> On Sep 21, 2004, at 12:55 PM, Crispin Cowan wrote: > >> Warren Harrison wrote: >> >>> actually, there is an Oregon statue: >>> 164.125 Theft of services. (1) A person commits the crime of >>> theft of services if: >>> (a) With intent to avoid payment therefor, the person obtains >>> services that are available only for compensation, by force, threat, >>> deception or other means to avoid payment for the services; or >> >> But what if the "service" is *not* intended for pay? I.e. I'm hanging >> around some street corner, and my wifi picks up the WAP for "Joe's >> Auto Insurance" located above me on the 2nd floor. Joe clearly is not >> offering any WAP service for pay. It is ambiguous whether he intends >> to just share his connection for free, or if he meant to close it >> down and forgot. And really mucking the intent is if Joe didn't even >> know this was an issue, and thus had formed no actual intent either >> way. >> > > I agree that using an open access point is unclear as to whether or > not that constitutes theft of service. > > One analogy that seems applicable is say Joe has a small home with a > walkway to the driveway and a sidewalk along the front yard. When Joe > comes home from work the walkway is too dark for him to find his keys > so he installs a light. The light is bright enough to light up the > walk, the front yard, and part of the sidewalk. > > Bob is walking down the sidewalk at night and wants to read the piece > of paper in his pocket. He stops at the right spot on the sidewalk so > that Joe's light shines on his piece of paper. The light that bob used > could be said to be unneeded or even a side-effect since it was going > to hit the sidewalk and not be used for Joe's original intent of > lighting up the walkway to the front door. Is this theft? > > Possibly the best answer is to have a policy indicator in the beacon > packet that states the intent of the access point owner. Since we > don't have this in 802.11b, the next best thing could be to use an > essid of a community wireless group where its fairly well established > that the standard essid of the group is meant to indicate that free > open access is allowed. > > don
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue Sep 21 2004 - 15:23:51 PDT