Jonathan's Universe

Posts Tagged ‘wi-fi’

Hello. Been a few days. But I never said I’d write in it everyday.

On to my opinions, which face it… are totally awesome.

Okay, the view that’d I’d like to cover today is about Wi(reless)Fi(delity). This is the type of signal that is sent to allow computers to connect to the internet without being wired to a modem. It’s common in homes and some office buildings. Simply put, anyone who is within a reasonable distance to your wireless router can connect to that router wirelessly and in essence connect to the internet for free.

But, there are ways around this. By being the administrator of my home router, I have the ability to encrypt that wireless signal. Some routers even allow for a login challenge (Basically, people connecting to the router are stuck at a login page until they complete the login successfully). Here is where the controversy starts.. if I make no reasonable attempt to secure my network with some sort of encryption key or login challenge, do I have the right to get upset when my neighbor uses my internet? My opinion is flat out: No.

Here is my logic. Plain and simple, airwaves are owned by the people. If Joe Shmoe takes a wireless router and broadcasts a WiFi signal along the airwaves with no sort of security (encryption, logon challenge, both) on it, it is considered a free broadcast. If I can freely connect to it, it is a free broadcast. It is the same logic with radio broadcasts. You say that “it is unfair to use someone else is paying for!” Well, radio broadcasters have to pay for licenses for music, material, etc and need to pay for staff and equipment, yet that is a free public broadcast.

Again, I’d like to reiterate the fact that airwaves are owned by the public. Free transmission on these airwaves is considered to be publically owned. Also many coffee shops and fast food places do offer free wifi. So how do we know that Joe Shmoe isn’t offering this internet freely; it’s a stretch but a fairly good argument.

I am in no way endorsing cracking closed networks. Once there is an encryption key in place and effort is required to connect to it (bruteforcing, packet analyzing/sniffing, etc), that is actually considered compromising a closed network, thus illegal. If you’re stupid enough to leave your wireless network open to all within a close distance of your house, you have no right to complain.

Also, as a little disclaimer, if there is a clear-cut law in your community about using foreign wi-fi resources, please abide by it… and don’t give the court my blog and say I gave you permission and said it was alright.