Did you read the story about the Vancouver, Washington coffee shop which called the cops on a wireless service freeloader?   The man in question would park his car by the coffee shop and surf the web via the free wireless service the business offered its customers.   The man had the audacity to do this while never buying a cup of coffee priced at 20 times the cost of producing it.   A related case involved the prosecution of a guy who mooched off a residential wireless network set up by a homeowner.   If I'm not mistaken, that guy either had to pay a fine or even do some brief amount of jail time.   These cases baffle me.   Let me explain why I am confused and then you can leave comments explaining why I am wrong.

A theft is a theft is a theft.   If you take something which is not yours, you're stealing, aren't you?   Maybe and maybe not.   I believe an integral part of "stealing" involves depriving someone of something that is rightfully theirs and which they took reasonable steps to protect from disappearing.

If you store your money or other personal belongings in a box located on your front lawn, near the street, it is likely somebody is going to eventually come along and take whatever you keep there.   That would be a stupid thing for you to do but you are keeping your property in your possession (on your property) and you have a right to do that.   The other person, our thief, has no right to come onto your property and take what is rightfully yours.   Somebody will probably do this in our example, but that is undeniably theft.   It's your property and he has deprived you of it.

On the other hand, if you had a perpetual money making machine which spewed forth limitless amounts of cash 24 hours a day and left it on your front lawn, somebody came along at night and simply took a bunch of cash, that wouldn't really be depriving you of anything.   Assuming the machine continued to work while you slept, the cash which was spit out by the machine would normally just blow away similar to the air which exists above your lawn or the loose soil in your yard.   Somebody breathing the air above your property or scooping up the soil blown into the street wouldn't be depriving you of anything.   They wouldn't have a rightful claim to it but they aren't exactly stealing it either.

Also, you have some responsibility to at least minimally protect your property.   If you put a box of money in a public park with the words "this is Joe Smith's money box" on it and somebody picked it up, that's not really stealing.   You have no more rightful claim to that money than if you found a rock and put a twenty dollar bill under it expecting it to be there in five years.   You have to at least keep your money and property reasonably safe.   Somebody has deprived you of property which is rightfully yours but you didn't take reasonable steps to safeguard your property.   The other person merely found it knowing that it was somebody else's property.   They didn't steal it.

I once set up a wireless network for my broadband connection in my home.   The signal didn't travel very far, barely getting outside the house.   But I had a neighbor who thought he was clever.   He found our signal and used it instead of his dial-up connection.   I never minded him doing this since it didn't slow me down and if I wanted to, I could have prevented him from doing it.   he wasn't stealing from me.   he was probably stealing from the cable company in the sense that he was depriving them of the subscription money they should be earning on his use of their service.   But on the other hand, they allowed me to set up an unsecured wireless network which was open to all comers.   they could have limited my bandwidth to avoid theft of some of their pipe but then I would have dropped the service.   They know that some of their bandwidth is taken like this.   They don't like it but it is part of doing business.

So, here's what bugs me about the coffee shop calling the cops on the wireless moocher and the prosecution of a guy "stealing" wireless service from a homeowner.   It is relatively easy to secure a wireless network from at least 90% of potential stealers.   The homeowner could do it without any repercussions.   the business could do it by creating password protected access and giving the password to all customers who ask for it.   But even if they don't protect their wireless networks from moochers, what do these individuals and businesses lose when somebody "steals" their signal?   Nothing, that's what!

So somebody is getting something which doesn't belong to them because somebody else is failing to protect it because it isn't worth protecting.   They are not deprived of anything when the "thief" takes that which they don't value enough to protect.   So, how is this stealing?   if you are walking through the park dropping twenties every cuple of feet, I'm going to pick them up and put them in my pocket.   Please don't call the police and tell them I am robbing you blind.