You're clearly not a computer person. A WiFi node can be run in locked mode or in unlocked mode, as this one was, as a customer convenience. If unlocked, the owner can have a notice come up, "For use of our customers only...". This coffee shop not only did not do that, but did not press charges against this heinous perpetrator. A messianic sphincter DA had to take special pains to spend the taxpayer funds it took to pursue this case.
“You’re clearly not a computer person. A WiFi node can be run in locked mode or in unlocked mode, as this one was, as a customer convenience. If unlocked, the owner can have a notice come up, “For use of our customers only...”. This coffee shop not only did not do that, but did not press charges against this heinous perpetrator. A messianic sphincter DA had to take special pains to spend the taxpayer funds it took to pursue this case.”
I’m enough of a computer person to know exactly what you are talking about.
Now;
A car can be in locked mode or in unlocked mode. Being unlocked does not give automatic rights to any walking by to use it without permission.
Like someone has said the owner could put a sign on the car could giving a passerby those rights, but the owner can take the sign off any time he wants. He has control of the car - because he owns it.
The ISP makes a deal with a subscriber for internet access, and the suscriber becoming the sole owner of internet access he pays for. The suscriber may or man not choose to use wireless distribution of that interent access. How he chooses to control any wireless distribution of the internet access he is paying for does not take away from the fact he is the sole owner of what he has paid for. He can choose to allow “free” access but any using that “free” access do not really have a “right” to it since the “free” access is still the owners private property to limit however he wants.
My gripe is too many people think they have a right to things owned by others. You see it everywhere, even in this thread. That increasing disrespect for private property is not healthy for a free society.