I wonder what they actually prosecuted him for as I don't think 'hijacking a wireless broadband connection' is an offence in its own right.
I'd like to know how you avoid falling foul of the law on this, if indeed it is the law. The moment I turn my laptop on in a built up area it finds any number of wireless connections. Those which are not secure it will use with no intervention or encouragement from myself and with the standard settings as supplied. At what point then does the law come into play? The moment I begin to transfer data? If that's so, what if I open my browser to look at a cached page, unaware of a connection being present and it downloads the page afresh as it does have one?
It all seems rather impossible to enforce to me, not to mention pointless. Surely the answer is simple; if you don't want people on your network, secure it. It's rather like saying it's somehow illegal for someone to see by the light of your outside light should it fall off your premises; unaviodable in many instances.