“Wi-Fi Squatting” a Crime – By the Victim

It’s a federal offense in the U.S. to use someone else’s unsecured wireless network for illicit purposes. It’s a crime in Germany, too – committed by the network owner.

Is this a way to send an enemy to jail?

We’ve always thought that so-called Wi-Fi squatting was largely a victimless crime. We’ve done it, and, based on the comments our previous posts on the topic received, so have most of this blog’s readers. The FBI has told us that it isn’t a federal offense to squat, as long as the squatter doesn’t use the connection to do anything illegal. Wi-Fi squatting is against the law in some states, however: A few unlucky folks have been arrested for checking email or surfing the Web while parked in a car outside a coffee shop or library.

But a court in Germany ruled that the owner of an unsecured Wi-Fi network that a squatter used to illegally download rap songs is responsible for the crime – even though he proved that he wasn’t the one who stole the files, TechDirt reports. (Here’s the news story in the original German and Google’s translation.)

Most of this blog’s readers compared Wi-Fi squatting to listening to music blasting through an open window or getting sprayed by the mist from a sprinkler that’s spilling onto that sidewalk. A few thought that it should be a crime, arguing leaving an unlocked bicycle on the sidewalk doesn’t give a passerby the right to take it. No one suggested that the person committing the crime was the network owner.

Nonetheless, the German court said that network owners are responsible for securing their networks — and can be held liable if they don’t (Although TechDirt points out that a different German court ruled just before this one that another network owner wasn’t responsible for the behavior of squatters in a similar case.)

-Ben Worthen

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