Posted on 06/02/2007 1:03:33 PM PDT by Sleeping Beauty
A Michigan cop, who'd obviously been hit over the head with a billy club one time too many, levied criminal charges against a man who used an open, public Wi-Fi network outside the cafe that was running it.
The dastardly computer criminal, Sam Peterson II, of Cedar Springs, Mich., chose to pay a $400 fine, do 40 hours of community service, and stay on probation six months.
Peterson has no criminal record. He's a 39-year-old toolmaker, volunteer firefighter, and secretary of a bagpipe band.
Peterson had gotten in the habit of checking e-mail on his lunch break in front of the Re-Union Street Cafe in Sparta, Mich. "[I]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," according to the article from Fox News. He did it on lunch breaks for more than a week.
Now, here's where the craziness starts.
Someone in a nearby barbershop saw Peterson's car pull up every day and sit in front of the coffee shop without anybody getting out.
A sane person would have knocked on Peterson's window and said, "Dude, I noticed you come here and sit in your car every day? What's up with that?"
But of course we live in paranoid times.
So the dummy in the barbershop called the cops.
Sparta Police Chief Andrew Milanowski asked Peterson where he got the Internet connection, and Petsron said from the cafe.
Now, the story so far is shocking enough, but it gets even more shocking:
Milanowski ruled out Peterson as a possible stalker of the attractive local hairdresser, but still felt that a law might have been broken.
"We came back and we looked up the laws and we figured if we found one and thought, 'Well, let's run it by the prosecutor's office and see what they want to do,'" Milanowski said.
Here's how that reads to me: They don't care about who's using Wi-Fi in Sparta, Mich. The police chief just didn't like the way Peterson parted his hair, and so he dug and dug and dug until he found something he could charge Peterson with.
Peterson copped a plea. If he'd fought it, he could have faced a sentence of up to five years in jail, and a $10,000 fine.
Sparta, Mich. residents, when you pay your tax bills, I want you to think about how this kind of nonsense is how your government is spending your money.
Laws like the Michigan law are pretty common, and they're just plain bad law.
A reasonable person encountering an open Wi-Fi connection will assume it's open until finding evidence otherwise. But most hacking laws assume the opposite -- you need to be told that you can use the Wi-Fi connection or else the law assumes you're a criminal.
In the real world, landowners are required to post their land as private property before accusing someone else of trespassing. The law correctly recognizes that you can't accuse people of crossing boundaries unless they're told where the boundaries. Laws governing Wi-Fi should be written similarly. If you want to keep trespassers off your network, you should password-protect it.
Its more like standing outside a restaurant with a live band and listening to the music without going in and paying for dinner. For me, what indicates that this charge is totally wrong, is the fact that the supposed “victim” didn’t have a problem with it. I could maybe understand if the victim was concerned or upset by the action.
If people steal bandwith from ISP providers the theft is costing the ISP customers and/or owners. The use of the service is not cost free.
“The case has surprised locals, including the owner of the barbershop that initially called police, as well as Donna May, owner of the coffee shop.
“He could have just come in the cafe, even if he didn’t have any money, I would let him get on it,” May said. The service is provided free to restaurant customers.”
The owner doesn’t seem to care, so why should anyone else?
I am amazed how few get this. Think of the coffee shop’s access to their ISP as going through a pipe of a certain diameter. The more connections, the more of the bandwidth is typically being used. Too much congestion causes delays due to dropped packets, retransmissions due to packet collisions, etc. It is definitely not free, and certainly can have an impact on legitimate users, especially if the person is downloading files, large emails, songs, etc.
The coffee shop pays for the service, and entices paying customers to use the service for free to attract business. The guy was stealing. It’s really that simple.
Doin' right ain't got no end...
You know people who have their phones on the OUTSIDE of their houses?
Must be a real kick in the pants when it rains, or when the kids leave the cell phone under the lilac bushes, again!
I guess it takes all kinds...
I was talking to a "jukie" the other day and and heard some fascinating anecdotal stuff about the RIAA and the juke box business.
Seems as though one of the guy's competitors was loading up his [the competitor's] boxes with pirated CDs, and the "jukie" reported this to the proper RIAA authorities, and got a big yawn back.
I was surprised, to say the least.
Did anyone even report a theft? In this case did the prosecutor just say he committed a crime against the state or the people of the state of Michgan? Who in the state of Michigan was harmed?
Did the coffee shop have a sign that said free; or only free if you buy something? Is it then really free or is it fales advertising?
You don’t want others using your Wi-Fi? Encrypt it. End of story.
Seems like the law doesn’t have to ask the coffee shop anything. And just how do they know whose WiFi net he’s freeloadin off of?
Just like the law does not need to ask a murder victims next-of-kin if they would like to press charges (or not.) Crime against the state!
Oh please, they ALLOWED people to “come pick their flowers” and they didn’t mind when they found out what he was doing. Dumb analogy.
Oh please, they ALLOWED people to “come pick their flowers” and they didn’t mind when they found out what he was doing. Dumb analogy.
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