If I’m using WiFi and my connection is slowed because of the thieves, I’m not getting the performance I paid for, the thieves are getting that performance.
I keep my personal WiFi encrypted and protected and only on when I need it, so it’s not that big a deal. I up/download giant chunks of instrument data, so speed is important.
But if you are using your own setup that’s not protected, notice how slooow it gets sometimes (like when someone is downloading a movie, a CD-load of music, or a block of pictures in RAR compression.
The article seems to feel that if you leave your front door accidentally unlocked, you should not complain when your stuff is stolen.
Plus, what IP address is seen? The router, right? Not the laptop or computer node, correct me if I'm wrong on this. If it is the wireless router that is "seen" as the IP address, who gets the responsibility for illegal actions, like downloading illegal music or pictures?
Years ago, there was a public ad campaign admonishing people not to leave the keys in their cars ignition. “Help keep a boy from going bad” or something like that. In those days there were still plenty of people who knew what’s what, and the outcry caused the ads to be pulled.
Not anymore. Everything is turned on its head.
what IP address is seen? The router, right?
quite right.
“...if you leave your front door accidentally unlocked, you should not complain when your stuff is stolen.”
I don’t think that’s an apt analogy. It’s more like - if you throw 10,000 pennies up in the air and they scatter in all directions and fall into others’ backyards, don’t complain if they get picked up.
The owner of the wireless router is transmitting. So, if anyone is trespasssing first, it’s him. But these analogies from the world of physical property and physical access just don’t work that well for the issues surrounding intellectual property, information assets, bandwidth, etc...
Packets destined for your particular router are for all users of that router’s subnet and are addressed to the router. The packets contain your individual machine’s MAC address, though, so assuming no black hat shenanigans sorting router traffic by machine is trivial.
I believe there was a case recently where that exact situation happened and the owner of the router (and, by default, owner of the service) was held responsible for his neighbor illegally downloading material to his (the neighbor) computer. This was because, like you said, the router's IP address was the IP address used to download the material. Sad thing is, the guy who owned the service had no idea that his neighbor was stealing the connection.
Nodes behind the gateway have private, non-routable IP addresses and will appear to the public Internet using the IP address of the gateway.
If it is the wireless router that is "seen" as the IP address, who gets the responsibility for illegal actions, like downloading illegal music or pictures?
The point of contact for the connection, or in other words, if you are subscribing to a cable Internet or DSL and pay the bills, you are legally responsible.
And, with the recent RIAA insanity, it appears that the point of contact will be held liable for any illegalities that occur, regardless of whether he or she committed the act in question.