> The owner of the device (and payer of the service) may not have a good
> grasp on this technology, and may not see the fire hose you are using on
> his device - but is this your problem?

There was a time when operating a RF sender required a license (in most
places, I think). The purpose was mostly to make sure people who did that
knew a bit of what they are doing. There is no license required to operate
a WiFi AP (or a WiFi NIC) -- but I think if you want to operate one, you
should be expected to know what you're doing (it is advertised as
"wireless" :) or get some advice from one who does.

> I am legally transmitting, I am legally receiving.  I am not decoding or
> decrypting anything.  If he doesn't want to share, he should not
> transmit responses to my carefully crafted packets.

I think this is the crucial point of this issue: the one connecting to an
AP is not actively pulling data, he is requesting data. The router is
responding to the packets, that (for the purpose of this discussion) are
not spoofed or anything. If the owner of the router doesn't want his router
to respond to my requests, he should configure it to not respond.

This is in many ways similar to a public HTTP server. If there is no login
prompt nor anything else that is telling me that I'm entering "private
property", how am I supposed to know that the server is not public?
Whenever you are connecting to a web server, you are potentially causing
cost on the side of the server. You are assuming that just because the
server is available on a public network, it is free to use -- unless there
is some login prompt that tells you otherwise.

A WiFi router is not much different. It is a wireless server that is on a
public band, just like the web servers you are using all the time are on a
public network. It's not that anyone would be "stealing" the packets -- the
server is serving them up to whoever is asking for them.

- "Can I get another piece of that http://domain.com/page.ext pie, please?"
- "Why, of course. Here you go!" (Hands over piece of pie.)

No question like "Who are you that you want to have a piece from my pie?"
or "Can I see your ID, please? My pie has alcohol in it."

That leads to another interesting question. Say a minor does illegal (or
just "bad") things through the open router of a neighbor. Do the parents
have a right to stop the neighbor offering that gateway to their children?

Gerhard

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