OPW – Other People’s WiFi
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011Nicholas Jackson of the Atlantic has a quite interesting blogpost up entitled “What’s Yours Is Mine: Using a Wireless Network You Don’t Own.” Is that theft? Or is it simply OK, no big deal?
The immediate impetus to his post is a recent ruling in the Netherlands, to the effect that that is in fact just no big deal, even if the wireless network you’re using happens to be secured, so that you have succeeded in breaking that security to use it! A controversial point-of-view, to be sure, which has also set off a mini-firestorm of discussion over on Slashdot.
Many of the legal issues here are somewhat subtle, meaning that reliance on machine-translation of the original Dutch report on the judge’s ruling is likely to be misleading. But that is where EuroSavant can step in; what follows is my own human-translated version of that piece, as a contribution to the discussion.
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