Relax.

In this day and age of wireless Internet, you're never far from an open signal. An average wireless signal, or Wi-Fi, can extend 150 to 200 feet from its antenna.

That means if you have a laptop and a wireless card, you can sit out in the street in a car and easily pick up the signals from home and business networks.

It's simple. And in fact, Wi-Fi is so widespread - even in Juneau - that it's hard to find a residential or business block where there's not two or more signals bouncing around.

"It still amazes me how hot Juneau is," said Gary Patton, general manager of Juneau Electronics. "This place is lit up like a Christmas tree. There's hardly anywhere you can go that you do not have some sort of wireless Internet access."

As an experiment, Hooligan recently drove on a small loop of downtown - from The Breakwater Inn to the Twisted Fish and back - with an easily downloaded Wi-Fi scanner that detects available networks. During that unscientific 15-minute drive, we picked up 291 wireless networks from the street while driving the speed limit.

Of those, 114 (39.2 percent) were not protected with an encryption password. That means we could have pulled over, selected any one of those open networks, and likely checked our e-mail for free in about 10 seconds.

Therein lies a 21st century ethical debate that's been raging ever since the advent of Wi-Fi:

Is that stealing? Is that public property?

Should the onus be on the wireless owner to place some sort of password on his or her network? Why are so many networks left unencrypted?

And does anyone care?

Judging by the high percentage of unencrypted networks, most people don't care, or are oblivious to the fact that they should establish a wireless password if they want to prevent unauthorized use.

"People are voluntarily going out and buying a wireless access point," Patton said. "It goes without saying: If you're able to connect to it, other people are able to connect to it. If you leave it wide open, you have to assume that people will connect to it. Buyer beware."

It's possible that an intruder could tap into your wireless network and use it to download large, high-bandwidth files. If your account is set up with a ceiling on its bandwidth limitation, that could quickly add up in overage fees on your bills. These days, however, many accounts are set up for unlimited download capacity.

It's also plausible that someone could hop on your network and engage in some sort of illegal activity that could complicate your life.

Setting up a key and a firewall for your wireless network is easy. It's not foolproof. A determined hacker can still crack it. But most likely trollers won't take the time to break into a password when there are already so many other networks out there for free.

"A lot of people, so long as it's not affecting their bottom line, they really don't care," Patton said. "Most people's home computers are pretty boring. There's not that much there that a hacker would be interested in.

"Businesses and people that have a lot of credit card numbers stored in a database," he added, "need to encrypt or lock down their networks."

There are few legal precedents for wireless theft. It's very much a gray area.

Benjamin Smith, a 41-year-old St. Petersburg, Fla., man, was arrested in April 2005 while sitting in a Chevy Blazer outside a home and using its residential Wi-Fi signal. Police charged him with gaining "unauthorized access to a computer or network," a felony in Florida, according to an article in PC World.

This February in Palmer, police confiscated a 21-year-old's laptop after repeatedly finding him playing online games outside the Palmer Library. The library usually shuts off its Wi-Fi connection during nonoperating hours, but at this particular time, the system was malfunctioning, according to an article in the Anchorage Daily News.

Police told the man that his surfing could be regarded as "theft of services," the Daily News said.

According to Alaska statute, a person commits "theft of services," when:

"The person obtains services, known by that person to be available only for compensation, by deception, force, threat, or other means to avoid payment for the services."

Or when, "The person obtains the use of computer time, a computer system, a computer program, a computer network, or any part of a computer system or network, with reckless disregard that the use by that person is unauthorized."

A misdemeanor charge of theft applies to crimes in which the dollar amount is less than $50. But the problem is proving that the suspect obtained the services "knowingly" or with "reckless disregard."

Sgt. David Campbell, of the Juneau Police Department, said he's never heard of a piggybacker being charged with theft of services in Juneau, nor has he heard of any complaints of such activity.

"If someone knowingly did it to avoid paying for the services, like if you parked outside someone's house and are trying to jump on their server, in my opinion that would qualify under the statute," Campbell said.

But he said if someone's wireless wasn't functioning properly and the person unwittingly used his or her neighbor's router, that wouldn't count as theft of services.

"It's one of those things that you'd have to look at on an individual basis," Campbell said.

Michael Penn / Juneau Empire   Click It: The downtown area is a "hot spot" for Wi-Fi activity due to all the businesses.

When Silverbow Inn co-owner Jill Ramiel got the idea of offering wireless access to her customers, she didn't realize what a boon it would be to her business.

"I really thought it was going to be an amenity for my hotel guests," she said. "I didn't realize that it would drive business to the cafe. But it really did."

The Silverbow began offering free access two years ago, after Ramiel attended an innkeeper's conference where she got the idea.

"It was really a surprise (how well it has drawn customers)," she said. "And this past summer, when it was so popular with the (cruise ship) crew, that was even more of a surprise."

The free network at the Silverbow is a separate network from Ramiel's business network. When customers buy a $1.50 coffee, for instance, the network password is on the bottom of their sales receipt.

The Silverbow isn't the only place to get Wi-Fi access. The whole of downtown is a giant "hot spot," in part because the buildings are so close together. Cafes and hotels also often leave wireless networks open as a service to their customers.

Silverbow's network is one of those that's open virtually 24 hours a day. You can pick it up from a car on Main, Seward and Second streets.

"It stays on," Ramiel said. "If somebody wanted to go into our parking lot at 4 a.m., they might be able to hook on. I guess until a bad experience happens to me, I'm pretty open to who uses the technology."