War Car Offers Wi-Fi

NetGyver writes "news.com has an interesting story about public hot-spot operators that use a weapon in protest against the growth of commercial Wi-Fi networks: Michael Oh's "war car." The 1997 Saturn has enough Wi-Fi equipment installed on its bumper and rooftop to create a 150-foot wireless network, said Oh, who helps run a free wireless network covering two Boston city blocks and is one of hundreds of so-called public hot-spot operators who believe Wi-Fi networks and the Internet access they offer should remain free."

Comments

Re:But who pays for it?

[Dun Malg]

In my opinion, resources that are on public property are free by implied consent. Your opinion is silly. Can I have your car next time you park on a street?

Pull your head out, please. Like all those idiots who say "copying a music CD is theft/stealing", you are comparing real property e.g. my car, with services. Services may or may not cost someone money based on quantity used. WiFi accesss on public property could be compared to putting a drinking fountain next to the sidewalk. Water is a metered utility, but cheap enough for a drinking fountain to not incur any significant cost; likewise, 'net access is cheap in that it's usually either flat-rate or metered only above a certain cap. If you don't lock up your sidewalk-adjacent drinking fountain, people will use it and you'd have a hard time getting the authorities to do anything about it. If you don't want the public using your sidewalk-accessable drinking fountain (wireless network), lock it up (encrypt it) and only give keys to those whom you wish to use it. If you pay a lot of money on a metered basis for your Internet access, then you're a fool to leave it open for anyone to use (see sidewalk drinking fountain analogy).
Point is, one can pontificate about absolute morality (picking a dime up off the sidewalk is theft!), or take the Common Law/rational approach to such things (would a reasonable and prudent person assume that a drinking fountain by the sidewalk is for public use?). Free WiFi 'net access is common enough that if a reasonable and prudent person with an 802.11b equipped laptop found himself able to access his webmail at Denny's, he'd assume it was intended for public use. To argue that one should seek specific permission first renders unusable such publicly-available things as parking lots and sidewalks.