Sunbelt BLOG: WarXing
It's interesting to see a legal opinion on the items relating to wireless networking..
the opinion seems to be "don't connect to someone else's wireless and if you do don't download a lot of traffic"
My (and IANAL) opinion is that this line of thinking applies if the person is aware that they're connecting to a network that they shouldn't, but there are two points which make this a lot less clear.
1) there are a number of legitmately free wireless networks and more municipal wi-fi connections appear to be being setup. So how is a non-technical user meant to know whether the network they've connected to is free or not?
2) Operating system and client software behaviour may not help. windows xp (pre-sp2) will by default connect to wireless networks that are available, so is a user responsible if that connection is made..?
And where a case where someone has deliberately and knowingly connected to a wireless network that they shouldn't have, how is the legal system meant to determine that they did know and didn't think that they'd connected to a legitimately free network...?
