It is a radio signal. Anyone would be perfectly just in saying that if you don't want me to receive it, then keep it off my antenna. To say anything less, is to open the door for all kinds of problems, elsewhere in the radio spectrum. How can receiving anything be "illegal", when it is cut loose in the air?
\you're not just receiving signals, your interacting with somebody elses piece of property- the access point- possibly purposely with the intent to circumvent and use the service provided by that device. If somebody was able to create a device that was able to use a cellphone network without them paying the company, would it follow that it's somehow the cellphone companies fault for making it "easy".
How about if your signal comes onto my property? Are you actually going to try to say that I can't listen to it? ... it makes no sense.
*You* are responsible for your signal, not the receiver. The receiver is passive.
The receiver is NOT passive. In order to use said signal, the receiver needs to respond and interact with said signal. As I noted above the only reason somebody might do that would be in order to use the service the device provides for free. It's like saying that you can use somebody's computer for free because their wireless keyboard/mouse just happens to be compatible with yours, and you can sit outside their window and do stuff using your keyboard/mouse. It follows that if the receiver is "passive" then the sender is equally innocent in that case since all they are doing is sending a harmless signal.
Each person that is transmitting a signal can be held responsible for it though. The way to logically regulate wifi then, is to regulate the transmitters... the laptops that also transmit. *That* can reasonably be regulated. But, it would be a very touchy thing, now.
Any WiFi device that can connect to a access point transmits.
A more interesting discussion would be: If a wifi signal is encrypted with state of the art encryption, and someone hacks it - should *that* be illegal?
With no "locking", then the owner of the transmitted signal should keep his signal off any one's antenna that he does not want to receive it. But, if he is clearly attempting to "lock" it... is it still just a signal out there to be received like all others? or can he claim some ownership of it?
That one would be tricky in court.
Not really. circumventing any sort of security in place at all on a network, wireless or otherwise, is an electronic crime. I know that Canada's Criminal Code, section 342.1 prohibits accessing a computer without authorisation. That covers the use of both "Open" networks just as much as it covers those that are Encrypted. I imagine the laws of other countries are nlot much different, this sort of thing might even have some sort of coverage by the DMCA in the US.
That being said- "listening" to signals as they pass through the air is probably covered by a completely different law, if you purposely don't send any signal in response (and therefore are not truly accessing any system) could possibly fall under wiretapping laws, depending on the circumstances.
If a TV station was transmitting a signal that was encrypted and they sold little boxes to decrypt the signal for a fee, would it be "wrong" to reverse engineer the encryption and be able to receive that signal for free? Personally, I don't think so. IMO that signal is not a communication between two people, but rather a large-scale signal sent to the public at large; although even the slightest bit of "reverse engineering" of even the simplest encryption is clearly prohibited by the DMCA, other countries laws on that subject are not as clearcut; there is only one way communication and the device is merely translating something in the air that is receivable by anybody; legally I don't think there is much difference between receiving that encrypted signal "legally" and decrypting that signal; the decryption is acting on something anybody can have, so it seems stupid to have some sort of restriction on how a encrypted signal can be used when the receiver has not made any agreement with the sender; in this case it's a matter of the encryption itself being too weak and easy to figure out as much as anything.
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