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Posting Publicly Available URL Claimed a "Hack"
Urban Strata writes "Popular mobile phone community HowardForums.com is being hit with take-down notices from MobiTV. At issue is the fact that a HowardForums community member uncovered a publicly accessible URL for MobiTV's television stream. This URL is not encrypted or authenticated in any way, and yet MobiTV sent site owner Howard Chui a cease-and-desist letter for hosting a forum with the public URL, claiming that doing so is equivalent to hacking their service."
Is it stupid to make your stream available unencrypted from a publicly available URLYes
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
"There are too many people freeloading nowadays. The internet makes it so much easier to freeload"
Jee, I wonder if you'd apply the same concept to OTA radio and Local TV with regards to magnetic recording media back in the 80s and 90s.
The fact of the matter is that they're claiming it is a hack, when it's their own stupidity and ignorance that allowed this to happen. Calling this a hack is just an attempt upon the person's character. People will begin to think the person that stumbled across this is a hacker, then they'll get that reputation, which in turn tarnishes the reputation of the non-hacker. It's character assassination and MobiTV should be nailed to the fucking wall while someone calls for their waaaaaahmbulance.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
likewise: Illegal != wrong.
The OP merely said that it was wrong, he did not say that it was illegal. Wrong is clearly a statement of whether something violates ones morals (in this context).
Just sayin...
well they're within their rights in asking you to stop.
How am I to know that membership is required if they do not ID? If I walk into a Gym and no one IDs me, I think "hey, cool. public gym. didn't know they still existed". If I stumble across a link to a TV stream, I think "hey, cool. free video. I wish they had stripped the ads." I feel it is unreasonable to expect the end user to determine if he or she should be paying for a service. If the service is pay only, it should have some method of access control. A lack of access control implies free (as in beer).
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Browsing the stacks, in this case.
You're not preventing anyone else from browsing or checking out the books, and at worst you're taking up a little bit of space in the hall. The resources that you've accessed are still there for all the other patrons.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
How is it wrong to just visit a completely public URL? If they're losing money it's their fault; you can't just say that verizon losing money is wrong. How is that wrong? We're gaining value. Nothing has been destroyed here. This situation is purely verizon's affiliate being lazy and insecure, and you're just stupid for thinking it's wrong to take advantage of that.
Also, this reminds me of this story where reuters was accused of hacking for posting a publically-available but secret URL. Everyone thought it was a complete joke and reuters lined up its battalion of lawyers and pumped the plaintiff full of hot lead. How is this any different?
They're also just asking for the Streisand Effect to bite them in the ass, especially with their lack of security. It would have been better to simply fix the security issues and watch the freeloaders drop off like flies. Instead they chose the route that will actually cost them the most since everyone is now well aware of it so the bandwidth will go up, they will still have to put up security AND they get bad publicity. Sounds like sticking up for their "rights" worked out well.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
"But you'd have to be really disconnected from society if you honestly thought that you just found a free gym."
So that gym I go to every Saturday to take martial arts has been charging all these years? Seriously, I go to a free gym every Saturday to train; the name is the Black and Williams Neighborhood Center just in case you think I'm bullshitting. These aren't unheard of in most civilized countries so one has to wonder who is really disconnected from society as per your statement above.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
You are the CEO of a multinational corporation. You manage the company into the ground. You are fired, but the golden handshake provision of your contract entitles you to 150M$. Money you didn't, in the strictest sense of the word, earn. Are you stealing?
Look, if I leave a sofa on the curb in San Francisco, and don't look like I am moving, it will disafsckingppear in less than an hour. The internet is no different; you make a stream avail without any protection, I tap into the stream, you don't want me to, you block it. You don't block, you are ok with it. Like leaving the sofa out, implied consent to access unprotected content/stuff.
Your argument essentially distills into having a house with glass walls in the middle of a crowded city and then complaining when people look in. Don't want observers, don't use glass walls.
andy