>>Do you shoplift to save money on groceries and clothes too?<<
There really is a lot of judgmental idiocy on FR these days.
I actually have to click on an “accept terms and conditions” page before I access. What I am doing is completely permissible. I am not stealing anything.
Like the cops in the OP story, you may want to get your facts straight before coming in with both barrels.
I thought people were jumping to conclusions. After all, a lot of companies offer free internet if you use their stores, and there was not nearly enough information to know that’s not what was happening here.
In fact, I expected RobRoy would come back and explain how he had spoken with his good-neighbor business, who had told him it was OK to use the internet, after all he used their store so it was a friendly relationship.
On the other hand, having to click on an “accept terms and conditions” doesn’t mean anything. It certainly doesn’t mean you are allowed to use the internet. What did the “terms and conditions” say? For example, many hotels I stay in give free internet, you have to accept the terms and conditions first. The terms and conditions state that you are staying in the hotel.
So sure, anybody who lived near the hotel COULD log in and “accept the terms and conditions”, but they would be lying because they aren’t staying in the hotel.
I imagine McDonalds and other eateries have the same type of “terms and conditions”, that say the connection is for their customers.
So yes, if you are hooking into someone else’s internet, and you haven’t received permission from them, you could be found to be stealing. They could find your mac address in their logs, call the police, and you could get arrested for it, and charged with theft.
When deciding whether something I’m doing makes “sense” morally and ethically, one point I find is useful is to ask “what if everybody did the same thing”. In this case, if everybody in your community stopped buying their own internet, and instead all tried to use this local business internet, the business wouldn’t have enough bandwidth for their jobs, and nobody would get a youtube video because you’d all be fighting over a small slice of bandwidth.
Anyway, if you did get permission, that would be a better way to silence those who posted here saying you were doing something wrong. And if you are sure you are doing nothing wrong, you should go tell the business.
If you are afraid to tell the business that you are using their internet, it probably means that you do think there might be something wrong with what you are doing.