Imagine you have no electricity and thus no lights in your house at night. Luckily you have a neighbor who purchases electricity and keeps incredibly bright lights on all night. These lights are so bright they shine through your window illuminating your living room enough for you to be able to read. Your neighbor could draw the shades and block the light from coming into your house at any time, but for one reason or another does not.

Because of this lucky accident, you decide not to purchase electricity of your own since all you ever really use the electricity for is to do some light reading anyway. Should we say in this situation that you are stealing light from your neighbor? We might have to if we agreed with many of the reasons given for why 'piggybacking' on other people's wireless internet connections is wrong. One might object to my analogy by claiming that wireless is unlike light in that the more you use of it, the less there is. This, however, is only true to a point. If one additional person uses the same wireless connection on a typically underused home internet connection there is zero difference in terms of connectivity. In cases where many people use the same connection I can easily agree that my analogy fails, but still maintain that in cases where only a small amount of people are sharing a connection, the analogy holds. This, especially in a small town like Blacksburg, is not an infrequent occurrence.

The Ethics of "Piggybacking"

According to recent legislation, using a wireless connection that is not your own can result in legal action. According to a source deep inside the Department of Justice, "It's not yours and you're taking it. This is theft plain and simple." Sounds reasonable right?

Wrong.

Let's explore the reasoning. According to our source, the reason why using another person's wireless internet is wrong is because you are taking something that is not yours. This, in turn, is taken to constitute theft. In order for this line of reasoning to hold, it would have to be the case that each time one found an instance of a person taking something that is not theirs one also finds a case of theft. Are all cases in which a person takes something that is not theirs theft? No. If you use the light that comes out of another person's window to read a book are you stealing their light? If you use the warmth coming from the window of a bakery to warm your hands on a cold day, are you stealing their heat? If you read a newspaper over the shoulder of a stranger are you stealing the words on the page? Of course not.

So, the reason our source gave for the immorality of wireless piggybacking fails. But, there may be another reason one could have for seeing piggybacking as stealing. Let's see if we can't put to rest these charges by focusing on the concept of 'stealing' itself. What is it to steal something from someone else? As we just saw there is more to the concept than simply taking something that is not yours. Can someone steal something from someone else without taking anything away from them? Doesn't seem likely.

The worst thing about being stolen from is that you no longer have something that you had before. But, in the case of a casual 'piggybacker' of Wi Fi, the person who is having something taken from them is no worse off. They have the same thing they did before. Can this even be said to be stealing at all? Many localities are beginning to come around. Instead of fining the people who do the 'piggybacking' (as in several cases in London recently) some localities in New York are now fining people who leave networks open. This is because of the potential for misuse of the internet and the resultant inability to track people if they are an unauthorized user on another person's network connection. Many people simply appeal to this potential problem as the reason why piggybacking is wrong.

Of course, child pornography, internet fraud, and spamming are bad things and the possibility that an open connection could be used in such a way is a really good reason to protect your connection. But...piggybacking in and of itself does not necessarily imply that these things will happen and thus can't place any moral disapprobation on the casual non-pedophiliac 'piggybacker'. It instead places the responsibility on the person who leaves a connection open.

So, the moral of the story is...lighten up. There's really no big problem when someone uses a connection that's not their own to check email occasionally. In fact, it seems pretty clear that it's not stealing (at least in the traditional sense) at all. If you are a habitual 'piggybacker' that uses other people's internet connections to play World of Warcraft 24 hours a day. Stop! You're giving the rest of us 'casual piggybackers' a bad name.

Yours in Discourse,
Brandiff Caron