I've been meaning to blog this for a while, but it's hard to know where to start. For background, see Code Breaking: Spectrum for All by Lawrence Lessig, where he makes the case for wireless spectrum as public property (he also devotes a section of The Future of Ideas to open spectrum). See also Yochai Benkler's The Political Economy of Commons and the Open Spectrum FAQ.

Now for the story: AKMA was sitting outside a public library in Nantucket (read: a public place) using the library's wireless signal. A police officer approached him and told him he was breaking a federal law by using the signal; according to the law, AKMA should have been inside the library. In good faith, AKMA turned off the power on his wireless card, but the officer went further and said, “Why don’t you just close that up, sir, or use your computer elsewhere?’ (!)

An exchange ensued between the officer and AKMA, and there's a lengthy comment thread after AKMA's post about the incident. Slashdot http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/01/0245219">picked it up too.