Stunnel and Airline Wi-Fi

>I honestly can't believe we're even having this conversation. It is theft, period. Not only is it illegal, it's blatantly immoral.

It's not theft. It's not immoral either. Open wlan means exactly that, so where is the sign? You are on HN, so using something like a VPN is not uncommon, regardless of what network you are using.

This is an extremely naïve, baseless argument- if you could even call it an argument at all.

So let us turn to the ‘proposed’ argument itself: “Software doesn’t commit crimes; people do” The first thing to notice is that the argument has no stated conclusion. What follows? That there should be no software regulation at all? That there should not be any more software regulation than there already is? That the increase in cybercrimes done with ‘software’ is irrelevant to whether or not there should be cyber regulations? Who knows? An argument without a conclusion is by technical basis, not an argument at all.

The statement under consideration clarifies that, when it comes to crimes committed with software , people are the ultimate cause and software is merely a proximate cause—the end of a causal chain that started with a person deciding to commit cyber crimes. But nothing follows from these facts about whether or not software should be regulated. Such facts are true for all criminal activity, and even noncriminal activity that harms others: The ultimate cause is found in some decision that a person made; the event, activity, or object that most directly did the harming was only a proximate cause. But this tells us nothing about whether or not the proximate cause in question should be regulated or made illegal. For example, consider the following argument:

"Bazookas don't kill people; people kill people."

Although it is obviously true that bazookas are only proximate causes, it clearly does not follow that bazookas should be legal. Yes, bazookas don't kill people, people do—but bazookas make it a lot easier for people to kill people, and in great numbers. Further, a bazooka would not be useful for much else besides mass murders. Bazookas clearly should be illegal and the fact that they would only be proximate causes to mass murders does not change this. In fact, it is totally irrelevant to the issue; it has nothing to do the fact that they should be illegal. Why? Because other things are proximate causes to people’s demise, but obviously shouldn’t be illegal. For example, consider this argument (given in the aftermath of a bad car accident):

"Cars don't kill people; people kill people."

Obviously cars should not be illegal, but notice that this has nothing to do with the fact that they are proximate causes. Of course, they should be regulated; I shouldn't be allowed to go onto the highway in a car with no brakes. But all of that has to do what cars are for (they are not made for killing people), what role they play in society (it couldn't function without them) and so on. It's a complicated issue—one to which pointing out that cars are merely proximate causes to some deaths contributes nothing.

In conclusion- people who make the feeble argument “software doesn’t commit crime; people do” have mistaken the relevance of proximate causation

Judges tend to be less impressed by technicalities than seems to be commonly believed. If you know that a network operator intends to route traffic only for paying customers, and you intentionally trick its router into routing your traffic without payment, the judge will probably see that as intentional unauthorized access.

I think that's legally reasonable, almost. It's the intent that matters here; if my use of Cloudflare DNS instead of what your DHCP server provides for performance and privacy reasons happens to bypass your insecurely implemented captive portal that asks for payment, there's no intent. If I employ a complex tunneling scheme specifically designed to bypass your payment check, that's theft.

Where I do have a problem with the law is that its digital nature is given special treatment and greatly enhanced penalties. If I walk into a store and steal a USB Wifi adapter worth $20, I have committed a misdemeanor. If I'm caught, I'll probably be given a summons, not arrested, and my penalty will probably be a fine or community service. If I use that adapter to steal access to $20 worth of in-flight Wifi, I've committed a felony, for which the penalty includes loss of civil rights, and probable incarceration.

In that situation, opening the doors without paying is illegal. It would be treated as trespassing or theft of services. You don't have the right to use other peoples' stuff without permission just because it's easy to do.

> My perspective is that a fundamental aspect of the Internet and the digital world is that the software-codified rules are basically authoritative.

Do you think that hacking per se is ever immoral?