First, there are no attempts from the 141.154.* netblock (where my WAN address resides).
Lucky you. I guess the former Bell Atlantic (141.x.x.x) portion of Verizon is where they send the clueful users, whereas I'm stuck with the fucktards here in former GTE-land (4.x.x.x). The last few entries in my log, about 90 seconds worth:
All those from the 4.14.x block are on the same Verizon DSL netblock as me. As you noted, 445 is likely Sasser, and the TCP:135 probes are, likely as not, either Blaster or Nachi trying the MS RPC port...
Incidentally, I haven't seen Slashdot render incorrectly with any of the recent releases of Mozilla or Firefox (including the current releases) under Windows.
I have - FF 0.8 under Win2k did it all the time, overlapping the text with the sidebars. FF 0.9 is not doing it at the moment, but the problem was intermittent under 0.8, so I'll wait a while to see if it's really fixed or not.
Trespass. Your purchase of a ticket is your permission to enter the premises.
I forgot to mention - today's performance is outdoors, in the park. Public property and all that, but you still have to buy a ticket and bring your own blanket to sit on. None of that ticket nonsense for me, though - am I doing anything wrong?
I pay for whatever reason I decide makes it valuable to me. You're an idiot if you think you have some magical insight into the what constitutes value for someone else.
Nobody gives a shit what you decide the value is, because you don't get to dictate the value to the person providing the service. Either you come to some mutually agreeable solution allowing you access to the service, or you don't get access, but you certainly don't get to decide that the objective value of the service is zero and use that valuation to justify taking it without compensation.
My motivation for doing it has absolutely no bearing upon whether or not DTV's has the moral right to dictate what I do in my own house that harms no one.
Oh, please. Look up "mens rea" sometime - your state of mind is an integral part of whether or not your actions are permissible or not under the law, and it has always been thus, going back a thousand years or so. I realize it's inconvenient for you to have people judging your motives - makes it harder to pull off that "but I wuz just testing the system!" business - but that's life.
Anything that does not infringe upon the rights of others should be allowed.
Well, whatever. Make that argument if you like, but that ain't the law now, nor is it likely to be any time soon, mainly because the issue of rights and infringments is not nearly so neat and clean as your average libertopian pretends it is.
DTV has no right to demand money for services I have not requested.
You have no right to services that you haven't paid for, especially when you're taking them against the will of those doing the providing. Do the people in DTV-land have no rights, or are we supposed to pretend that your rights are somehow superior?
But just because "society" has decided something doesn't mean it's not an infringement of our rights.
You can argue that all the live long day, for all the good it does you, but the bottom line is that a "right" that you claim to have, but which no one else recognizes as a right, is of no practical value to you whatsoever. You can claim that you have a natural right to free daily blowjobs from the supermodel of your choice, but nobody else recognizes that as a right, which pretty much renders it a theoretical right at best - rights are as much a matter of social compact as they are of natural law or whatever else you want to drag in. As a practical matter, not very many people recognize your "right" to free HBO at the moment - perhaps you can eventually persuade them otherwise, but in the meantime, don't be surprised if your exercise of your presumed "right" meets with some opposition.
Like it or not, this is an infringement upon my right to do what I like with my own property.
Even if I grant such a right exists, in what imaginary world are any of your rights absolute and unlimited? You don't have the right to do absolutely anything you like with your own property, and you never have had such a right - claiming that any restriction is a priori immoral is just plain goofy. It may be your land, but you don't have the "right" to "do what you like" with it - you don't have the right to build a slaughterhouse and animal rendering plant in a residential neighborhood. It may be your stereo, but you don't have the "right" to "do what you like" with it - you don't have the right to blast it at 3 AM in a crowded apartment building. It may be your hammer, but you don't have the "right" to "do what you like" with it - you don't have the right to break someone's window or mailbox or face with it. You're telling me any drawing of lines at all is inherently immoral, and I'm here to tell you that you can't avoid drawing lines about what you can and can't do with your property somewhere, unless you live in a society of one - the only argument is where to draw the line. The argument about whether is over and
And in such cases the bill or statute should have followed the Ramseyer/ Cordon Rules when explicitly affecting other statutes...
What are you talking about? The Ramseyer and Cordon rules are wholly irrelevant in this context - they're simply conveniences for members of Congress, dictating how bills must be formatted when printed. That's it - new legislation still supersedes old legislation, even if Ramseyer and Cordon disappear tomorrow, because those are internal rules for Congress, not integral parts of the legislative process. Ramseyer and Cordon weren't around
... however from a constitutional law position this is quite obviously incorrect.
Feel free to cite someone - anyone of authority - that can support such a claim.
...are probably not happy about you blaming them for your misunderstanding. This is the simplest, shortest explanation I can find at the moment - the simplest, shortest version that doesn't have pictures to color in and dots to connect anyway...
If a bill proposes to enact
certain provisions, but does not explicitly amend existing law on the same subject, then
the intended relation between bill and law can be ambiguous. The resolution of these
ambiguities may come through juridical or administrative interpretation. In the absence
of clear conflict between an existing and a new provision, courts normally presume that
the two are intended to be read together, and attempt to give both the fullest effect
possible. In that case the provisions in the new law would be interpreted as additional to
the previously existing ones. By contrast, an earlier enactment may always be superseded
by a later one, so that, if a new enactment is interpreted as conflicting with existing
provisions of statute,
the new provisions may be held to supersede the earlier ones.
You do not repeal old laws by passing new ones (with the exception of specifically repealing a law)
Sure you can. If your town council passes a law saying that the speed limit is thirty miles an hour in your town, and then the following week passes a law saying the speed limit is twenty-five miles an hour, they don't have to specifically repeal the first law for it to no longer be in effect - the second law overrules the first, by virtue of the fact that it's later in date. They've effectively repealed the first law and replaced it with the second, simply by passing a law that directly contradicts the first law.
You might want to go find a constitutional lawyer or a judge that actually deals with case law, precidents and the like and have them explain it to you.
Gosh, and to think I wasted all that money on those con law classes;)
Trust me - you're conflating the notion of stare decisis in case law with how conflicting statute laws are resolved. Under the principle of stare decisis, old precedents in case law and common law are to be given great weight, and all else being equal, old precedents should outweigh newer precedents when they conflict. That's case law. When statute laws - legislation - conflict with each other, the new law overrules the old.
I was under the impression that the more recent law had to make explicit reference to the old law to make any changes to it. If there is no reference then the old law is used.
The way judges do it is, if it is at all possible, one should interpret two laws in such a way as to avoid any conflict between them. If that's not possible, such as when one law directly contradicts another, the more recent law controls. That's black letter law, and it dates back many, many years.
There is an implicit agreement created upon entering the taxi -- a contract, if you will.
Yet the law calls it theft of services, not breach-of-implied-contract. Well, you may get sued for that, but you'll also get prosecuted for theft.
Anyway, try this on, then. Suppose I sneak into a Broadway play without paying, and watch the whole thing. I even stand in the back, in the aisle, so there's no way I'm taking up a seat that would be otherwise occupied by some paying customer. Have I done anything wrong in so doing? Why or why not?
I MADE NO CONTRACT WITH DIRECTV TO ALLOW THEM TO TRANSMIT THEIR SIGNAL THROUGH MY HOUSE, therefore I do not have to agree to any contract.
Your neighbors made no contract with you to allow your cordless/cellular transmissions through their house, and yet I bet you expect them to respect the law and your interests.
In cases where laws overlap, legal precidence simply states that the previous law trumps the later one.
That's exactly backwards - in terms of both statute and case law, the more recent law supersedes the older law. It has to be that way. After all, if old law always trumped new law, you'd never be able to repeal old laws - they'd simply trump any attempt to do so;)
Skipping out on a fare is breach of contract, not theft
The law says otherwise. Try it sometime - you will be arrested, and you will be charged with theft of services. I practically guarantee it - this is criminal law, not civil. Traditionally, services were not defined as a subject of larceny or theft in common-law courts, but I assure you, that's how the law is today.
LOL. I mean that - I actually laughed out loud reading this. Here you are, essentially inarticulate, incapable of dicussing the issue at hand in a reasonable, adult manner, and yet you're actually surprised and angry when nobody listens to your half-baked, semi-literate "opinions" on how the world should be. LOL again - really. Good luck with that petition drive or congressional campaign or whatever it is you plan to do to change the world - you're gonna need it;)
What if ratboy gets enjoyment out of listening to the undecoded signal/noise on a radio receiver.
That would be a service to ratboy.
But not the service the DTV people have undertaken to provide, and not the service they're interested in charging for. If/when DTV tries to declare that you should pay for this notional "service", let me know, but otherwise, it's just castles in the air.
By law they can demand it, but really only because of the DMCA and similar legislation.
No, by law, they can demand compensation from those who partake of the service they provide. By law, their product is defined as a service, and taking it without paying for it is defined as theft, not copyright violation or some other junk you think it ought to be. You can argue that the law should be some other way, but you don't get to make shit up about how it is.
The sticking point is what determines "service"? This service isn't the radio signal.
You're joking, right? The service being provided to you, the thing that you value enough to expend the effort to intercept, is the entertainment and information you receive upon so doing. Are you seriously going to argue that entertaining you and informing you is not providing you with a service? Do you pay for a newspaper or magazine simply because you like the texture of the paper? Of course not - you pay for the information contained therein, and the service of having it dropped on your front door every morning. Same with DTV - you pay for the service someone provides you with, the service of entertaining you and informing you.
The way it differs from broadcast TV is this: the service they're selling is the decryption.
No, the way it differs from broadcast TV is that, although neither is free, for broadcast TV, you pay for it indirectly, via HyperGloboMegaCorp's ad budget. With DTV, you pay the distributor directly for the enhanced service they provide, the service over and above the service you receive when you pay indirectly. If you prefer to pay indirectly, by all means, stick to a half-dozen channels and rabbit ears wrapped in tinfoil, but don't pretend you're receiving nothing of value when you crack the signal illicitly - that's just bullshit, and everyone here knows it. I reiterate what I said before - if the service was worthless, you wouldn't expend the necessary effort required to decrypt it in the first place. The overt act of illicit decryption is itself prima facie evidence of the value provided thereby, and a tacit admission that the person doing the decrypting values the service provided.
They have no moral right to forbid someone from doing whatever he wants with the radio signal they're raining down on his roof.
Uh, no. This morally stunted techno-geek attitude that suggests that anything we can do should somehow be permitted is absurd and ridiculous, and never seems to get any play beyond the world of signal theft for some reason. I wanna put these transistors together in this particular arrangement and you can't stop me, you have no moral right to tell me what I can or can't do, nyah nyah nyah. GMAFB.
This notion that the world is someone's personal playground, and they can do whatever they want with it, everyone else's interests be damned, is a notion that really should have been nipped by about the fourth grade or so. Here in the adult world, we balance competing interests against one another, and here in the adult world, society has decided that transmitting entertainment and information via satellite is a worthwhile service, and one where those who provide it have a right to be compensated for that provision - their interest in being compensated for their service outweighs your interest in a free lunch, because otherwise, nobody would provide this service that everyone values. Even the folks who are trying to rationalize not paying for it value it. Sorry, that's the way it is. Your interest in a free lunch is going to be outweighed most of the time, so I suggest you get used to it, because there just aren't a lot of free lunches here in the adult world.
If people are making their own decryption at home, then DirecTV needs better encryption, not laws dictating the behavior of private citizens in their own homes.
That's right. If people are breaking into your house an
But somehow the DTV folks aren't entitled to due compensation? How on earth does that work?
In the case of satellite hackers, the "potential revenue" argument assumes that those people hacking it would have paid for the service had hacking it not been an option.
Garbage. If they don't pay, they have no contract with the service provider and hence no right to receive benefits as though they did. You cannot unilaterally dictate the terms of how someone will provide a service that you find valuable by simply taking it without compensation. And of course you find it valuable - if you didn't, you wouldn't expend the effort to decode it. So basically, you want something of value to you, but you don't want to compensate those who bring it to you. The law calls that "theft of services", regardless of how incongruous you find that designation.
And here you are hoist by your own petard. If not for you, he would have been free to pick up a paying passenger.
Make up your mind - am I responsible for his lost revenue or not?
In the case of satellite hacking, you've hired no one and diminished no one's capacity to provide service.
You are receiving a service to which you are not entitled - the fact that you don't think you're depriving anyone is completely spurious. Do satellites launch themselves? Do transmissions broadcast themselves? Does content produce itself? So why is the taxi driver entitled to compensation for the service he performs, but the DTV people are not?
If you are riding in his cab, he can't take another passenger.
So I deprived him of potential revenue after all?
He most certainly was not "going that way anyway", you knob.
He was going somewhere anyway, you tool, regardless of whether or not I'm in the car - if it wasn't me, it would have been someone else.
Your argument might have had merit in the case of a bus, but even then every person is a load on the vehicle decreasing gas mileage, adding stress to the drivetrain, and rubbing away the vinyl covering on the seat padding.
Oh, bullshit. By that logic, at worst I owe him about $0.50 for depreciation - I guess he can sue me for his four bits then.
You did not pay for his time, time he could have spent making money off another person.
The original post specifically excluded potential lost revenue as a rationale for declaring it to be wrongdoing.
You also didn't pay for his gas, which is not even a service.
I don't pay for his gas directly when I do pay for the ride - the driver never stops at the station and asks me to toss a twenty in the tank. I didn't take his gas - it's not like I'm running away with a siphon and a gas can. He used it driving, which he would have done even if it hadn't been me in the car.
...any example where somebody does any work for you is a bad example...
So by bringing you entertainment and information, are the DTV people doing work for you or not?
You've taken up his time, his gasoline, and exacted wear upon his vehicle without providing compensation.
Irrelevant points. He's a taxi driver - he was going to be driving around, using gas, and putting miles on regardless of whether or not I get in the car. It's exactly the same "you were going that way anyway" argument that is apparently being used to rationalize signal interception.
Slashdot Mirror
Lucky you. I guess the former Bell Atlantic (141.x.x.x) portion of Verizon is where they send the clueful users, whereas I'm stuck with the fucktards here in former GTE-land (4.x.x.x). The last few entries in my log, about 90 seconds worth:
4.14.164.45 TCP: 445
4.14.51.88 TCP: 445
4.14.116.28 TCP: 135
194.230.209.11 TCP: 445
81.134.88.81 TCP: 445
219.122.144.91 TCP: 445
82.50.44.214 TCP: 445
68.19.44.230 TCP: 445
64.109.56.171 TCP: 445
4.14.180.139 TCP: 445
64.126.189.80 TCP: 445
4.14.162.96 TCP: 445
219.82.96.121 TCP: 445
65.26.38.233 TCP: 445
4.14.109.207 TCP: 135
4.14.49.136 TCP: 135
4.14.114.51 TCP: 445
All those from the 4.14.x block are on the same Verizon DSL netblock as me. As you noted, 445 is likely Sasser, and the TCP:135 probes are, likely as not, either Blaster or Nachi trying the MS RPC port...
I have - FF 0.8 under Win2k did it all the time, overlapping the text with the sidebars. FF 0.9 is not doing it at the moment, but the problem was intermittent under 0.8, so I'll wait a while to see if it's really fixed or not.
Like when you grab hold of ostensibly "public" airwaves that someone is using for commercial purposes?
Quit while they're ahead? Please?
"Wilco? That's so last year, dude. Have you heard (insert band nobody's ever heard of) yet? Check it out sometime...." ;)
Well, yeah - unlike the real stock market, this one has a hard ceiling of 10.0. Is it too late to short their new album? ;)
I forgot to mention - today's performance is outdoors, in the park. Public property and all that, but you still have to buy a ticket and bring your own blanket to sit on. None of that ticket nonsense for me, though - am I doing anything wrong?
Nobody gives a shit what you decide the value is, because you don't get to dictate the value to the person providing the service. Either you come to some mutually agreeable solution allowing you access to the service, or you don't get access, but you certainly don't get to decide that the objective value of the service is zero and use that valuation to justify taking it without compensation.
My motivation for doing it has absolutely no bearing upon whether or not DTV's has the moral right to dictate what I do in my own house that harms no one.
Oh, please. Look up "mens rea" sometime - your state of mind is an integral part of whether or not your actions are permissible or not under the law, and it has always been thus, going back a thousand years or so. I realize it's inconvenient for you to have people judging your motives - makes it harder to pull off that "but I wuz just testing the system!" business - but that's life.
Anything that does not infringe upon the rights of others should be allowed.
Well, whatever. Make that argument if you like, but that ain't the law now, nor is it likely to be any time soon, mainly because the issue of rights and infringments is not nearly so neat and clean as your average libertopian pretends it is.
DTV has no right to demand money for services I have not requested.
You have no right to services that you haven't paid for, especially when you're taking them against the will of those doing the providing. Do the people in DTV-land have no rights, or are we supposed to pretend that your rights are somehow superior?
But just because "society" has decided something doesn't mean it's not an infringement of our rights.
You can argue that all the live long day, for all the good it does you, but the bottom line is that a "right" that you claim to have, but which no one else recognizes as a right, is of no practical value to you whatsoever. You can claim that you have a natural right to free daily blowjobs from the supermodel of your choice, but nobody else recognizes that as a right, which pretty much renders it a theoretical right at best - rights are as much a matter of social compact as they are of natural law or whatever else you want to drag in. As a practical matter, not very many people recognize your "right" to free HBO at the moment - perhaps you can eventually persuade them otherwise, but in the meantime, don't be surprised if your exercise of your presumed "right" meets with some opposition.
Like it or not, this is an infringement upon my right to do what I like with my own property.
Even if I grant such a right exists, in what imaginary world are any of your rights absolute and unlimited? You don't have the right to do absolutely anything you like with your own property, and you never have had such a right - claiming that any restriction is a priori immoral is just plain goofy. It may be your land, but you don't have the "right" to "do what you like" with it - you don't have the right to build a slaughterhouse and animal rendering plant in a residential neighborhood. It may be your stereo, but you don't have the "right" to "do what you like" with it - you don't have the right to blast it at 3 AM in a crowded apartment building. It may be your hammer, but you don't have the "right" to "do what you like" with it - you don't have the right to break someone's window or mailbox or face with it. You're telling me any drawing of lines at all is inherently immoral, and I'm here to tell you that you can't avoid drawing lines about what you can and can't do with your property somewhere, unless you live in a society of one - the only argument is where to draw the line. The argument about whether is over and
What are you talking about? The Ramseyer and Cordon rules are wholly irrelevant in this context - they're simply conveniences for members of Congress, dictating how bills must be formatted when printed. That's it - new legislation still supersedes old legislation, even if Ramseyer and Cordon disappear tomorrow, because those are internal rules for Congress, not integral parts of the legislative process. Ramseyer and Cordon weren't around
Feel free to cite someone - anyone of authority - that can support such a claim.
If you want more, I'll get more.
Relax - it's not that big of a deal in the end. Pax? :^)
Sure you can. If your town council passes a law saying that the speed limit is thirty miles an hour in your town, and then the following week passes a law saying the speed limit is twenty-five miles an hour, they don't have to specifically repeal the first law for it to no longer be in effect - the second law overrules the first, by virtue of the fact that it's later in date. They've effectively repealed the first law and replaced it with the second, simply by passing a law that directly contradicts the first law.
You might want to go find a constitutional lawyer or a judge that actually deals with case law, precidents and the like and have them explain it to you.
Gosh, and to think I wasted all that money on those con law classes ;)
Trust me - you're conflating the notion of stare decisis in case law with how conflicting statute laws are resolved. Under the principle of stare decisis, old precedents in case law and common law are to be given great weight, and all else being equal, old precedents should outweigh newer precedents when they conflict. That's case law. When statute laws - legislation - conflict with each other, the new law overrules the old.
The way judges do it is, if it is at all possible, one should interpret two laws in such a way as to avoid any conflict between them. If that's not possible, such as when one law directly contradicts another, the more recent law controls. That's black letter law, and it dates back many, many years.
Already answered. I'm not going to waste my time with inarticulate trolls who try to provoke flamewars.
If you had and didn't want to retort, DON'T FUCKING REPLY.
I don't need your permission to post, n00b - if you wanna run your own site, piss off and do it then.
Yet the law calls it theft of services, not breach-of-implied-contract. Well, you may get sued for that, but you'll also get prosecuted for theft.
Anyway, try this on, then. Suppose I sneak into a Broadway play without paying, and watch the whole thing. I even stand in the back, in the aisle, so there's no way I'm taking up a seat that would be otherwise occupied by some paying customer. Have I done anything wrong in so doing? Why or why not?
I MADE NO CONTRACT WITH DIRECTV TO ALLOW THEM TO TRANSMIT THEIR SIGNAL THROUGH MY HOUSE, therefore I do not have to agree to any contract.
Your neighbors made no contract with you to allow your cordless/cellular transmissions through their house, and yet I bet you expect them to respect the law and your interests.
That's exactly backwards - in terms of both statute and case law, the more recent law supersedes the older law. It has to be that way. After all, if old law always trumped new law, you'd never be able to repeal old laws - they'd simply trump any attempt to do so ;)
The law says otherwise. Try it sometime - you will be arrested, and you will be charged with theft of services. I practically guarantee it - this is criminal law, not civil. Traditionally, services were not defined as a subject of larceny or theft in common-law courts, but I assure you, that's how the law is today.
LOL. I mean that - I actually laughed out loud reading this. Here you are, essentially inarticulate, incapable of dicussing the issue at hand in a reasonable, adult manner, and yet you're actually surprised and angry when nobody listens to your half-baked, semi-literate "opinions" on how the world should be. LOL again - really. Good luck with that petition drive or congressional campaign or whatever it is you plan to do to change the world - you're gonna need it ;)
That would be a service to ratboy.
But not the service the DTV people have undertaken to provide, and not the service they're interested in charging for. If/when DTV tries to declare that you should pay for this notional "service", let me know, but otherwise, it's just castles in the air.
No, by law, they can demand compensation from those who partake of the service they provide. By law, their product is defined as a service, and taking it without paying for it is defined as theft, not copyright violation or some other junk you think it ought to be. You can argue that the law should be some other way, but you don't get to make shit up about how it is.
The sticking point is what determines "service"? This service isn't the radio signal.
You're joking, right? The service being provided to you, the thing that you value enough to expend the effort to intercept, is the entertainment and information you receive upon so doing. Are you seriously going to argue that entertaining you and informing you is not providing you with a service? Do you pay for a newspaper or magazine simply because you like the texture of the paper? Of course not - you pay for the information contained therein, and the service of having it dropped on your front door every morning. Same with DTV - you pay for the service someone provides you with, the service of entertaining you and informing you.
The way it differs from broadcast TV is this: the service they're selling is the decryption.
No, the way it differs from broadcast TV is that, although neither is free, for broadcast TV, you pay for it indirectly, via HyperGloboMegaCorp's ad budget. With DTV, you pay the distributor directly for the enhanced service they provide, the service over and above the service you receive when you pay indirectly. If you prefer to pay indirectly, by all means, stick to a half-dozen channels and rabbit ears wrapped in tinfoil, but don't pretend you're receiving nothing of value when you crack the signal illicitly - that's just bullshit, and everyone here knows it. I reiterate what I said before - if the service was worthless, you wouldn't expend the necessary effort required to decrypt it in the first place. The overt act of illicit decryption is itself prima facie evidence of the value provided thereby, and a tacit admission that the person doing the decrypting values the service provided.
They have no moral right to forbid someone from doing whatever he wants with the radio signal they're raining down on his roof.
Uh, no. This morally stunted techno-geek attitude that suggests that anything we can do should somehow be permitted is absurd and ridiculous, and never seems to get any play beyond the world of signal theft for some reason. I wanna put these transistors together in this particular arrangement and you can't stop me, you have no moral right to tell me what I can or can't do, nyah nyah nyah. GMAFB.
This notion that the world is someone's personal playground, and they can do whatever they want with it, everyone else's interests be damned, is a notion that really should have been nipped by about the fourth grade or so. Here in the adult world, we balance competing interests against one another, and here in the adult world, society has decided that transmitting entertainment and information via satellite is a worthwhile service, and one where those who provide it have a right to be compensated for that provision - their interest in being compensated for their service outweighs your interest in a free lunch, because otherwise, nobody would provide this service that everyone values. Even the folks who are trying to rationalize not paying for it value it. Sorry, that's the way it is. Your interest in a free lunch is going to be outweighed most of the time, so I suggest you get used to it, because there just aren't a lot of free lunches here in the adult world.
If people are making their own decryption at home, then DirecTV needs better encryption, not laws dictating the behavior of private citizens in their own homes.
That's right. If people are breaking into your house an
But somehow the DTV folks aren't entitled to due compensation? How on earth does that work?
In the case of satellite hackers, the "potential revenue" argument assumes that those people hacking it would have paid for the service had hacking it not been an option.
Garbage. If they don't pay, they have no contract with the service provider and hence no right to receive benefits as though they did. You cannot unilaterally dictate the terms of how someone will provide a service that you find valuable by simply taking it without compensation. And of course you find it valuable - if you didn't, you wouldn't expend the effort to decode it. So basically, you want something of value to you, but you don't want to compensate those who bring it to you. The law calls that "theft of services", regardless of how incongruous you find that designation.
And here you are hoist by your own petard. If not for you, he would have been free to pick up a paying passenger.
Make up your mind - am I responsible for his lost revenue or not?
In the case of satellite hacking, you've hired no one and diminished no one's capacity to provide service.
You are receiving a service to which you are not entitled - the fact that you don't think you're depriving anyone is completely spurious. Do satellites launch themselves? Do transmissions broadcast themselves? Does content produce itself? So why is the taxi driver entitled to compensation for the service he performs, but the DTV people are not?
So I deprived him of potential revenue after all?
He most certainly was not "going that way anyway", you knob.
He was going somewhere anyway, you tool, regardless of whether or not I'm in the car - if it wasn't me, it would have been someone else.
Your argument might have had merit in the case of a bus, but even then every person is a load on the vehicle decreasing gas mileage, adding stress to the drivetrain, and rubbing away the vinyl covering on the seat padding.
Oh, bullshit. By that logic, at worst I owe him about $0.50 for depreciation - I guess he can sue me for his four bits then.
The original post specifically excluded potential lost revenue as a rationale for declaring it to be wrongdoing.
You also didn't pay for his gas, which is not even a service.
I don't pay for his gas directly when I do pay for the ride - the driver never stops at the station and asks me to toss a twenty in the tank. I didn't take his gas - it's not like I'm running away with a siphon and a gas can. He used it driving, which he would have done even if it hadn't been me in the car.
So by bringing you entertainment and information, are the DTV people doing work for you or not?
Irrelevant points. He's a taxi driver - he was going to be driving around, using gas, and putting miles on regardless of whether or not I get in the car. It's exactly the same "you were going that way anyway" argument that is apparently being used to rationalize signal interception.