Kenneth Emmons wrote: >Whether or not "Joe" wants to give Internet service away for free is >irrelevant. You would be stealing it from the ISP provider. The "spirit >of the law" is if it's a service you need to pay for it. If are you >receiving something you aren't paying for, you are stealing. > > That is not correct. It depends on the ISP's Terms of Service (TOS). For instance, most ISP's TOS permits Joe to grant access to guests. Some ISP's permit Joe to grant anonymous access to passer's by and neighbors. See the http://personaltelco.net/ project, where several Oregon-local ISPs actually do have TOS that permits you to run an open WAP, so long as you are not charging money to grant such access. For example, here is the Easystreet.com page on this issue http://www.easystreet.com/services/personal_telco.html Just about no ISP will let you re-sell your access, unless you purchase a reseller's connection, which costs a lot more. Which brings us back to the question of Joe's intent. There exist real scenarios in which someone like Joe explicitly intends to grant wide-open access, and the ISP's TOS permit exactly that. But what is the legal status of a war driver if they don't actually know that to be the case? Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. http://immunix.com/~crispin/ CTO, Immunix http://immunix.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue Sep 21 2004 - 15:11:15 PDT