Probably because this is a victimless crime...
What he did would be more akin to someone entering your property, having their lunch in your garden and cleaning up before leaving.
What he did would be more akin to someone entering your property, having their lunch in your garden and cleaning up before leaving.
A better analogy would be going into a restaurant with big “No Outside Food” signs with a sandwich you made at home, hiding the sandwich in a false compartment to get past a check at the door, printing the restaurant’s name on your sandwich wrapper so it looks like you bought it there, and then eating it at a table meant for paying customers.
Regardless of the criminality a real world analog would be more akin to someone taking a chair in a starbucks without paying - maybe there's room, and maybe it doesnt burden them unduly - but the company definitely pays a cost for each table aggregated across its customers.
How is this a victimless crime?
Thus: let's switch who is penalized: everyone else on the flight. Bandwidth isn't unlimited, without payment it's hard to justify increasing bandwidth if it isn't profitable.
What should the author do? Report it. If he didn't, maybe you can submit it to the company. If they have a bug bounty, you may get paid (if this happens: would you give the money to the original author?)
If you run a company: you should determine how to insensitivise reporting, it's possible in this case: not fixing it spreads awareness, most people can't/don't exploit it.
Only if everybody else on the flight was paying for WiFi (doubtful) and bandwidth was maxed out during the flight (plausible.)
Because it looks like it causes a infinitesimal harm to a corporation whereby no person is harmed to any noticeable extent, aka a victimless crime.
"Victimless crime" doesn't mean there are no negative effects, it means no _person_ is a victim.
In the U.S., property law is about the right to control access and use -- harm is a secondary concern.
It's really weird that this is presented as normal so frequently in a virtual context.