor.
That is not the legal definition, if I buy a headset that works with your telephone system I cant make long distnace calls on your buck.
“I just see it as tacit approval for the general pubic to use your services since they are unlocked and have left your property. If I have to come onto your property to use them, that is a different deal.”
This attitude shows a disrespect for something someone else, not you, has bought and paid for.
It doesn’t take rocket surgery to see where disrespect of private property belonging to others leads.
That is what fries me about this whole issue, those that do it are often in your face rude about it being their “right” and come alone with all sorts of weak excuses why.
Remember an excuse is the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie.
Tommy,
Not all systems take keys the same way. to put my windows box with a lynksys car all I do is type the pass phrase, if I want to put an apple on I have to type the full encrypted number oh yea I can see it now.
Here is your coffee and btw if you want to use our wireless access our hey is 12bdc32cfed452...
That reminds me of a famous case where a man was charged with illegally intercepting a satellite TV signal. He told the court, "If you don't want me to receive your signal, keep your damn signal out of my back yard."
You would need a headset that would crack the encryption that came with my headset.
What was the outcome of that case?
I think a better analogy would be using their parking lot without patronizing the store. A virtually unlimited number of people could listen the the band, but the WiFi network will only accomodate a limited number of concurrent users, much like the parking lot.
It is understood that every AM/FM broadcast out there is a unicast service provided for that purpose. With Wireless it is not understood because many do not secure their networks
Secondly me using the AM/FM signals do not cost the broadcaster any more than if I do not, with wiress the host are paying for bandwidth which is reduced when this thief jumps on their property without consent and steals service.
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