Is it wrong to steal wireless bandwidth?

In last Sunday's edition, a reader wrote to say she'd "accidentally discovered that the wireless Internet card in my laptop lets me access the Web in my apartment" via what is a neighbor's Wi-Fi connection. She went on to say she only used it to "check e-mail, which will not affect my neighbor's usage." She then asks whether what she's doing is wrong and whether she should offer to pay part of the monthly connect fee.

Forgetting that the reader sounds too tech-savvy to be in a moral quandary over Napstering a little bandwidth, our country's newspaper-of-record-slash-arbiter-of-ethics essentially tells her to come clean about her usage--as long as she can identify who's sharing the wealth. If she can't (which is pretty likely), the NYT counsels her to go ahead and take a free ride--but not to overdo it.

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