All this feature does is offer the site: operator through the use of a new search box under the original result.
It's not a "new feature" in terms of what it can do, this has been available for ages. It's just making it easier for people who didn't know how to do it, who no longer have to click on "Advanced Search" or learn to type "site:"
bypassing the traditional distribution channels completely.
Merely a slightly different market...
If the traditional distribution channels are bypassed completely, you have a market that is more that "slightly" different, it is substantially different. It is essentially the destruction of (that segment of) the industry.
If you accept Thomas Jefferson's idea that books are capital...
"Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital."
... then we now have a situation in which significant amounts of capital can be aquired, by individuals of average means, at no cost and without diminishing the holdings of others. All that remains is to ensure that there remains incentive for the original work to be created. Pay per copy business model may well still exist, but will have a diminished role, as evidenced in the software industry with F/OSS, where pay per copy exists, but is diminished, ie no longer the predominant form of distribution (within the F/OSS model, yes I am aware that MS still exists).
To be able to aquire capital without significant effort or forcibly removing it from someone is indeed a radical change in the societal order. I'm also not exactly clear on what I said that you disagreed with. Your first point...
The problem is that the "original" distributors are not conforming to the actual market... rather, they have been trying to force the market to conform to their old business model.
... was that the market has changed, which is the point (perhaps ineptly) that I was trying to make.
On the contrary, I fail to see any new issues that digital text brings to the table. These very same issues were debated hundreds of years ago, and the circumstances are not substantially different at all.
As I understand it, one difference that digital text brings is a difference in the reason for copying. Specifically, when copyright laws were introduced, the copying being prevented was commercial, ie printers producing books for sale without paying the author. The possibility of someone making a copy of a book for their neighbor would have been remote, taking a book and distributing copies worldwide for free impossible. Now, much of the copying is done by individuals who are not in business producing copies at all.
In the first instance, the printers were not changing the market books were sold in, they were taking share of that market without paying royalties. Each copy still had to be paid for, even if they could be produced marginally cheaper. The physical production and distribution of the book still had to be paid for.
In the second instance, the copiers are changing the market, diminishing or even possibly destroying the business model of charging per copy. The production and distribution of copies can be done at virtually zero cost.
I'm not arguing the rightness or wrongness of it, but it is certainly different. Whether people think it's right or wrong, there seems to me to be another profound difference: The unauthorised printers could be found and stopped. This largely does not seem to be the case with digital copying.
I do believe that if someone is not explictly told they have access to something then they don't.
I do not believe everything is community property by default, and if you want to keep something you have to secure it. I believe that everything is owned/controlled by someone/something and if you want to use it you need their permission. People are allowed to let others freely use whatever they own, I do not object to that. I just do not believe that is how the world works.
I substantially agree with all that. I just think that a broadcast advertisement of an available service, followed through by configuration information being sent to me in order to assist me to use the service is permission. I don't see how it could reasonably be construed as being anything other than an invitation to use it. If you read my previous post again, you will see that I am not advocating using the service without permission.
If you use the device, you certainly know if it is offering connection without authentication, and at what range. You therefore know if it is offering an unauthenticated connection to your neighbors. If you know that it does that, and you turn it on, you have taken an active step to offer an unauthenticated wireless connection to my house, and advertise that offer. There is nothing wrong with me taking you up on that offer. Since it is by nature an open offer, if you wish for it to be limited, it is up to you to clarify that, or not make the offer at all.
If you want a connection then you pay for it, and let who you want use it.
If you don't want to share your connection, don't send rf signals into my house advertising its presence, provide connection configuration (IP) and a gateway. If you don't put the slightest obstable such as a password to make it clear that the offer you broadcast is limited in some way, then why shouldn't I take that offer at face value?
Do I have an obligation to assume incompetence on your part? If you send rf signals with an offer of a connection, do I really have to assume that you're too stupid to use your own equipment properly and therefore the offer is invalid? If people need some special consideration because of inherent incompetence, just let me know, I don't discriminate or take advantage of the disabled. Until then, if you offer me something, I will feel myself at liberty to accept it.
In the courtroom, though, ignorance is still not a defence.
I didn't know I wasn't authorised! - no excuse
I didn't know my router was inviting people to use my network! - no excuse
I've seen good arguments for both sides on this article, but it seems to me that the better position is that if the router is broadcasting an offer of a connection and enabling it without encumberance, then it is authorised.
The people who want to share leave it unsecured. The people who don't want to share use encryption, or deny access in some other way. Everyone gets what they want, no new law required. What is making it illegal is not sharers or freeloaders, its people who won't take reasonable steps to secure their router and would rather call the government for help than quickly and simply deal with it themselves. It shouldn't be surprising that if you broadcast a service that people will use it, neither should it be illegal.
Yes, but what do you think is the best response: configure your router to require a password, making access illegal under current law, or write new laws making life a bit more difficult for many people.
Hint: people who will share child porn etc already break the law, and may not stop if you just add another law. You need to actually prevent access if this is your concern.
Should something like this go to court, then you can feel free to ask my AP to appear in court as a witness. If it confirms that it authorised you to use its service when asked by the judge, then I'll admit that you are right.
No need. The AP was run by you, and you are there. We'll just get you to confirm the following:
Your AP broadcast its presence to your neighbor's property (advertised).
Your AP provided an IP address for connection to your network (enabled).
Your AP provided a gateway for connection to the internet (enabled).
Your AP provided an unencrypted connection (permitted).
You connect without authentication, and therefore know that others can also.
You can be expected to know the approximate range of your broadcast.
You own the AP and are therefore responsible for its configuration.
Therefore, you turned on the AP, and left it on, knowingly taking deliberate action that would advertise the available connection to your neighbor, provide the appropriate configuration to them and enable them to use it. To knowingly advertise and enable a service, broadcasting it to the homes of others, is to give them permission unless otherwise stated.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tax
1. a sum of money demanded by a government for its support or for specific facilities or services, levied upon incomes, property, sales, etc.
There is little difference here from recharging your power tools using the neighbor's external power outlets or washing your car with the neighbor's hose.
If your neighbour puts the external power outlets on your wall, or connects a tap in your yard, it's quite different.
If you send someone an object in the mail, it is theirs, they do not have to pay for it. If you broadcast an unencrypted connection onto their property, that's your action, you are responsible.
In any case, there is no need for legislation on this. It can and should be solved by the individual who owns the router having it properly configured. Legislation ought not be used to enable wilful ignorance. If you can connect to your router without authentication it is obvious that others can too and reasonable for others to expect that you understand this. My tax dollars should not be spent making up for other peoples refusal to learn how to use their equipment. If you don't want to learn, pay someone.
What's with all the moral infants here trying to defend this? These pirates are clearly getting something free from their neighbor that the neighbor had to pay for, and without permission. That's stealing, without any wiggle room. I'm amazed anyone can claim with a straight face that it isn't.
As you've described it, that's stealing, no question. Whether accessing a broadcast unencrypted service that advertizes its presence and relevant configuration to you in your own home without you actively searching for it can be construed as "without permission" is what is open for debate in my mind, to say the least.
The only "invalid assumption" being made is that "DHCP IP" and "explicit permission to freeload off an internet connection" are synonymous.
Since you compared it to electricity, gas and water connections, what if my neighbour runs a power line into my living room, a gas line and a tap to my barbeque area? If I secretly ran a line from my neighbours power to my house and used it, that would be stealing in most people's eyes. If they run the line and I plug my stereo into it, it isn't.
It isn't just "DHCP IP", it is broadcasting the availability. Compare it to a wired router. Mine uses DHCP, but my neighbours don't connect to it. If I ran a cable to their house, they wouldn't be stealing if they plug it in and use it.
I've got 3 kids under 5. How can they be considered able to authorize entry? It's not a recourse against uncooperative children, it's a defense against those who would exploit your childrens naivety. Would you allow your house to be searched by police without warrant because they manage to convince your 4 year old to say its ok?
It is a reasonable expectation that a microwave will contain the radiation.
It is a reasonable expectation that you will understand that if you can contect to your wireless router without authentication, so can others.
To the extent you don't take responsibility for yourself you come under the control of others. If you don't want others to use your router you have several options:
1. Learn how to configure your router.
2. Pay someone to configure your router.
3. Convince someone to configure your router for free.
4. Find a seller who configures routers to require authentication.
5. Put up with people using your router even though you don't like it.
6. Increase government regulation.
Why do so many people opt for increasing government regulation. You cannot do this continually and remain a free people.
However, the issue basically, in my mind, breaks down to this: Your computer/router/child has no authority, on its own, to issue or deny an invitation for entry or use of your systems, space, etc, etc.
That's right. It also has no ability to configure itself. If it is actively offering a connection it is in my opinion a valid offer, just as a sign "please take one" hanging over a magazine is a valid offer, even though the sign have no authority on its own to give away magazines.
If the person configuring the machine had the right to do so, it's a valid offer.
"Look, I understand your point, but you should reevaluate the copying = stealing line."
I don't think so - not because you didn't raise a point - you raised a couple of good ones. The problem is that there are people who would use that as a justification for feeling entitled to rip off whatever they want, regardless of if they are putting somebody into bankruptcy in the process, and the counterpoint needs to be made.
If that is "the problem" then yes, you should reevaluate it. Consider that rape is not theft, yet I have never heard anyone use that as a justification for rape.
The idea that copyright infringement is theft is unnecessary to the concept of copyright infringement being wrong or undesirable. If you were to argue: "There are some benefits and costs to the various positions on copyright, but on balance, because of X, Y and Z, society will benefit more from strong copyright protection and infringement of those rights is wrong" it is much more difficult to refute. If you argue that copying = stealing it is very easy to refute and therefore weakens your arguement overall.
Personally, I think there is a very good case to be made that copyright infringement costs society more than it provides benefits. "Copying = theft" is not a part of it. Essentially, trying to equate copying and theft is making an emotional appeal rather than a logical one. It is trying to use people's objection to theft to persuade them against something which is not theft. If you want the basis of a sound logical arguement, you could start by stating that we could:
... promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings
and Discoveries
Keeping in mind that the author of these words, Thomas Jefferson, also said:
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.
Laws, moreover, abridging the natural right of the citizen, should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.
So, let me get this straight. You have the money for it, you want it, but you don't want to pay for it. So, you'll just take it. If this was a store, that would be called shoplifting. Last I checked, there were other options, like downloading an open source solution, or taking your business to a company that doesn't overprice their software.
While saying he takes it is technically accurate, it does have the connotation that he is taking it from someone, ie that they would be missing the thing he took. I think that using the word copy more accurately conveys the reality of the situation.
I've never heard of a parallel situation in a shop, where someone entered the shop, copied a product and left without paying, taking the copy with them but leaving the original. I doubt that a conviction for shoplifting could be secured, but if patents or copyrights applied to the copied product then the appropriate laws could be brought to bear.
It can be argued that copyright violation has some similarities to theft, but it also has substantial differences. Equating theft and copyright violation adds nothing to the discussion in any case that I have seen, serving only to blur the distinction between them and make reasoned debate more difficult. If you think that copyright infringement is wrong, there are obviously a substantial amount of people who agree with you (there are international laws pertaining to it, after all). I'm quite willing to consider any arguement you present to support that position.
But to say "copyright infringement=shoplifting/theft" is just incorrect. Does it have similarities? Yes, but it is the differences that make it not theft.
It's about 90 seconds wages for most people in the UK.
Really? Most people in the UK get paid $280/hour?
We pay about £1.07, or $2.16, per litre, or $8.20 per US gallon. The average UK wage is about £12 ($25)/hour, so about 7 minutes work for the average UK wage earner. At the minimum wage its about 12 minutes work.
A price of $8.20 per US gallon, while earning $25/hour is almost 20 minutes work. Or about 33 minutes work if you have your proportion right between average and minimum wage. Far above the claimed 90 seconds anyway.
It is interesting to note that the decision was essentially ratified by the Australian people in the following election, despite the subsequent harrassment of John Kerr by labour supporters.
Just today I started reading Gough Witlam's book "On Australia's Constitution". Even the introduction is quite enlightening:
"In our concern with the Constitution as an obstacle to a Labour government's programs we overlooked its threat to a Labour government's existence."
"...as a general principle the Labour Party would support any amendment which augmented the Federal government's powers."
Whitlam, by his own admission, was attempting to pass unconstitutional reforms. He could not get enough support to amend the constitution the way he wanted, so did various end run tactics to get around the constitution. Tactics which have passed into common use by "both sides" of politics to expand Federal power at the expense of our freedoms.
Whitlam's dismissal was an appropriate exercise of our constitutional "checks and balances". If the population had disagreed, we could have re-elected labour, but we didn't. The hunting of John Kerr from society is the triumph of thuggery over democratic process.
but really; is there that much chance of people being blown up?
no, there isn't. When you think how freely available info on explosives making is (and the numerous other avenues for terrorist attacks that would be simple to implement, I'm sure you can think of several if you put 5 minutes thought to it) and how infrequent terrorist attacks in the west are, you would be forced to one of very few conclusions:
1. There are very few people dedicated to carrying out terrorist attacks on the west.
2. The masses of terrorists in the west are extremely incompetent and/or unimaginative.
3. The majority of terrorists have colluded together to not commit terrorist attacks for the time being.
Slashdot Mirror
All this feature does is offer the site: operator through the use of a new search box under the original result.
It's not a "new feature" in terms of what it can do, this has been available for ages. It's just making it easier for people who didn't know how to do it, who no longer have to click on "Advanced Search" or learn to type "site:"
Merely a slightly different market...
If the traditional distribution channels are bypassed completely, you have a market that is more that "slightly" different, it is substantially different. It is essentially the destruction of (that segment of) the industry.
If you accept Thomas Jefferson's idea that books are capital...
To be able to aquire capital without significant effort or forcibly removing it from someone is indeed a radical change in the societal order. I'm also not exactly clear on what I said that you disagreed with. Your first point
The problem is that the "original" distributors are not conforming to the actual market... rather, they have been trying to force the market to conform to their old business model.
In the first instance, the printers were not changing the market books were sold in, they were taking share of that market without paying royalties. Each copy still had to be paid for, even if they could be produced marginally cheaper. The physical production and distribution of the book still had to be paid for.
In the second instance, the copiers are changing the market, diminishing or even possibly destroying the business model of charging per copy. The production and distribution of copies can be done at virtually zero cost.
I'm not arguing the rightness or wrongness of it, but it is certainly different. Whether people think it's right or wrong, there seems to me to be another profound difference: The unauthorised printers could be found and stopped. This largely does not seem to be the case with digital copying.
Windows does have a /home/ equivalent, namely the My Documents folder.
It's been a long time since I've had a windows machine (9x) but it didn't store email in "My Documents" then, I'm curious, has that changed?
laziness + ambition?
I do believe that if someone is not explictly told they have access to something then they don't.
I do not believe everything is community property by default, and if you want to keep something you have to secure it. I believe that everything is owned/controlled by someone/something and if you want to use it you need their permission. People are allowed to let others freely use whatever they own, I do not object to that. I just do not believe that is how the world works.
I substantially agree with all that. I just think that a broadcast advertisement of an available service, followed through by configuration information being sent to me in order to assist me to use the service is permission. I don't see how it could reasonably be construed as being anything other than an invitation to use it. If you read my previous post again, you will see that I am not advocating using the service without permission.
If you use the device, you certainly know if it is offering connection without authentication, and at what range. You therefore know if it is offering an unauthenticated connection to your neighbors. If you know that it does that, and you turn it on, you have taken an active step to offer an unauthenticated wireless connection to my house, and advertise that offer. There is nothing wrong with me taking you up on that offer. Since it is by nature an open offer, if you wish for it to be limited, it is up to you to clarify that, or not make the offer at all.
If you want a connection then you pay for it, and let who you want use it.
If you don't want to share your connection, don't send rf signals into my house advertising its presence, provide connection configuration (IP) and a gateway. If you don't put the slightest obstable such as a password to make it clear that the offer you broadcast is limited in some way, then why shouldn't I take that offer at face value?
Do I have an obligation to assume incompetence on your part? If you send rf signals with an offer of a connection, do I really have to assume that you're too stupid to use your own equipment properly and therefore the offer is invalid? If people need some special consideration because of inherent incompetence, just let me know, I don't discriminate or take advantage of the disabled. Until then, if you offer me something, I will feel myself at liberty to accept it.
In the courtroom, though, ignorance is still not a defence.
I didn't know I wasn't authorised! - no excuse
I didn't know my router was inviting people to use my network! - no excuse
I've seen good arguments for both sides on this article, but it seems to me that the better position is that if the router is broadcasting an offer of a connection and enabling it without encumberance, then it is authorised.
The people who want to share leave it unsecured. The people who don't want to share use encryption, or deny access in some other way. Everyone gets what they want, no new law required. What is making it illegal is not sharers or freeloaders, its people who won't take reasonable steps to secure their router and would rather call the government for help than quickly and simply deal with it themselves. It shouldn't be surprising that if you broadcast a service that people will use it, neither should it be illegal.
Yes, but what do you think is the best response: configure your router to require a password, making access illegal under current law, or write new laws making life a bit more difficult for many people.
Hint: people who will share child porn etc already break the law, and may not stop if you just add another law. You need to actually prevent access if this is your concern.
Should something like this go to court, then you can feel free to ask my AP to appear in court as a witness. If it confirms that it authorised you to use its service when asked by the judge, then I'll admit that you are right.
No need. The AP was run by you, and you are there. We'll just get you to confirm the following:
Your AP broadcast its presence to your neighbor's property (advertised).
Your AP provided an IP address for connection to your network (enabled).
Your AP provided a gateway for connection to the internet (enabled).
Your AP provided an unencrypted connection (permitted).
You connect without authentication, and therefore know that others can also.
You can be expected to know the approximate range of your broadcast.
You own the AP and are therefore responsible for its configuration.
Therefore, you turned on the AP, and left it on, knowingly taking deliberate action that would advertise the available connection to your neighbor, provide the appropriate configuration to them and enable them to use it. To knowingly advertise and enable a service, broadcasting it to the homes of others, is to give them permission unless otherwise stated.
That's a problem to be solved through legislation, not lack of enforcement of the law.
It's NOT your money. You gave it away!
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gave
1. to present voluntarily and without expecting compensation; bestow: to give a birthday present to someone.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tax
1. a sum of money demanded by a government for its support or for specific facilities or services, levied upon incomes, property, sales, etc.
Emphasis mine. He didn't give it away.
There is little difference here from recharging your power tools using the neighbor's external power outlets or washing your car with the neighbor's hose.
If your neighbour puts the external power outlets on your wall, or connects a tap in your yard, it's quite different.
If you send someone an object in the mail, it is theirs, they do not have to pay for it. If you broadcast an unencrypted connection onto their property, that's your action, you are responsible.
In any case, there is no need for legislation on this. It can and should be solved by the individual who owns the router having it properly configured. Legislation ought not be used to enable wilful ignorance. If you can connect to your router without authentication it is obvious that others can too and reasonable for others to expect that you understand this. My tax dollars should not be spent making up for other peoples refusal to learn how to use their equipment. If you don't want to learn, pay someone.
What's with all the moral infants here trying to defend this? These pirates are clearly getting something free from their neighbor that the neighbor had to pay for, and without permission. That's stealing, without any wiggle room. I'm amazed anyone can claim with a straight face that it isn't.
As you've described it, that's stealing, no question. Whether accessing a broadcast unencrypted service that advertizes its presence and relevant configuration to you in your own home without you actively searching for it can be construed as "without permission" is what is open for debate in my mind, to say the least.
The only "invalid assumption" being made is that "DHCP IP" and "explicit permission to freeload off an internet connection" are synonymous.
Since you compared it to electricity, gas and water connections, what if my neighbour runs a power line into my living room, a gas line and a tap to my barbeque area? If I secretly ran a line from my neighbours power to my house and used it, that would be stealing in most people's eyes. If they run the line and I plug my stereo into it, it isn't.
It isn't just "DHCP IP", it is broadcasting the availability. Compare it to a wired router. Mine uses DHCP, but my neighbours don't connect to it. If I ran a cable to their house, they wouldn't be stealing if they plug it in and use it.
I've got 3 kids under 5. How can they be considered able to authorize entry? It's not a recourse against uncooperative children, it's a defense against those who would exploit your childrens naivety. Would you allow your house to be searched by police without warrant because they manage to convince your 4 year old to say its ok?
For a teenager though, I'd see it more your way.
It is a reasonable expectation that a microwave will contain the radiation.
It is a reasonable expectation that you will understand that if you can contect to your wireless router without authentication, so can others.
To the extent you don't take responsibility for yourself you come under the control of others. If you don't want others to use your router you have several options:
1. Learn how to configure your router.
2. Pay someone to configure your router.
3. Convince someone to configure your router for free.
4. Find a seller who configures routers to require authentication.
5. Put up with people using your router even though you don't like it.
6. Increase government regulation.
Why do so many people opt for increasing government regulation. You cannot do this continually and remain a free people.
However, the issue basically, in my mind, breaks down to this: Your computer/router/child has no authority, on its own, to issue or deny an invitation for entry or use of your systems, space, etc, etc.
That's right. It also has no ability to configure itself. If it is actively offering a connection it is in my opinion a valid offer, just as a sign "please take one" hanging over a magazine is a valid offer, even though the sign have no authority on its own to give away magazines.
If the person configuring the machine had the right to do so, it's a valid offer.
The idea that copyright infringement is theft is unnecessary to the concept of copyright infringement being wrong or undesirable. If you were to argue: "There are some benefits and costs to the various positions on copyright, but on balance, because of X, Y and Z, society will benefit more from strong copyright protection and infringement of those rights is wrong" it is much more difficult to refute. If you argue that copying = stealing it is very easy to refute and therefore weakens your arguement overall.
Personally, I think there is a very good case to be made that copyright infringement costs society more than it provides benefits. "Copying = theft" is not a part of it. Essentially, trying to equate copying and theft is making an emotional appeal rather than a logical one. It is trying to use people's objection to theft to persuade them against something which is not theft. If you want the basis of a sound logical arguement, you could start by stating that we could:
Keeping in mind that the author of these words, Thomas Jefferson, also said:
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.
Laws, moreover, abridging the natural right of the citizen, should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_jefferson.html
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl220.htm
I've never heard of a parallel situation in a shop, where someone entered the shop, copied a product and left without paying, taking the copy with them but leaving the original. I doubt that a conviction for shoplifting could be secured, but if patents or copyrights applied to the copied product then the appropriate laws could be brought to bear.
It can be argued that copyright violation has some similarities to theft, but it also has substantial differences. Equating theft and copyright violation adds nothing to the discussion in any case that I have seen, serving only to blur the distinction between them and make reasoned debate more difficult. If you think that copyright infringement is wrong, there are obviously a substantial amount of people who agree with you (there are international laws pertaining to it, after all). I'm quite willing to consider any arguement you present to support that position.
But to say "copyright infringement=shoplifting/theft" is just incorrect. Does it have similarities? Yes, but it is the differences that make it not theft.
Bear in mind that "not theft"!="not wrong"
It is interesting to note that the decision was essentially ratified by the Australian people in the following election, despite the subsequent harrassment of John Kerr by labour supporters.
Just today I started reading Gough Witlam's book "On Australia's Constitution". Even the introduction is quite enlightening:
"In our concern with the Constitution as an obstacle to a Labour government's programs we overlooked its threat to a Labour government's existence."
"...as a general principle the Labour Party would support any amendment which augmented the Federal government's powers."
Whitlam, by his own admission, was attempting to pass unconstitutional reforms. He could not get enough support to amend the constitution the way he wanted, so did various end run tactics to get around the constitution. Tactics which have passed into common use by "both sides" of politics to expand Federal power at the expense of our freedoms.
Whitlam's dismissal was an appropriate exercise of our constitutional "checks and balances". If the population had disagreed, we could have re-elected labour, but we didn't. The hunting of John Kerr from society is the triumph of thuggery over democratic process.
but really; is there that much chance of people being blown up?
no, there isn't. When you think how freely available info on explosives making is (and the numerous other avenues for terrorist attacks that would be simple to implement, I'm sure you can think of several if you put 5 minutes thought to it) and how infrequent terrorist attacks in the west are, you would be forced to one of very few conclusions:
1. There are very few people dedicated to carrying out terrorist attacks on the west.
2. The masses of terrorists in the west are extremely incompetent and/or unimaginative.
3. The majority of terrorists have colluded together to not commit terrorist attacks for the time being.
Only 1 seems likely to me.