[wplug] On the subject of wardriving...

[Bill Moran]

John Harrold <jmh17 at pitt.edu> wrote:

> Sometime in March Drew from Zhrodague assaulted the keyboard and produced:
> 
> | 	I think Steel City Telecom is the only ISP here in Pittsburgh that 
> | has authorized their clients to share bandwdith wirelessly. Comcast, The 
> | Antichrist (Verizon), and other have entries in their TOS that says 
> | bandwidth sharing wirelessly with friends and neighbors is not allowed.
> 
> My girlfriend recently moved to Philadelphia and got dsl from verizon. The
> dsl modem they sent her had wireless access bulit in. By default the the
> wap was running and encryption was disabled. So wouldn't it be fair to
> assume that it's ok to share your access wirelessly given that:
> 
>  a) the hardware supplied by verizon supports it 
>  b) the default configuration after installation allows any monkey 
>     with a wireless card to access it?

This is the kind of assumption that is liable to get you in legal trouble.

It's like saying that you tried the door and it was unlocked, so it's
obviously OK to come in ... and since nothing was bolted down, it's
obviously OK to take whatever you want.

If their TOS say it's not OK, then it doesn't matter what configuration
they ship their stuff in.  If you want to test the waters to see what
you can get away with, that's your decision, but the presumptions you're
making are unlikely to stand up if they ever come to court.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com