@lek:
It may have 'eased your conscience' but you were still stealing from a person, in this case a company. A company is considered a person under the law. And that company is made up of people, people who your theft, in some way, was hurting.
"If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"
A company should go down by market forces and bad business practices, not from the unthinking theft of others. It may not have a single face, but it can be hurt. And by doing so, they that the business supports and who in turn support it, the employees and employer, are hurt in turn.
No, you can borrow. But the difference between borrowing and theft, is permission from the owner. I don't care if the Wi-fi comes into your home, your still stealing if you don't ask permission, and if they have the right to give that permission. The server, automatically dos not have that right.

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You keep throwing up strawmen...

Of course you can receive certain things without paying for them. C'mon are you just trying to wind people up?

But you are robbing him though. It's his, he paid for it. Did you?
Well then how come you have internet then?

Again, it's the same as a satellite dish. Bell has this big fat signal out there and if you tap into that without paying... or is that ok too?

Actually, the government robs me and pays the welfare recipients. They're receiving stolen money.

Bell loses nothing if I don't pay for satellite TV since their signal will be sent to my apartment whether I look at it or not. With WiFi I'm using bandwidth that would not otherwise have been used. Unused satellite signal costs them just as much as viewed signal.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

They may or may not lose nothing, but you are gaining soemthing, without losing something, that ordinarily you have to pay for.
Besides, you aren't gaining nothing from taxes. It's what builds roads, funds public education, and if say you lost your job , you would be able to feed and house yourself until you got a job again. Taxes support the things that no single person or even corporation could fund alone. Or that just don't pay for themselves, like welfare. The idea of a welfare program run by a corporation, whose first and foremost interest is making a profit, is just scary.

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But that's not what's being compared--it's paid satellite signal vs unpaid, not unused vs viewed. There may not be a difference in cost in the latter, but there's a vast difference in the former. If all "viewed" were "unpaid" you'd not even be able to express the relation, because there would be none at all.

Ok well that's it for me in this thread. lol

This is worse than being over at JREF watching some of the boys go round and round about 9/11. No offense intended.

Well, thank you for your contribution. And welcome to BAUTforum I hope to hear more from you.

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It doesn't seem fair and is certainly illegal, but no one is actually harmed. Getting something without paying for it doesn't seem like sufficient reason to label something as being wrong. Neither does being illegal unless you think that every rule a government makes is always justified. If the satellite signal thief couldn't have afforded it then you can't even say that Bell is out that money because the money doesn't exist.

Whether or not I benefit from my tax payments has no bearing on whether or not it's theft. The governments say I must pay it or they'll extract it by force and inflict punishment. That makes it extortion no matter how it's spent. If someone wants my financial aid the polite thing to do is ask for it.

Everything that a government does is scary.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

If no one paid for satellite then there would be no satellite, but given the current situation in which most people pay, someone who can't afford it has no effect on the system whether he views it or not.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

That's a gross oversimplification. No-one here is saying somethign as simple as "free = theft".


Who decides if he/she "really" couldn't afford it?

You seem big on personal decisions on the use of ones' own money. Maybe this person who can't afford it, just shouldn't have it?


So you barely think taking an unlocked bike off a lawn is theft, but an elected (and un-electable) Government making laws on taxes, to help run the country, is???!


How about politely asking for use of WiFi?


It would be a scarier world if run the way you want it to be!


Another contradiction. By not having laws in place to stop theft of services, you would be encouraging it in a similar way to how you've been arguing that an unsecured service is "inviting" its' usage. If we make it (or consider it) "legal" to use bandwidth in this way, then everyone does it, then no one supplies it because there's no money in it.

It's sad that in your world view the person who leaves somethng unsecured is somehow a "worse" person than the other person who steals it.

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Someone can't afford it if he wouldn't have it if he didn't steal it. If Bell would not have gotten money from him in any case then they're not out any money.

Taking an unlocked bike is theft, as is using WiFi without permission. I just don't think tax money should be spent investigating theft if the owner didn't care enough to take reasonable precautions against it.

If someone threatens me to extract money then it's extortion no matter who does it. That's what extortion is. They sugarcoat it by calling it a tax contribution but not everyone is fooled by this.

Stealing satellite TV should stay illegal since that makes the system work. If other people knowing about satellite TV theft is the problem then is it still wrong if no one else ever finds out?

In the 20th century, over 100 million people were murdered by their own governments. That seems pretty scary to me.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

What level of crime would you consider worthy of action by those paid by the public dollar?

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It's hard to draw an exact line so I decide case by case.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

Thank you for the welcome.

I'd love to say more but as I'm new to all of you I better be careful when responding to stuff like this.

I have no posting history here so whatever I say could easily get me in trouble even though I know what it sounds like in my mind. I hope that makes sense.

This is a great thread and I will still follow it eagerly.

Maybe instead of me saying "Ok well that's it for me in this thread" I should be saying "Ok well that's it for me debating with Chuck and his line of reasoning".

I can understand and even identify with a lot of what you are saying Chuck, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how you justify it.

Here's where I'll probably get myself in trouble but I'll try once: heh

I think the concept that you are flowing with is what I think of as a form of Communism. No, I'm not calling you a Communist.
I know very little about it but when I see statements like this
all I can think of is equal share for everybody.
I love that idea! Neighbors sharing, take what you need, give what you can and everyone's happy and life is good.

It sounds really great... but we live in a Capitalist society and everyone wants to get paid.
If you work out some agreement among the willing participants, sure fill your boots!
But to me what you are suggesting is theft.

I don't think you and I will ever see each others point so I thought I should opt out before I said something stupid. Kinda late for that now eh? lol

I do see the point, I think. It seems unfair for someone to get free satellite while others are paying for it. On the other hand, if no one knows about the signal theft then it seems hard to justify calling it wrong. How can an act be wrong if no one else is affected by it, as would be the case if the thief would not pay for it even if he couldn't steal it? So while it seems wrong, it's hard for me to see exactly why.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

This goes back to what I wrote way way back in comparing it to MP3 downloads; it seems like a victimless crime, you can pretend you'd have not bought the music anyway, etc.

Here, the issue becomes one of deterence. If people get to know it's possible, then maybe they'll all do it - and then the service collapses because no-one is paying. (Certainly, it is one reason why sat TV is encoded (not that it stops folk selling smart cards that decoded it)).

Sure, one guy doing it won't bring down the company, but if his friends all start doing it...


Still seems to me that if you know it's wrong, just not doing it would be nice.

That would lower law enforcement even further - and maybe decrease the taxes you pay...

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i wanted to quote that 0.o

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"The purpose of life is not just to be happy; the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
-Albert Einstein-

But if no one finds out then law enforcement would not be affected. If he couldn't have paid for it then there was no money for the satellite provider to get. It would be bad if everyone else did it too, but one person doing it and having no one find out will have no effect on what anyone else does. If something someone does has no effect on anyone else can it even be said to be right or wrong?

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

So doing wrong is OK if it's secret?


Couldn't is different to wouldn't.

Maybe he'd have chosen different priorities in his spending, and bought A instead of B?

The only easy, practical, way to resolve this is for the person who doesn't want to or isn't able to, pay for something - to just not have it.

After all, even you agree it is stealing.


Ridiculous, and contradictory.

Allowing one person to do something illegal and just hoping no one else finds out about it just plain silly.

We also know more than one person will do something; is two OK then? Maybe three? ...


Yes.

I also think when a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, it still makes a noise.

Also, in the cases we've been discussing - who decides what constitutes "no effect"?

[
I'm typing this right now using my work laptop and my home wireless - because my daughter is using my PC (which is the only thing hard-wired to my router). Usually I set my router to disable wirelss altogether.

I'm using a pre-shared-key (etc.) for security. I know how to set that up, so my neighbours can't steal my bandwidth. I'm a programmer for a living; so it's something I know how to do.

Yay for me.

If the 60-something year old folk directly next door didn't know how to do that (I don't know if they even have internet; this is hypothetical) I would feel rotten if I stole their bandwidth, and I simply wouldn't do it.
]

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No, it's questionable that something can be wrong if no one else is affectedIs stealing wrong if no one loses anything and never knows something was stolen? The portion of the satellite signal that the thief receives would have been discarded because no satellite dish would have received it.No one is being allowed to steal. No one knows about it and no one is affected by it so there's no way to know it was done.I'm not seeing it. Right and wrong depends on how you treat others. No one else if affected here. If it's wrong, exactly who was harmed?

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

The provider who is not paid is harmed by loss of potential income.

(Life has gotten more complex than to be able to point to a physical loss, in this case).

Any attempt to say they wouldn't have been paid anyway, doesn't help, because then you open up a can of worms on how to decide if it really wouldn't have been paid for.

e.g. The person getting satellite for free might have paid for it if they couldn't get it free, and instead chosen not to buy that new couch, or maybe they'd buy less fancy coffee and drink more instant.

As soon as you make it "acceptable" to steal that service, you make it easier for anyone to make that "oh, I wouldn't have paid for it anyway" claim. (Maybe we should have tax-paid Government employees to judge such claims?)

If that's true - that they would have just not had the service if they couldn't get it for free - then let them prove that by actually not getting it.

If an official decision were made that stealing bandwidth would not be considered illegal, or at least, would not be prosecuted - then people would be encouraged to do it. You'd not keep that secret. The problem would get worse; the people paying for service would get worse service and the ISP's would lose money.

That's why immoral or damaging behaviours are made illegal and punishable.

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Let's try this in more concrete terms. Say I have pile money in my backyard...oh, a gobazillion dollars. It's more money than I'll be able to count, much less spend, in a hundred lifetimes. Succumbing to temptation, you reach across the fence and help yourself to crisp $100 bill.

Is that wrong?

Since I can't count it all, I'll never realize the loss. If I never realize the loss, what tangible harm have I suffered? Then there's that security argument. Surely, I must realize that such a temptation would irresistable to some, so leaving unsecured is as good as an invitation, isn't it?

I don't think so. In my opinion, the wrongness of an action isn't inseparably pinned to the perceived harm it does, the guessed-at intentions of the one wronged, or whether someone is watching or not.

If it's not yours, don't touch it, play with it, or take it... unless you ask...nicely.

And please...a few comments have strayed a little close to the inflammatory political. Let's have a care, folks.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska
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That would be the nice men with the big guns. They would be the ones enforcing majority opinion on the topic. It is unfortunate, perhaps, in this global system of state sovereignty and territorial administration that there is no where else to go to escape government or be exiled, forcible or voluntarily.

They lose the revenue they would have gained from a paid subscriber, i.e. you. But this also requires cracked receivers, as unsecured satellite signals are, as far as I know, free to view, which is why a lot of companies started encrypting their signals.

Should home wi-fi network owners also encrypt their signals? Yes. Should police be paid by taxes for investigating this? That's a bad question, they are paid by taxes as a matter of course, no matter what their particular policing actions might be. Should they be paid vis-a-vis wi-fi theft? That's also a bad question because the deterrent action of policing is separate from any actual policing of specific cases, hence the saying "it's only wrong if you get caught". But if you get caught, you're in trouble. If you think that part of the police pay for policing wi-fi theft should be paid by the person who ignorantly didn't secure his wi-fi by means of a fee or fine, then convince lawmakers to pass that law.

There are a lot of issues where people try to argue "No harm, no foul" but they are not often successful. After all, the issue has often already been debated by lawmakers and enshrined in law and the judiciary must enforce it. Conspiracy to commit a crime is a crime, even if the actual plotted crime was not committed. Attempted murder is a crime, even if the attempt resulted in no damage or injury. Growing your own drugs and using it in your own home conscientiously is a crime (although some might argue that PharmCos suffer a loss of revenue). Mere posession of copies of certain items, like certain state documents, or certain types of porn are crimes, even if you merely found them by chance and have no causal link to their theft or production.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

If I take uncountable money from someone he's still out that money even though he'll ever know it. That's not the same as watching satellite TV that wouldn't have been paid for even had it not been stolen because then the satellite provider is not out any money since they wouldn't have received it no matter what. Whether the signal thief didn't have it or needed it to feed his kids, the satellite provider would not have gotten it under any circumstances.

I'm not claiming that such signal theft should be legal or forgivable. Since no one else would know about it, there would be no legalizing or forgiving to do. The satellite provider would be making no claims against the thief that would need to be judged. There's no question about what society should do about the theft since nothing could be done. No one but the thief knows about it and no one but the thief is affected by it. Why is the theft wrong if no one has lost anything, not even peace of mind because no one else knows about it? If someone throws away a valuable item because he doesn't know its value, is the person who finds it later a thief? The original owner would be out that object no matter what else happens to it. If it's perishible and can't be returned under any circumstances then is it wrong for someone else to use it? Unused satellite signal can't be returned and will be wasted if not viewed, so why is it wrong to view it? It will be gone in any case and no one else will know or care.

I'm not arguing that any law should be changed or ignored. I'm just asking why the theft is considered to be wrong. Being illegal doesn't always mean wrong. Some laws can be pointless or oppressive. It's wrong to financially harm someone but that's not happening here. It's wrong to set a bad example but that's not happening here. Law enforcement costs money but that's not going to happen in this case. Only the thief is affected in any way. Is there any other reason that the theft is wrong?

Police investigating WiFi theft might not be paid anyway. Well less investigating to do, police departments could be smaller. No deterrent would be needed against WiFi theft if people complaining about it would just be told to secure their networks.

Seems self explanatory to me, given the meaning of 'theft'.

Theft isn't always wrong. It depends on the circumstances.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

It is probably a quote from someone famous but my mom always told me that "character is what you do when no one is looking."

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

What circumstances? There may be mitigating circumstances and excuses, but that doesn't mean it's not wrong, it usually only speaks to the severity of a penalty.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

If someone stole a baseball bat from his neighbor's garage to use to stop a dog from mauling a child then the theft wasn't wrong. It would have been wrong to not do it.

In any case, whether an act is right or wrong depends on how it affects others. If no one else is affected then the concept of right or wrong doesn't apply to the situation.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

I always loved that saying.

"Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking." Jackson Browne

I like this one too:
"Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are." John Wooden

More here
hxxp://www.motivatingquotes.com/character.htm