Man Charged With Felony For Accessing Public WiFi

[Serenity]

Yeah its really hard to draw the line, I agree with Edi on that.

However if you play music on street, and people listen to the music, they are not obligated to pay you; it is knowingly made available to others through lack of any restrictive measures such as having the music contained in private apartment or a festival area, and thus can be considered your own neglicence.

Only thing separating these 2 examples is the fact that a internet access is limited and everything others download/upload is in theory taken off of your current capacity to dl/upload, but which I imagine is practically unnoticeable considering the place is full of people using internet which is shared.

[Edi]

If you play music in the street as you're walking along, or in your front yard while doing something else, you're not doing it for money and you are not doing it to advance any kind of business venture (such as playing music in stores to put customers in a better mood to buy something), so there is no conceivable valid argument for charging you for anything. Rather impossible when no violation or even potential violation has occurred with those parameters.

If you're talking about street performers, that's covered by other sorts of rules. So it's a bad analogy all around.

[CUnknown]

Wow, this is some serious BS. I think a polite, "Please do not do this anymore" would be sufficient. Charging him with a felony is ludicrous. He was checking his f'ing e-mail. Is he not going to be able to vote anymore? If he applies for a job, will he have to check "yes" when he's asked if he was ever charged with a felony?

Let the punishment fit the crime, my god. Is there a law making this a felony? I suppose there is. But -should- doing this be a felony? Hell no, that's insane.

[Edi]

CUnknown, yes, it's harsh, and the reason it ended in such a clusterfornication is basically outlined in the a-j in my post above. The followup of it is either the prosecutor being an arsehole or the laws not giving him any leeway.

In recent years there has been a very disturbing tendency in American legislation to eliminate any and all power of consideration and leeway from various laws, regulations and statutes, which can then lead to cases like this, so it is a very real possibility.