A favourite topic of mine in the past, as some of you may know, is the subject of wireless internet – WiFi, as it is often called. I may not be as dumb as this gentleman, and Google “How to commit murder” before killing your wife, so everything following this is purely hypothetical.
Suppose a hypothetical person was playing in a poker tournament online to win a first place prize of $14,000, when their Internet connection goes down. Suppose Access… uhh… his/her service provider says that it will be over an hour before they get it fixed, but there are only, oh let’s say, 8 people left in this said tournament. With time of the essence, suppose this person drives down the street, opens up his/her laptop, and finds, lo!, there is a weak WiFi signal floating around, but he/she does not know where it is coming from, so he can not ask the permission of the owner to use it.
Hypothetically speaking, if this person were to connect to, and use this WiFi signal, that would be illegal. However, under most circumstances, if there were time, and a way of finding out who the owner was, I personally doubt that there would be an issue at all with it, especially given the circumstances. If that could somehow be ascertained, would it still be criminal to do this?
The only connection I can make between this and teaching is that often there are issues that are “immoral” or “illegal”, and we have to be sure we know where we stand on each issue, and where the law stands on each issue. I personally know exactly where I stand on this issue (The hypothetical individual told me he won $1131!), but can I tell that to my students? No, you have to be steadfast with what the law says is legal, regardless of your personal feelings. If the day ever comes where someone is sitting outside my house roaming freely on my unsecured wireless signal, I will be happy.
In fact, I think that soon enough the government will just supply free WiFi to the entire country, and tax people for it. I would love that so much.
1 response so far ↓
1
Labatte
// Mar 27, 2007 at 9:52 am
First the poker issue, get on the phone and find someone who uses a different provider so that you can get over there asap, or better yet have this situation already covered before starting the tourney. Last but not least call your co-op and he will get you out of this mess!
In regards to school, over the past 23 years I can only recall a few situations like this, and I would suggest consulting with two people together, this adds transparency. The three of you should be able to solve the issue together. Of course if one of them is an admin in the school that is so much the better. I have on one occasion gone directly to the Director. In another case I should have by passed “chain of command” but didn’t and I now try not to loose and sleep over the admin’s point of view. Definately stay away from none gray area illegal however. Nothing good can come of that.
ps – I tried to get on downtown Regina the other day and I guess the free WiFi is not up and running yet.
Leave a Comment