A Texas man who was convicted of possessing child pornography tried to use the good ol’ “Oh, my WiFi network is open” excuse. The courts didn’t buy it, and he is currently serving his time.
The ruling is interesting for two reasons. For starters, the decision could carry over in other cases, specifically copyright infringement cases involving P2P. In addition, the man had CDs containing child pornography, so that kind of ruined any argument he had from the start.
Basically the decision says that you are not 100% protected if you have an open wireless access point, which is the way it should be anyways. If someone takes your dog or your car and kills someone with it (Attack doggy, attack!) then you could very well be held liable. Why should it be different if someone were to “borrow” your Internet connection via a WiFi network and break the law?
The bad side of this is that now the owners of public access points could be held liable for illegal actions by their users, and now if someone does do something illegal on your WiFi network you better have enough evidence to prove you are innocent.
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