BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Is stealing wireless wrong? — Everyone knows how I stand on this issue. What do the Brits think?
A man has been arrested after being spotted allegedly sitting in a street with a laptop using someone else’s unsecured wireless connection. Is it immoral to do this?
So here’s the thing.
You’re walking down the street in Hypotheticalville and in front of you is a gentleman who, when he walks, spills seemingly endless torrents of golden coins on to the pavement behind him.
He seems unconcerned by this and you notice that if not picked up, these magic coins quickly evaporate. Is it moral for you to pick a few up?
#52 – RtSBD
You’re right on ’til you reached this issue;
“t doesn’t matter if there is nothing solid and tangible. If you tap into some electric lines and use the free flowing electrons then that also is theft. If I make a movie that is near word for word the same as your book, that is theft.”
Ralph, that is not so, at least not as a matter of settled law. The laws regarding tangible property go back as far as you like, but intangibles are very slippery.
Tapping into a electrical supply line is different from copying a movie.
The act of connecting to a physical, tangible electrical circuit has physical, tangible and measurable effects on that circuit. You are altering the load on that circuit and energy is taken. That energy is now no longer available on that circuit. Although electron flow is trickier than, say, water, tapping into a power line has exactly the same results as tapping into a water line. The producer has produced measuable product and made it available to authorized consumers. The amount available is finite. When you intercept that product, you are consuming it, at a measurable cost to the producer.
But copying information isn’t like that.
Imagine some strings of binary data of various lengths. The first string is the datastream from a Digital Versatile Disc. All 1s and 0s. Billions of them. When properly reassembled, and tranduced into human-perceptable visible and audible form, you have, say, Transformers 2. BUT – it is still this, except very long:
11000010101111101001110101000010100010101011101010101100001010100011110101010100110101010101001010010…….
You say that’s a copyrighted movie and that duplicating that bitstream, whether by downloading a file from the Intertubes or painstakingly reading the pattern and then writing it, on your paper, with your pencil, is theft.
OK, what about this:
00000100000001000000000000010
…or this:
0011
??????
Is reading someone else’s “0001” and writing it down theft?
If no, then what is the difference between the first stream I mentioned, the one consisting of a series of billions of 0s and 1s, in a particular, arbitrary order – and the last one, which is also a series of 0s and 1s in a particular, arbitrary order – other than the fact that one is longer than the other??
If a particular combination of 0s and 1s is someone’s unique, copyrighted intellectual property, is the same true of an exact, identical copy of that stream, except the last bit is a 1 instead of a 0? What about if 2000 bits are different?
And that’s just the beginning. What if that bitstream is processed? If every 0 and 1 is inverted, is it the same movie, the same IP, is copying THAT theft?
When you download a file from the Net, you are not taking one single, solitary subatomic particle from the creators, producers, director, actors, financiers, crew or anyone else. Their lives, in every respect and aspect, are not 99.9999999999999% unaffected by your action, it’s 100%. Nothing is different except you then have, stored on your computer, a bitstream identical to another one. If you run it through it’s intended processes, a movie can be seen and heard.
But what have you taken – what is stolen? The emotional effects that the film has on you; enjoyment, laughter, sadness? Can those be taken? So it’s the ideas, right? But those ideas still exist, unaffected, with their creator.
I am not rationalizing copying copyrighted materials, what I’m doing is demonstrating how incredibly difficult it is to point out where anything that can be measured in any way can be said to be taken from someone else.
Those with a pecuniary interest in the original art which became that bitstream are naturally going to have a different take on that, since it translates into dollars and cents.
And they have the controls of the propaganda machine. And they would like for these extremely deep and controversial issues about how to apply the laws to intangibles to be dispensed with – in their (profitable) favor. Crap like “the movie / music / whatever industry loses X number of gazillion dollars from theft of IP.”
But that’s a lie. It’s not money taken from them – it’s money that they figure they would have collected, if things were the way they’d like…
If I d/l Transformers and watch it, by their definition I’ve stolen $20 from them. It’s true that if I didn’t watch it in the theater, didn’t buy or rent the DVD, they didn’t get their money. So, goes their reasoning, if I d/l it, that’s cheating them out of their righteous profit. And it WOULD be – only if I would’ve watched, bought or rented it. But I had little interest in it; if I d/led it or not doesn’t matter – since I wasn’t going to watch, buy or rent it in the first place – they were never going to get my money anyway – whether I d/led it or not! So not only did I not take anytthing from them, they’re counting as a loss money I was never going to pay them anyway. And as I’m far from the only one, that means that their “losses” are, to whatever degree, inflated and therefore dishonest.
So, Ralph, if someone was never going to buy that bitstream anyway, how can that person’s watching it affect the creators’ finances or rights? Not black or white – all grey areas, very grey.
Stay tuned for another :Battle of the Analogys” brought to you by DU.
Gosh, that was a mitey long reply, Ghoti, and perhaps I lost the thread somewhere.
But it appears to me that wrt the WiFi thing, we’re not talking about d/ling bits of data that the d/ler was never going to d/l or use in the first place. We’re talking about somebody who wants internet access (who may even CRAVE internet access), but who doesn’t want to pay for internet access. If push comes to shove, they WILL pay for it, but they’d rather piggyback onto someone else’s signal (which the other person pays for).
Where I’m sitting right now, my WiFi shows 5 available networks (including mine, which I’m connected to); 3 encrypted, 2 not. I don’t think anyone’s bitching about me bathing myself in the radio waves of those other networks. If I disconnect from mine though (and cancel the service) and log on to one of the unecrypted ones nearby, well, then the area becomes a little greyer.
I’m not sure how much of an issue RtSCBD’s point about clogging up the bandwidth is in real life; I guess if 75% of the people piggybacked off of the other 25%’s signal, it would make a difference. But wtf; internet access isn’t THAT expensive, and most people who can afford a WiFi enabled laptop can afford the monthly fee as well.
Dat’s so; also, in some cities, provided they get their acts together, there’ll be free municipal WiFi, so… B’sides, there’s no shortage of available free hotspots, like coffeeshops and such, which are far more comfortable than sitting outside someone’s house.
A better question than about piggybacking is what’s gonna happen to pay hotspots, like T-Mobile’s at Starbucks. Are people gonna keep paying for that?
Piggybacking may load the network of the party with the unsecured signal, but if their signal’s unsecured, they’re likely the sort of unsophisticated user who’d never be aware of any diminution of their bandwidth anyway…
#61, LtG.
The act of connecting to a physical, tangible electrical circuit has physical, tangible and measurable effects on that circuit.
Ok, show me the EMF or the electrons that were taken or used without permission. I am forming a mental picture of you walking into a courtroom, holding up a three foot piece of wire and declaring it is full of electricity.
You say that’s a copyrighted movie …
No you said that. My point was: If I make a movie that is near word for word the same as your book, that is theft.” Although the exact charge is copyright infringement, most people would call this theft.
conversion n. a civil wrong (tort) in which one converts another’s property to his/her own use, which is a fancy way of saying “steals.” Conversion includes treating another’s goods as one’s own, holding onto such property which accidently comes into the convertor’s (taker’s) hands, or purposely giving the impression the assets belong to him/her. This gives the true owner the right to sue for his/her own property or the value and loss of use of it, as well as going to law enforcement authorities since conversion usually includes the crime of theft. (See: theft)
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/conversion
So, other than that, what is your point?
PS, bring on the legal hot spots.
As a radio “scanner” enthusiast I feel strongly that it is my right to monitor any signal that anyone transmits into my home or car. It’s my private space and I have the right to do with it, as I please. Public space is little different.
The trouble with stealing wifi (which I happen to be doing right now) is that you are TRANSMITTING data into someone else’s private space. You are also remotely manipulating their equipment. This does change the moral debate from being about passive to active behavior.
But I figure that if people really cared, they’d turn on WEP. I have left my wifi open on purpose as a favor to the neighbors. Why not?