The author is mixing a lot of largely unrelated topics. Emitting light from your residence is just an externality that can be positive or negative depending on

The author is mixing a lot of largely unrelated topics. Emitting light from your residence is just an externality that can be positive or negative depending on the situation. The question “who should pay for lighting?” is a classic question that comes up when discussing street lights in the context of theoretical user-pays economics models. As in “what services can potentially be implemented in a user-pays model? for instance you can’t practically charge somebody for benefitting from a street light”. Using somebody else’s wifi is related to neither of those topics, because that’s about consuming somebody else’s limited resources without their permission. The legality and morality of that question relates to whether the wifi broadcaster should expect that to occur when using unsecured wifi, and whether they should have any obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent it if they don’t want it happening.