On Stealing Wireless Internet

Just when I got my laptop, I decided to try on the wireless feature at my neighborhood. I was surprised that many people, who had wireless routers and networks, were detected by my laptop. I was even more surprised at the fact that a good number of them were unprotected. Connecting to one gave me a faster connection than the one I had at home. I was tempted to stay connected, but I felt I was doing something that I shouldn't be (call it guilt). I mean, it's not my fault that I was able to tap into my neighbor's internet, even though a door wide open that leads to something wrong doesn't necessarily mean you have to or can go into it.

So, I disconnected.

I mean, sure: it's not like I killed someone, but it's still as bad as stealing someone's wallet. What if the guy paid for bandwidth? What if his bills are already outrageously high? What if he was doing some serious work that required a consistently hi-speed connection? That would certainly make me a bad neighbor.

But seriously, whose fault is it? Like I mentioned in the first paragraph, two wrongs don't make a right, but considering that a lot of people would rather take the easy way, the distinction seems to go away. It's like that little voice in your head nagging, "Come on, you're just borrowing some bandwidth. It's not like the guy's paying for it."

Bottom line: I personally think that stealing wireless internet is wrong simply because it is in and of itself an act of robbery. Stealing someone's unsecured wireless internet is as bad as hacking into a secured wireless network and stealing the internet, especially since hackers can access more than just the internet from such wireless networks.

What do you think? Is stealing from unsecure wirless networks okay, or is it as immoral as hacking to the network and stealing the bandwidth?