A man has been arrested after being spotted allegedly sitting in a street with a laptop using someone else's unsecured wireless connection.
The man arrested in a street in west London is at least the third person to be accused of breaching the law by taking internet service without permission.
The Communications Act 2003 says a "person who (a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service, and (b) does so with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service, is guilty of an offence".
For god's sake, who told the owner not to password protect his signal?!
personally I think its dishonest because somebody is paying for it and the thief knows this and has not asked for permission to use it.
ReplyDeleteYes, but think about it this way. You've left your car on, with the door open and the keys in - you can't expect it not to be stolen, do you?
ReplyDeleteThis is not like using pirated software where you had no intention of payng for the software anyway, so no one gets hurt.
ReplyDeleteIn this case you are not only slowing down the legitimate users internet speed, if they have a monthly cap (as all accounts do in Jordan), you are using it up.
So I'd say if you are doing it intentionally its dishonest.
I have a wireless network at home, but rather than password protect it which will be hassle when leaving and coming back to the house, I just used a clever feature on the router, which allows you to specify the MAC address of the PCs allowed to conenct to the wireless network. No password needed. However the traffic will not be encrypted which is fine with me, I'm not transmitting secrets.
Even if stealing something is easy, it does not make it ok, halal or legal. It is still forbidden.
ReplyDeleteYes I guess so, amo bilal, but its still good to quickly check your e-mails or something. =P
ReplyDeleteJust joking.