Police arrest WiFi “moocher”

The St. Petersburg Times (of St. Petersburg, Florida) reported that police arrested a fellow for using his neighbors WiFi Internet access.

Now this leads to an interesting bit of supposition.

Lets take a look at some software that also does this:
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Adware - uses your network to blast advertising at you.
Spyware - uses your network to report back to the originator what you buy and where you go.
Malware - uses your network to attack other computers, send out spam, etc.
Trojans - use your network to do anything your computer can do from a remote location.
Keyloggers - use your network to track your usernames, passwords and financial information.

So if “mooching” of your neighbors network (WiFi or not) is a crime, then those that are the installers of Adware, Spyware, Malware, Trojans and Keyloggers on YOUR computer are criminals as well because they are using YOUR network to do their dirty deeds. And three out of the above five actions are used by enterprise-sized businesses.

All of the above software can be considered to be ‘parasitic’ in their actions, since, again, they are using YOUR network connection, just as the above ‘moocher’.
(For a good explaination of parasitic software, read this article.)

Now, I’m not one to be known as “lawyer-friendly” but it seems like there’s lots of money to be made here for these guys…