Quote:
Originally Posted by devilsadvocate
USC Title 18 Part 1 Chap. 47 Para. 1030.
U.S. legal precedent has consistently shown a network to be similarly defined.
It's illegal in the U.S., whether anyone wants it to be or not. How about if, instead of popping off with ill-informed opinion, someone (other than me) shows actual law.
I don't even pretend to understand how the law works in the U.K. (though ours is loosely based on it), but in the U.S. the unlocked-house analogy is valid, no matter which state you live in or which mountain you live on.
|
Speaking as a US lawyer, my "curbstone opinion" is that this law does not cover what we are talking about here, which I understand to be "unauthorized access to an unprotected wireless network for non-criminal purposes." But a little bit of net surfing should convince most people that there are plenty of states with laws that do cover it. It has convinced me, at any rate.
The legal question at the bottom is whether maintaining a completely open network amounts to "implied consent" by the network owner to the free use of the network. I would certainly look into raising that as a defense if I had a client charged with a criminal violation based on nothing more than hopping on an open network. Depending on the exact facts, that might be successful, but based on my sense of the general drift of the law, it's not the way to bet.
The truth is, most people who do this won't get caught, and those that do probably won't be prosecuted without there being some other factor involved.
My personal opinion is that if the network is completely open, anyone should be able to use it so long as it's just being used as a portal to the internet. But in general, that does not seem to be the law.