Wireless Internet freeloading might become a crime
Clueless in Maryland
IF A LAW proposed last week in Maryland gets passed, intentionally using a neighbour's wireless Internet connection without permission will be a crime.
State delegate LeRoy E. Myers, Jr. said his bill aims to distinguish between intentional theft and accidental use. He told the story that a neighbour of his unintentionally used his wireless network and said that he would not want to see such inadvertent wireless trespassing prosecuted like computer hacking, which is typically a felony punishable with stiff fines and lengthy prison time.
He cited the story of some man in Michigan who was prosecuted for parking outside a coffee shop and freeriding on its wireless network to check his email.
The man was charged with a felony and faced a fine of up to $10,000 and up to five years in prison.
As an alternative, the man chose a diversion program, a $400 fine, spending 40 hours in community service and six months probation.
Myers' draft bill defines intentional, unauthorised access to another person's computer, network, database or software as a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and up to three years in jail.
The Maryland public defenders office filed opposition to Myers' bill. It observed that wireless Internet access is becoming common in neighbourhoods and that proving that unauthorised wireless access was intentional would be difficult.
Instead, the public defenders office proposed that Internet account owners might more effectively secure their wireless networks with help from Internet service providers or vendors. It didn't suggest that a law is needed for that. µ
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L'Inq
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Comments
Insanity once Again
These laws are insanity. Yes, I think that there should be protections for people who secure their networks, but open networks are an invitation for people to log on-- an open house, so to speak. It should be up to me, as a broadcaster, to limit access if I don't want anyone receiving my signals, not up to everyone else to not log into an open network.Take the fellow out in front of the coffee house (I can't believe he lost that case, WTF was that jury thinking?)-- do you think that he even knew that it was a crime? Most of the coffee houses here have unsecured networks and I wouldn't think twice about just popping on their network if I needed to check some email. I can't wait until police start setting up open networks just to ensnare those malicious surfers and email-checkers and make our streets safe once again.
Lock up the ISPs
IMHO it is just common sense to distinguish between an intention and an accident. But there is more going on.Of course the Internet Service Providers would like to see that everybody locks up their wireless network, because they fear the competition from a free Internet based entirely on our wifi devices. Free as in Bier and Speech. Think about a mesh where network traffic is hopping from neighbour to neighbour to its final destination, without an ISP between, with all the bandwidth avaiable through mutliple parallel wireless instances. Not really a big surprise that some parts of the government are already in the ISPs' pocket (or is it vice versa?!).
hacks
Yea, i remember that maryland dude. He's called l33tz0r and he has mad rep in the 'hacking' community!Wireless Internet identity assumption becomes a legal inconvenience
Ref. for instance the current FBI porn sting. This is how the legal mind works. Make it illegal, it therefore doesn't happen, therefore no more inconvenience.3 years for a misdemeanor?
"as a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and up to three years in jail"How does that square with the common definition that a felony is a crime carrying a sentence greater than one year?
The nice thing about unsecured wireless...
...if you want to download pirate torrent data, the best thing to do is hook up a wireless router and just feign ignorance. "It must have been the neighbor kid" when your ISP sends threatening e-mail letters. "How the heck do you secure these blasted confounded things, tarnation!"I think wireless is the best way to indulge in copyright piracy.
Huh.
Why didn't they charge the guy with illegally sniffing coffee odours too? What's with the liberal lax laws? ;)Setting up wifi is childs play
Bottomline: If the moron who set up the wifi network can't READ the instructions on any router expressly telling them to enable security features, then they are willing sharing the connection for public access.Worst. Lawyer. Ever.
Why didn't the lawyer argue that anyone with the capability to log and identify the MAC address and e-mails of the guy that was prosecuted for using the mobile network, must also therefore know how to secure their wireless network -therefore, given that they didn't do that and would have known it meant anyone could use it, they can't complain later if anyone did use it.
Yup
just another reason why the USA has more people behind bars per capita than any other country in the world!Possible life sentence?
Thanks to Michigan's Three Strikes law, a "reformed criminal" who got in trouble a few times back in the 70's or 80's could probably face a life term if he's busted now for freeloading. That's taxpayer dollars at work folks!