Please proceed to Boing Boing for the story and a list of links.

How can it be stealing if it's free? Because he didn't go inside the library to use it? If the library has use policies, like mine does, he would still have to agree to abide by those policies.

My town installed wireless on poles along the railroad tracks. It is reachable from the parks close to the tracks, most of the stores/restaurants/cafes in town, as well as the businesses. They did this partly as an experiment, partly because it was simple to do as they were running new lines along the street parallel to the tracks anyway and thus it was cost effective. I live only one block from the tracks and cannot reach it from my home, but if I walk down the street, there's a nice bench I can sit on.

I have not secured my own wireless. Between myself and several neighbors, we have a pretty nice selection of connections within a half-block radius.

It seems to me that the time has come for individual towns and states to establish policies as to the use of wireless internet connections. If I didn't want anyone using my wifi, I'd secure my router. If my library didn't want anyone to use their's, they'd not provide it for free, or require that I come inside and ask for a password. This is the way it works at my college library, but the password is given to anyone who asks. Certainly if my town didn't want anyone using their free wifi, they wouldn't have bothered to set it up in the first place!