Is It Ethical to “Steal” Wi-Fi?
Posted on January 4th, 2008 by mikull
The ethics of “stealing” a WiFi connection from arstechnica.com: Interesting article about the question of morality when it comes to lifting a little wireless that technically doesn’t belong to you. They lay it out like this:
It’s time to put an end to this silliness. Using an open WiFi network is no more “stealing” than is listening to the radio or watching TV using the old rabbit ears. If the WiFi waves come to you and can be accessed without hacking, there should be no question that such access is legal and morally OK.
Check out the rest of the article for greater detail and analyzation.
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Is "Stealing" Wi-Fi Unethical?
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Lifehacker stole my poll ( http://lifehacker.com/340716/the-ethics-of-wi+fi-stealing ) …dammit. My complaints are ironic, considering I steal content from them. This time it appears I’m linking to them, so you can see how the same poll is doing on another blog.
So um - yeah I think that this is really not considered stealing. Since none of the WiFi specifications have a place for a “This is free - please use this” descriptor for your WiFi signal then it is safe to assume that the distributor of said WiFi signal wants you to use said signal - freely. Otherwise they would have secured it - No?