Is Leeching Wi-Fi Unethical?
Ars Technica reports on an all-but-defeated bill in the Maryland legislature which would have made it a criminal offense to leech someone else’s wireless signal. I have two bones to pick with the report.
First is the assertion that if people don’t want others to use their wireless connection, then they should lockout their network using WAN or WEP. By this logic, it only stands to reason that total stangers are welcome to enter your house so long as the door is unlocked. The FOSS crowd will denounce this assertion and say that I am comparing apples and oranges. I am not so sure.
The second assertion is that some people want to create free wi-fi hotspots and so they choose to leave their networks unsecure. How, then, are we to know the difference between a network that has been left unsecured in order to grant public access, and a private network that, for whatever reason, remains unsecure? Hmm. Perhaps if you have the tech savvy to create a free wi-fi hotspot, you can choose an appopriate name for your network so as to let people know that it is open for public use. Or would that be too easy?
I realize that the issue of wi-fi leeching is problematic. I know that networks can be accessed accidentally, or that there is often no way to be sure that an unsecured network has been purposefully left open. At the same time, I also know that the majority of leeching involves tech-savvy wi-fi users who take advantage of the ignorance of those who are less versed in the ways of network security. Criminal? No. Unethical? Perhaps.
