It's the same principal as if you let your kid borrow your car and he hits somebody and kills them. Under civil you are liable for that because it was your car and you let them use it. Same can be said if you just left your car unlocked outside with a banner on it that said, hey free car, please use if you'd like to, which is my analogy for your wifi piggy backer, your wifi should be secured. Now if someone hacked into your wifi, that would be considered stealing and would be acted upon similarly to someone stealing your car and hitting somebody, you wouldn't be liable for that. No matter how stupid it might be, they are acting within the laws here and people are either going to settle with them or get stuck paying millions of dollars when they are found guilty in court.
I just want to point out that this is not the same case in a lawsuit based on Copyright Infringement. If you have a WiFi connection out in the open, even with an SSID and WEP/WPA/etc. people are still able to get into the network. I personally have a non-hidden SSID with a WEP key...why, because I have gone down the road of MAC filtering, hidden SSID's and WPA/2 security configuration and you know what, it is a major pain to keep configured, especially if people want to borrow the net on their htc or iPhone, etc.
When you are talking about Copyright Infringement via a documented IP with an ISP. If that home has a wireless router installed and they are in a very well populated neighborhood (see: apartment complex, duplex, densely packed housing, etc) it is 100% impossible to prove WHO was using the network to steal that content...AND...if you have your own SSID with a WEP key, that is enough security that you can say you "tried" to prevent people from connecting to the internet via your service.
With that said, unless you are the 0.5% of people that have a high-end router with logging enabled on traffic throughput connections (MAC based Destination/Source) your router doesn't have the information they are required to provide to the court in order to convict you.
Now with THAT said, have fun trying to find 75% of people who have High Speed Internet in their homes guilty of this...especially if they have this knowledge and they get a good attorney.
no i know and i understand that, i just think them cracking down on this is retarded. Im just saying the US has alot of other problems that are way more important to worry about
I agree, we have thousands of other topics that should be discussed before this gets hit. Brick and Mortar stores as well as online sales of media (ie, Movies, Music, Games) are still making money...and lots of it. So I don't want to hear of you suing anybody for downloading a song off the internet and then try to justify it with they are stealing from your profits.
If you want to stop the stealing you need to give better AND cheaper methods to obtain these products. There isn't a 3-5+% cost-of-living increase for no reason, the reason is people trying to make more and more money...just STOP, your making enough as it is.
/rant
