What is the position under Irish law of access to the Internet via unsecured Wifi?

This is an issue that has arisen in the UK (with a conviction under the Communications Act), but Eoin asked me to do some work on this (supervisors get to do that), and has kindly given me permission to publish my preliminary findings here. I do have my doubts on the intepretation of the UK act and its application to using someone else’s broadband but I’ll touch on that later on.

The key question is whether there is an Irish version of s 125 of the (UK) Communications Act 2003, which provides that:

A person who- (a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service [ECS], and (b) does so with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service, is guilty of an offence.

(ECS elsewhere defined as: “a service consisting in, or having as its principal feature, the conveyance by means of an electronic communications network of signals, except in so far as it is a content service”)

And the answer is ’sort of’.

We start with the Postal and Telecommunications Services Act 1983 (which I’ll call the P&T Act): this is the law that set up An Post and Telecom Éireann (TÉ) as monopoly semi-states for post and telecoms respectively. The Act provides (s 99(1)) that:

A person who wilfully causes the company to suffer loss in respect of any rental, fee or charge properly payable for the use of the telecommunications system or any part of the system or who by any false statement or misrepresentation or otherwise with intent to defraud avoids or attempts to avoid payment of any such rental, fee or charge shall be guilty of an offence.

(”The company” being TÉ). All we have from the Dáil record on why we got this section is that the section “penalises the fraudulent or attempted fraudulent use of the telecommunications system. This closes a gap in existing laws.” Thanks.

After a whole series of amendments/rereadings, I conclude that the section currently stands like this:

A person who wilfully causes an authorised undertaking to suffer loss in respect of any rental, fee or charge properly payable for the use of something (see below) or who by any false statement or misrepresentation or otherwise with intent to defraud avoids or attempts to avoid payment of any such rental, fee or charge shall be guilty of an offence.

which is similar to (but not the same as) the UK provision, and thus preventing a clear answer. In this post, I cover what operators are protected, what services are referred to, what cases have been taken, and the background to the UK provisions.

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