Except if you bypassed payment and used the service in a manner that was not intended, most likely you were by definition not undertaking "strict adherance" to service terms ?
Huh ?
DNS tunneling is not exaclty something you do "by accident".
And if the person doing it on the flight "did not know" (which, given the text of the blog, I doubt) , then you can bet your botom dollar that the "roommate" that was summoned for remote assistance knew very well what was going on.
I don't know the age of the author, but it almost doesn't matter, sometimes people don't know (lack of knowledge).
A few kids doesnt matter. A few adults is only a problem if it's their stuff (If they are teachers, they will care more about unautorized changes of the wallpaper in the computer of the school that anything in a remote computer.) And yuo can even later claim they misunderstood or you were exagerating.
But here is an in written report in front of thousands of persons and about planes that is a sensitive topic.
Not law per se. More like contractual obligations taken upon by connecting to the flight's WiFi.
Well, being pedantic, you could be said to be breaking Civil Law. :)
Jest aside, IANAL but most western countries have some sort of Criminal Law relating to mis-use of computers.
A brief search for Canada reveals Criminal Code (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46)[1].
Again IANAL, but from my reading in this scenario it would be (c) -> (a), "uses or causes to be used ... a computer system" to "obtains, directly or indirectly, any computer service".
[1]https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-342.1....
The user agreement helps define the service as a paid service with defined access cases. Going around those would put the user in violation of some laws.
An analogy would be showing up to a paid event venue and noticing a back door was left open. Going into the building without paying is not okay, even though you never engaged with the ticket office to agree to anything.
This may be the dumbest write up I have ever read.
Likewise illegality is just a boring and simple way to dismiss someone on moral grounds, but laws are only as effective as the level of agreement people have with them. Drinking in the park is technically illegal, but I don't care, the police don't care, nobody cares, unless someone needs to care, and I'm going to do it anyway, because the law does not make drinking in the park inherently wrong, it just provides a framework for telling you to stop if you're interfering with others in a way that relates to alcohol consumption.
I agree more with your second argument, though that tends to be strained when the exploit is published.
This is a court of casual opinions, but incidentally when all Air Canada employees recently went on strike—grounding and/or rescheduling all flights, including my own, and causing plenty of inconvenience—and were quickly ordered back to work by the federal government, basically everyone supported them continuing to refuse to work even though technically it was illegal because the government just decided it was. The government's move ended up backfiring and turned into a negative mark on their record after the employees basically won and everything went back to normal with more equitable pay. The CEO outright said they hadn't planned for the situation in which the employees just said no to the order.
Using their internet connection without paying is unlicensed usage/illicit access, but nobody is being deprived of it. Mega corps tried, and failed, to get people to think watching a free movie on YouTube was theft. Same logic, very few people agree with the claim.
As far as I know courts in most jurisdictions are allowed to look at a case in its entirety and that won't look good for you.
A defense like "I thought it was just an config error and couldn't possible imagine that someone would want payment" doesn't sound very plausible to me in particular if it comes from an IT expert who just used sophisticated means to surgically circumvent the block.
In this particular cases of course they confessed the "crime" while bragging about it in their post.
Now what if a random person downloaded an app called "Internet anywhere" from their store and it justed worked? Much muddier because they wouldn't even know it was circumventing anything. For all they know it could be a deal between Air Canada and the app vendor.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250823174801/https://bobdahack...
Yes, long flights are miserable and air travel is a bit of a ripoff. I choose to cope by treating it as an internet break and enjoying a dense book.
The author knew there was a fee for the service; the author devised a way to obtain the service without paying the fee; the author knew this action was not authorized by the service provider.
For all intents and purposes it is the country of registration of the aircraft.
There are one or two exceptions to the rule, but they would not be applicable in this scenario. Mostly stuff relating to air safety. For example, if the aircraft did something against the aviaition laws of the country being overflown. Or hijackings etc.
IIRC the way it works is that when you land (destination or forced landing elsewhere) the offender is delivered to the local competent authorities.
They then undertake an initial investigation and decide either to exercise their own jurisdiction or undertake extradition proceedings to send the offender to the country of registration of the aircraft.
In a scenario of (attempted)murder, I suspect that it is highly likely it would be dealt with in the local courts unless there was a specific external push for extradition.
The point of the convention is to ensure there is never no jurisdiction, i.e. the country of registration to the aircraft is always there as the ultimate fallback. The wording doesn't seek to strictly define the jurisdiction, which is why in most cases the delivery country has the option to take jurisdiction.
Wake me up the first time someone gets into legitimate trouble over a little harmless computer fun like this. Until then..who cares?