Archived from groups: alt.internet.wireless (
More info?)
In article <kB3Dc.2967$q24.1800@newssvr23.news.prodigy.com>,
gary <pleasenospam@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
:"Walter Roberson" <roberson@ibd.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca> wrote in message
:news:cbi67g$qcu$1@canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca...
:> "sort of" isn't meaningful in law. It either is or it isn't.
:If someone leaves a wifi network wide open, and someone else knowingly
:associates to that network and uses the ISP's services without the ISP's
:agreement or knowledge, then there are two parties afoul of the law.
:The owner of the network is certainly violating his contract, whether he is
:aware he is doing it or not. The third party piggybacking onto the network
:*may be* committing theft of service, which is a matter of criminal, not
:contract, law.
No-where in my posting did I say that it was impossible to use a
wireless network to break a criminal law. My posting said that
breaking a contract is [except in certain restricted situations] a
*civil* law matter, not a *criminal* law matter. Penalties in civil
law can be pretty strong (e.g., divorce settlements can last for
decades), so I am not by any means saying "Oh, go ahead and do it,
you know you want to!!": I am saying that breaching a contract is
not "illegal" in the sense that most people think of "illegal" meaning.
:If the owner of the network is reselling the ISP's services,
r simply knowingly making them available for general use, he *may be
:*committing theft of service, in addition to violating a contract.
Well, it could be that a judge would rule that, but unless the
network owner found a way to exceed network usage limits beyond what
the owner could theoretically have used himself or herself, then
any good defence would, it is my belief, be able to get them off
the "theft" charge. "Theft of service" requires the obtaining of
services that one as no authorization for, or beyond the limit that
one was authorized for; if the owner made no move to interfere with
any caps or limiting settings that the company had put in place, then
I really don't think you could get a "theft of service" charge to stick.
However, if the contract is restrictive about who the customer may
allow to use the equipment, then there is a lot of precident in law
for damages for breach of contract... a civil matter.
But I'm not a judge, and there are a lot of different jurisdictions around
the world, so I wouldn't say that getting a criminal conviction in
such a case would be impossible. It seems -unlikely- to me.
:I liberally spice the preceding with "may be" because we all know from
:experience that we are capable of debating this until we wear the labels off
ur keys, without reaching any consensus. It will take a specific example of
:a successful prosecution to resolve it, and I have ample faith that someone
:will still insist that the judge's fingers were crossed.
Or we could end up with a case such as the one earlier this year in
which a judge in Canada ruled against the recording inddustry going
after music downloaders. All the headlines were about how supposedly
the judge had ruled the downloading music was legal in Canada. But if
you dug a little further into the story, it turns out that the judge
issued a long detailed decision that essentially said "The industry
was so sloppy about this whole case that finding the defendants guilty
would require severely trampling their rights. Now, here's what you
*should* have done to nail the downloaders to the wall. If you'd done
things -properly-, I wouldn't have had any problem convicting!"
--
Feep if you love VT-52's.
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