maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - Man arrested for stealing (wifi) broadband

	tabletrat	2007-08-24 , 11:41
	Posts: 481 \| Thanked: 65 times \| Joined on Aug 2007 @ Westcountry, UK	#45

Originally Posted by Texrat

I really don't understand this idea of "if you don't protect then it I have a right to invade it". Where does that line of thinking come from? There is no precedent for it in any other legal sense.

it is an odd state of affairs that most people would find completely unreasonable in any other field.

The cable to my neighbours phone passes over the top of the corner of my garden, and they haven't made any attempt to protect it, so I guess I can use it too

Theft of soft ware and services is still theft, no matter how one rationalizes it. It's really sad to me that somehow increasing numbers of people believe they have an automatic right to something simply because it's within their grasp.

Well, in the UK it is not theft*, it is copyright violation, but that still doesn't make it any less wrong.

*Here that means removing and illegally depriving something from its recognised owner, I don't know what the US definition is.