I wrote a post asking if anyone had any comment requests and got a comment from Kevin.  Well, it wasn’t really a request for comment ideas but Kevin took it as such and asked me to speak about something he and I had talked about on the phone a while back. 

Is it OK to use someone else’s wireless access to the internet if you have the ability to do so?  This applies to all kinds of situations, but the basic theory here is that you live near someone who has not secured their wireless router.  You are close enough to use it.  Should you?

There are several ways to think about this.  Let’s take the pro-using side first.  To begin with, are you really stealing anything?  I mean, wireless internet bandwidth has no additional cost per additional user, at least to the individual paying for the subscription.  As long as the paying customer is able to use their internet connection as they see fit whenever they want (within the limits of whatever contract they agreed to with the internet provider), should they care if someone else uses any leftover bandwidth?  Probably not.  The internet provider shouldn’t really care.  The additional traffic is throttled to the limit of the bandwidth pipe they provide to the user and if the paying customer took up every bit of that bandwidth pipe they can’t say anything about it.  So that cost can’t really be argued, can it?  So, in these circumstances it really can’t hurt to steal wireless bandwidth you come across because there is no real impact to anyone.  Can that even be called stealing?  That’s like letting your neighbor water part of your lawn with overspray from a carelessly placed sprinkler.  If the neighbor with the wireless router really cared about protecting their bandwidth, couldn’t they have taken some steps to prevent you from accessing the network – such as a password on the router?

Of course, the devil’s advocate would then pop up and say that using another’s internet access is bad because there are always consequences.  When you siphon off some of the paying customer’s bandwidth you are taking up potentially unused bandwidth.  By taking this bandwidth you are increasing the load on the internet provider’s servers and driving up costs.  This will eventually result in the provider having to spend more on their servers and passing those costs on to the paying customers.  In this scenario there is a direct financial impact – easily comparable to taking money from someone’s wallet.  Even if your neighbor incorrectly places a sprinkler such that it waters your lawn, that water is going to cost your neighbor, not you.  In this case, isn’t it your moral obligation NOT to take advantage of an unsecured wireless internet connection?

But people don’t view issues in a moral black and white vacuum.  At least, they don’t usually act like that.  Consider this example – a waitress returns with your change and hands you too little change back.  Most people will complain about this and get the problem rectified.  But if that waitress hands you too much change, people’s attitudes change.  Generally, if the amount of the difference is large, most people’s consciences get the better of them and they inform the waitress and return the extra money.  But if she’s off only by a little bit (a sliding threshold for all of us) we tend to walk off with the extra money thinking, “It’s not my mistake!”  Stealing wireless internet access is kind of like that.  If all you plan on doing is downloading your e-mail every once in a while, it’s easy to overlook the transgression.  If you plan on downloading 600Mb movie files, you might see this as a larger impact activity and spring for your own access.

I got an e-mail from Kevin where he was talking about this same issue with a friend of his.  Kevin and his friend were comparing the stealing of wireless access to pirating a copy of MS Office.  I won’t paste the entire conversation into this blog entry, only a few words:

“… MS Office comes with a license that bars distributing copies. ISPs, by contrast, don't require their customers to promise not to allow others to use their wireless. There's no breaking of promises, or the suborning of the breaking of promises, by the person who uses an unsecured wireless network.”

So tell me what you think.  Is using someone elses wireless access really stealing?  Is it borrowing? 

— Matt Ranlett