Authored by: billsimmon on Tuesday, June 27 2006 @ 10:39 AM

Brooke, it's the "theft of service" that gets my goat. Let's accept for argument's sake that the guy was Charlie Manson with a laptop. It may be perfectly reasonable to arrest the guy for loitering, trespassing, stalking, whatever... But it's not unreasonable for one to assume a completely unprotected network with no indication that it's for "customers only" is fine to use. True, the guy was warned about it, and if that warning contained words to the effect of "please don't use our internet without buying something first," as opposed to merely "you creep me out, get lost," then again, I can see a case for calling it "theft."

My problem basically boils down to this: many people operate under an a priori position of "duh, of course leeching wifi is theft--they're not paying for it and someone else is," when often, open wifi networks are open because the networks' owners don't care if others use them, or actually actively want to share their networks. This Communist attitude is prevelent enough that if you are a cafe owner and expect customers to buy something before using the wifi, you should tell them that specifically. Dan's analogy with the outdoor seating is close, but even in that case there is a clear, accepted norm. With wifi, the social rules are different and not everyone is hip to that so stuff like this happens.

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