Computer Hope
Other => Other => Topic started by: Helpmeh on October 21, 2010, 02:09:57 PM
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Just wondering if you agree with the title? Post your arguments for or against it.
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Unlocked = Accessable, not free
An unlocked house does not mean its free, an unlocked car does not mean its free. It still belongs to somebody.
So, IMHO, if you use somebodies unlocked wireless internet this = stealing. You are not paying for it, it does not belong to you, therefore it's not yours to use.
If you want to test this theory, go to a bar, wait till a really big guy goes to the toilet, then take his drink. Theres nobody there, it's not 'locked' and when he comes back, you tell him it was free.
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I agree with reddevilggg. Leaching unsecured wifi is stealing. The law in many countries recognises this. In Britain, the The Communications Act 2003 says a "person who (a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service, and (b) does so with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service, is guilty of an offence". There are also suggestions using somebody else's wireless could come under the Computer Misuse Act, usually used to combat hacking and electronic fraud. People have been arrested for it.
A man has been arrested in connection with using a wi-fi broadband connection without permission.
He was initially detained by two Police Community Support Officers in Chiswick, west London, on Tuesday.
They became suspicious when they saw the 39-year-old using his laptop outside a house in Prebend Gardens.
When questioned he admitted to using someone else's unsecured wi-fi broadband connection. He has been bailed pending further inquiries.
The case is now being handled by the Metropolitan Police's computer crime unit.
Det Con Mark Roberts said: "This arrest should act as a warning to anyone who thinks it is acceptable to illegally use other people's broadband connections."
Dishonestly obtaining free internet access is an offence under the Communications Act 2003 and a potential breach of the Computer Misuse Act.
Note correct (British) spelling of 'offence'.
Also in the USA arrests have happened.
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Why would anyone think that unsecured = free. That's just infantile.
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Why would anyone think that unsecured = free. That's just infantile.
In my country, maybe in others, one way of describing a compulsively dishonest person who is an opportunist thief is to say that they "will take anything that is not screwed down". A person who asserts that anything not secured is fair game is morally deficient in my opinion.
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In my country, maybe in others, one way of describing a compulsively dishonest person who is an opportunist thief is to say that they "will take anything that is not screwed down". A person who asserts that anything not secured is fair game is morally deficient in my opinion.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The part that gets me though is that when they are caught, or lose the access they had, they then act as though they are the one who has been wronged.
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I read a funny story once, I don't know if it was true, about an American guy who noticed that somebody was connecting to his wireless internet, so he secured it and not long afterwards his neighbour (Brit spelling) came hammering on his door demanding to know why he had cut off "his" (the neighbour's) internet! There is fun to be had... here are some fun things you can do to people who steal your internet
The bit about redirecting every request to Kittenwar is funny, especially where the Kittenwar guy says he keeps getting complaints that he is hosting a virus stopping people accessing the net.
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html
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Unlocked = Accessable, not free
An unlocked house does not mean its free, an unlocked car does not mean its free. It still belongs to somebody.
So, IMHO, if you use somebodies unlocked wireless internet this = stealing. You are not paying for it, it does not belong to you, therefore it's not yours to use.
If you want to test this theory, go to a bar, wait till a really big guy goes to the toilet, then take his drink. Theres nobody there, it's not 'locked' and when he comes back, you tell him it was free.
I agree. It's kind of like those bait car shows, where they lure in criminals to jack cars. They then proceed to arrest the set up crook.
(http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:Glo-aO-Z5q0sBM:http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/monopoly-jail042710.jpg)
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Well I believe I know who one of the two voters are that said yes but I wonder who the other one was and why neither voter wanted to post why they think it is free.
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The fact that people have been arrested for stealing wireless access kind of answers the question.
Also, depending on timing of when the owner and unauthorized user are using wifi, it could be lowering the owners bandwidth.
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The fact that people have been arrested for stealing wireless access kind of answers the question.
But I'd be interested to know how the court cases came out.
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But I'd be interested to know how the court cases came out.
Interesting question. I've read about a number of people that have been arrested for stealing wireless. A lot of states in the US, and I'm sure other countries, have laws against stealing wireless, and fines for doing it. But I can't seem to find any record of convictions.
It would be a hard thing to prove in court unless some kind of sting was set up. And I think most police departments feel like they have more important things to do.
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It is a radio signal. Anyone would be perfectly just in saying that if you don't want me to receive it, then keep it off my antenna. To say anything less, is to open the door for all kinds of problems, elsewhere in the radio spectrum. How can receiving anything be "illegal", when it is cut loose in the air?
How about if your signal comes onto my property? Are you actually going to try to say that I can't listen to it? ... it makes no sense.
*You* are responsible for your signal, not the receiver. The receiver is passive.
All the attempts at comparison above are not even close to what is really happening.
Each person that is transmitting a signal can be held responsible for it though. The way to logically regulate wifi then, is to regulate the transmitters... the laptops that also transmit. *That* can reasonably be regulated. But, it would be a very touchy thing, now.
A more interesting discussion would be: If a wifi signal is encrypted with state of the art encryption, and someone hacks it - should *that* be illegal?
With no "locking", then the owner of the transmitted signal should keep his signal off any one's antenna that he does not want to receive it. But, if he is clearly attempting to "lock" it... is it still just a signal out there to be received like all others? or can he claim some ownership of it?
That one would be tricky in court.
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if you don't want me to receive it, then keep it off my antenna.
Thats just irresponsible. To find the signal, you would have to look for it, and it not yours to use. You've also contradicted yourself. You state '*You* are responsible for your signal, not the reciever'. So therefore, if you are 'tuned' into that signal, then you are recieving a signal THAT SOMEONE ELSE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR. It is not yours. Thousands, probably millions of text messages and mobile/cell calls are flying around in the air. That does not give you the right to listen in or recieve them. Your antenna picks up everything, its your equipment that deciphers it and you control your equipment, therefore it would be YOU that made your equipment pick up someone elses signal. Is my dog free to bite you because its not on a lead. Just because you can pick up a unlocked signal does not mean you should. Like i've said before, is a unlocked car a free car. No, it is not. Your arguement is ridiculous.
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It is a radio signal. Anyone would be perfectly just in saying that if you don't want me to receive it, then keep it off my antenna. To say anything less, is to open the door for all kinds of problems, elsewhere in the radio spectrum. How can receiving anything be "illegal", when it is cut loose in the air?
\you're not just receiving signals, your interacting with somebody elses piece of property- the access point- possibly purposely with the intent to circumvent and use the service provided by that device. If somebody was able to create a device that was able to use a cellphone network without them paying the company, would it follow that it's somehow the cellphone companies fault for making it "easy".
How about if your signal comes onto my property? Are you actually going to try to say that I can't listen to it? ... it makes no sense.
*You* are responsible for your signal, not the receiver. The receiver is passive.
The receiver is NOT passive. In order to use said signal, the receiver needs to respond and interact with said signal. As I noted above the only reason somebody might do that would be in order to use the service the device provides for free. It's like saying that you can use somebody's computer for free because their wireless keyboard/mouse just happens to be compatible with yours, and you can sit outside their window and do stuff using your keyboard/mouse. It follows that if the receiver is "passive" then the sender is equally innocent in that case since all they are doing is sending a harmless signal.
Each person that is transmitting a signal can be held responsible for it though. The way to logically regulate wifi then, is to regulate the transmitters... the laptops that also transmit. *That* can reasonably be regulated. But, it would be a very touchy thing, now.
Any WiFi device that can connect to a access point transmits.
A more interesting discussion would be: If a wifi signal is encrypted with state of the art encryption, and someone hacks it - should *that* be illegal?
With no "locking", then the owner of the transmitted signal should keep his signal off any one's antenna that he does not want to receive it. But, if he is clearly attempting to "lock" it... is it still just a signal out there to be received like all others? or can he claim some ownership of it?
That one would be tricky in court.
Not really. circumventing any sort of security in place at all on a network, wireless or otherwise, is an electronic crime. I know that Canada's Criminal Code, section 342.1 prohibits accessing a computer without authorisation. That covers the use of both "Open" networks just as much as it covers those that are Encrypted. I imagine the laws of other countries are nlot much different, this sort of thing might even have some sort of coverage by the DMCA in the US.
That being said- "listening" to signals as they pass through the air is probably covered by a completely different law, if you purposely don't send any signal in response (and therefore are not truly accessing any system) could possibly fall under wiretapping laws, depending on the circumstances.
If a TV station was transmitting a signal that was encrypted and they sold little boxes to decrypt the signal for a fee, would it be "wrong" to reverse engineer the encryption and be able to receive that signal for free? Personally, I don't think so. IMO that signal is not a communication between two people, but rather a large-scale signal sent to the public at large; although even the slightest bit of "reverse engineering" of even the simplest encryption is clearly prohibited by the DMCA, other countries laws on that subject are not as clearcut; there is only one way communication and the device is merely translating something in the air that is receivable by anybody; legally I don't think there is much difference between receiving that encrypted signal "legally" and decrypting that signal; the decryption is acting on something anybody can have, so it seems stupid to have some sort of restriction on how a encrypted signal can be used when the receiver has not made any agreement with the sender; in this case it's a matter of the encryption itself being too weak and easy to figure out as much as anything.
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I just think and wonder... If people or computer users with internet connections having wi-fi capabality routers in their home is not secured and is aware he/she is being shared by an unwanted user, and the unwanted user has its own wi-fi signal(home) and having wireless connection problem. Does it implicate the user with any privacy law? Being aware of the topic that users intentionally stealing bandwidths are arrested. And just to add, Why not make a wi-fi connection security hassle-free when obtaining a wireless router, like a button or icon to press available everytime you want it locked during or after wi-fi or router set-up ? The reason I ask is people of all ages as we know have different awareness, knowledge(none,low,average,experts) who have to ask, pay for that matter to arrange certain router wi-fi security settings. A set-up that is different from having a wireless connection to a secured connection.
Why are wireless networks so often unsecured?
The main flaw in wireless network security is that most wireless devices, such as routers, come out of the factory with wireless security disabled. This is done deliberately by the manufacturer to make the set-up procedure easier. The manufacturer pretty much assumes that the user will choose to enable wireless security as part of the normal set-up procedure. Many users don't enable security, usually because this adds extra difficulty to the set-up procedure.
The reason why piggy-backing is so common is that many notebook computers have a wireless adaptor, with software which will automatically offer to connect to any unsecured network! Casual users can inadvertently connect to someone else's network even when they are trying their level best to connect to their own!
http://jstuf.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=439&Itemid=1 (http://jstuf.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=439&Itemid=1)
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Actually, re the quoted text, the reason that routers come "unsecured" is because it's impossible for them to come secured. if they come secured, then they will all have the same wep passcode or password, in which case anybody else can easily determine what brand of router they have and connect using that password/username anyway. It wouldn't prevent "accidental" connections either, since if most brands all use the same passcode/passphrase then the OS will often keep that cached, and will send those credentials to another router if it mistakenly connects to it, and therefore they are now using somebody elses connection via an encrypted connection. There is no magical "press me to make things secure" for a router/network just as there is no magical button to do that to secure a single computer.
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But I'd be interested to know how the court cases came out.
Well maybe you could just apologize... :)
http://ph.news.yahoo.com/afp/20101022/ttc-us-it-company-privacy-internet-googl-0de2eff.html (http://ph.news.yahoo.com/afp/20101022/ttc-us-it-company-privacy-internet-googl-0de2eff.html)
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Just a random thought, some how I think if wireless routers came from the factory with security enabled the password would be "password". And that's really hard to crack.
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Well I believe I know who one of the two voters are that said yes but I wonder who the other one was and why neither voter wanted to post why they think it is free.
I didn't vote in this one, I just felt like reading your arguments against using insecure wifi.
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Thats just irresponsible.
What is? Putting a signal on the air, then whining about it if someone else recieves it, and expecting some government agency to "protect" you, for your convenience? Obviously, the irresponsible one is the one that is asking for all this, without thinking it through.
To find the signal, you would have to look for it, and it not yours to use.
Any signal, that is out there, is fair game to be received. Think about it. Again, if you don't want it to be received, then don't transmit it.
You've also contradicted yourself. You state '*You* are responsible for your signal, not the reciever'. So therefore, if you are 'tuned' into that signal, then you are recieving a signal THAT SOMEONE ELSE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR. It is not yours.
It is anybody's, once it is transmitted. That's the way radio works.
Thousands, probably millions of text messages and mobile/cell calls are flying around in the air. That does not give you the right to listen in or recieve them.
Of course it does.
If not, what's next? I can't listen to .... Radio Free Europe? Voice of America?
(Am I going to have to yell Sieg Heil too?)
Your antenna picks up everything, its your equipment that deciphers it and you control your equipment, therefore it would be YOU that made your equipment pick up someone elses signal.
Exactly. Now you got it.
Is my dog free to bite you because its not on a lead.
On your property? Sure.
On my property? ... hardly.... I'd just shoot the dog and fix the problem.
But -- what does this have to do with radio reception?
Just because you can pick up a unlocked signal does not mean you should. Like i've said before, is a unlocked car a free car. No, it is not.
Poor analogy.
A car is a tangible, single object. A radio transmission is not.
Your arguement is ridiculous.
Because you can't understand it? heheheeh ... that's pathetic.
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\you're not just receiving signals, your interacting with somebody elses piece of property
By transmitting in return? Yes.
That's why I said that the transmitters are the only way to regulate.
And... that is why transmitters are what the government regulates, with other radio services.
- the access point- possibly purposely with the intent to circumvent and use the service provided by that device. If somebody was able to create a device that was able to use a cellphone network without them paying the company, would it follow that it's somehow the cellphone companies fault for making it "easy".
The receiver is NOT passive.
Of course it is. By its very nature it is. Barring spurious emissions, etc.
In order to use said signal, the receiver needs to respond
And that is transmitting.
and interact with said signal. As I noted above the only reason somebody might do that would be in order to use the service the device provides for free. It's like saying that you can use somebody's computer for free because their wireless keyboard/mouse just happens to be compatible with yours, and you can sit outside their window and do stuff using your keyboard/mouse. It follows that if the receiver is "passive" then the sender is equally innocent in that case since all they are doing is sending a harmless signal.
If they are not barred by law, from making the transmission, they you are correct.
And therein lies the whole problem with this stuff. Manufacturers have jumped on it, because there is a market for these products. Home wifi.
Can't blame them for making a buck.
However, the consumer is not cognizant of what he is getting into, and suddenly wants to make somebody else responsible for a problem that he created with his new toys.
Remember, his internet service comes to him inside a wire. The consumer is the one that changed that, when he puts a signal on the air. If he doesn't want someone else to hear it, and use it, then he has a few choices to make.
He can buy a few hundred acres, and put his house in the middle of it, so no one can get close enough to his little radio station to use it.
He can turn it off... ( horrors... give up a convenience, that nobody explained to him before he purchased his new toy!)
Or, he can learn how to use it, and encrypt his signal. That alone will deter what? 99.99% of would be freebie users?
Any WiFi device that can connect to a access point transmits.
Not really. circumventing any sort of security in place at all on a network, wireless or otherwise, is an electronic crime. I know that Canada's Criminal Code, section 342.1 prohibits accessing a computer without authorisation. That covers the use of both "Open" networks just as much as it covers those that are Encrypted. I imagine the laws of other countries are nlot much different, this sort of thing might even have some sort of coverage by the DMCA in the US.
That being said- "listening" to signals as they pass through the air is probably covered by a completely different law, if you purposely don't send any signal in response (and therefore are not truly accessing any system) could possibly fall under wiretapping laws, depending on the circumstances.
Sometimes right and wrong, is not equal to legal and illegal.
Telling someone that they cannot receive a radio signal, legally - is just plain wrong. Defies common sense.
I can think of an example or two, in the U.S. where it is done.
Virginia, for example, will confiscate a radar detector in your car. That should be thrown out in a court of law. It is wrong.
If a TV station was transmitting a signal that was encrypted and they sold little boxes to decrypt the signal for a fee, would it be "wrong" to reverse engineer the encryption and be able to receive that signal for free? Personally, I don't think so.
Exactly.
The TV station *can* patent the little boxes, and go after anyone else that is selling them though. But, if you want to build your own, ... go for it.
IMO that signal is not a communication between two people, but rather a large-scale signal sent to the public at large; although even the slightest bit of "reverse engineering" of even the simplest encryption is clearly prohibited by the DMCA, other countries laws on that subject are not as clearcut; there is only one way communication and the device is merely translating something in the air that is receivable by anybody; legally I don't think there is much difference between receiving that encrypted signal "legally" and decrypting that signal; the decryption is acting on something anybody can have, so it seems stupid to have some sort of restriction on how a encrypted signal can be used when the receiver has not made any agreement with the sender; in this case it's a matter of the encryption itself being too weak and easy to figure out as much as anything.
Weak?
as in non-existent? I think that's where this thread started... with non-existent encryption. :)
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It might be a good time for some one in the UK to respond. I don't remember the details, but before my time, and before cable and satellite, I read about when the BBC only had a few channels and charged a fee for picking up off the air channels. I remember seeing pictures of vans with directional antennas driving up and down streets looking for TV IF frequency's coming from unlicensed users, which meant some one was watching off air TV but not paying for it.
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It might be a good time for some one in the UK to respond. I don't remember the details, but before my time, and before cable and satellite, I read about when the BBC only had a few channels and charged a fee for picking up off the air channels. I remember seeing pictures of vans with directional antennas driving up and down streets looking for TV IF frequency's coming from unlicensed users, which meant some one was watching off air TV but not paying for it.
I live in Bristol, isn't that in the UK? (It was last time I looked). The BBC still charges a licence fee, and TV Licencing still uses vans, but the detectors these days are hand held. Like chunky remote controls. Handy for blocks of flats. Your post makes me wonder if you have paid for yours, since you seem to think it's a thing of the past.
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Americans have always enjoyed free television, financed by advertisements. Nowadays you need a digital converter box to pickup the signals but you still don't pay any fees for the signal. We do have to pay for cable and satellite TV, but you can still get all of your local channels for free.
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Americans have always enjoyed free television, financed by advertisements.
A:) The Television has not always existed. therefore neither did television programs. therefore it was impossible for anybody to get free Television anywhere (including the US) since the TV wasn't invented. Pedantic? Maybe. However, even so, the advertising model has changed rather dramatically.
Remarkably, the new age of television dawned virtually on the 50th anniversary if the industry. The first regularly scheduled telecasts in the US were begun by NBC in 1939, and it was not a promising beginning for the new medium. In a public demonstration at the New York World's Fair that year, television — a chunky set wit ha screen 8 inches (20cm) high — drew large crowds but was largely dismissed as an electronic marvel with a dubious future. A number of "experts" declared that television transmissions were too expensive to compete with radio, that channel frequencies were too few in number, and that television sets were too complicated for most people to operate.
Television might have proved the naysayers wrong sooner, but the US involvement in World War 2 from 1941 to 1945 stopped the medium's development there for the duration. Immediately after the war, however, there was no question that television had arrived. Owning a TV set became part of the postwar American dream, and the prosperity of the 1950's helped that dream along.
Originally, Television modelled itself on radio. The new medium snapped up radio's program forms, its economic structure, its executives, stars, and advertisers. And soon enough, it's audiences as well.
As in pre-war radio TV programs were presented by single sponsors — advertisers who paid all the costs of producing and airing the show. This arrangement gave advertisers considerable control over program content. In addition, companies often became strongly linked in the public mind with the shows they sponsored. To this day, there are people who associate comedian Milton Berle with the Texaco oil company. Berle's Tuesday night ptohtam, "the Texaco Star Theater" which debuted in 1948 and ran until 1956, was US television's first genuine mass-audience hit. Berle went on-air just as TV sets were dropping in price and becoming a fixture in middle-class homes. He is credited with helping television tovertake radio in mass appeal.
Initially, in the US, there were four networks. NBC, CBS, ABC, and DuMont. The DuMont network was founded by Allen B. DuMont, one of the inventors of the the television. But it was the smallest of the four entrants, and because there was scarcely enough television advertising to support 3 networks, they went out of business in 1955. ABC struggled for survival for the next 10 years as the third network in what was often characterized as a 2 and a half network economy.
Searching for new ways to compete, ABC i nthe mid-1960's introduced participating advertising, a system in which spot commercials are placed in a program like advertising pages in a magazine or newspaper. The economic realities of broadcasting at that time — climbing producting costs, the expense of airing "blockbuster" movies, and the dwindling number of companies that could afford to underwrite the entire cost of programs — prompted CBS and NBC to also adopt this form of advertising. Spot commercials took program control away from advertisers and handed it over to the networks. Moreover, participating advertising meant that companies would literally compete to have commercials aired during prime time viewing hours and during national telecasts, resulting in larger profits for the networks with each passing year.
By the 1970's, the three networks were on equal footing in the competition for viewers and advertising dollars. And they ruled the TV industry. The Big Three networks held such domination over the airwaves that all other TV broadcasters combined — independent commercial stations as well as public television affiliates — could muster barely 10% of prime-time viewership. The demand for network commercial spots so exceeded the supply that networks were able to raise their ad rates, by ten percent or more each year. network television at this point became a failureproof business- even programs that flopped made money. The networks got to be such money machines that NBC sank into third place in the competition for viewer ratings and still posted record profits from ad revenue.
But the richer and more powerful the networks grew, the more they were resented. The federal government became so concerned about the networks domination of the TV industry that it began looking for ways to limit their power and open to airwaves to greater competition. In the early 70's the FCC adopted several new measures aimed at reining in the networks. The financial-interest and syndication rule, for example, barred the networks from demanding an ownership stake in programs they put on the air and thereby forced them out of the profitable business of selling their own reruns to local stations.
Just when network television was at it's peak of power, the marriage of two previously separate technologies — video cable and satellite communications — made it possible to deliver programs coast to coast in a new and more economical way. Before the satellite connection, a typical cable operation was simply a tall antenna that brought in programs — mostly network programs — in areas of poor reception and relayed them by wire to subscribers homes. In 1975, Home Box Office (HBO) a pay-television service, began feeding it's line-up of programs by satellite to cable-TV systems in the US. By reaching homes across the country, HBO became, in effect, a new national network. The only cable systems that could receive it however, were those with satellite dish antennas (which at this point made "stealing" the signal a tad uneconomical to your average consumer). Within a year, most of the larger systems had such antennas, and by 1980 they were part of any cable company's standard equipment. By the early 1980's virtually every cable system in the US offered subscribers 10 or more channels of satellite-relayed programming. (People with satellite receiving dishes could pick up satellite broadcasts directly, for a more expensive one-time "fee" of buying the dish.)
Still, the ability of satellite networks to reach audiences was slight compared to that of ABC, CBS, and NBC. By 1980, cable was available to only 20% of the nations households, and most of those were in rural and suburban areas. The major cities remained unwired for cable. Wiring urban areas was difficult and costly, and it was further complicated by municipal governments, which required cable companies to compete for exclusive franchises. It appeared that the largest cities might not have cable in the foreseeable future, and possibly not until the next century. Without access to urban audiences, cable services had no chance of challenging the great broadcast networks.
As it turned out, though, public demand brought cable to the cities far sooner then anybody had expected. The demand was not for the technology itself, but for the variety of programs cable offered; channels devoted to news, sports, movies, music, public affairs, arts, Siamese faith-healers network, etc.
Today we remember the 1970's... Or, some people "remember"- others learned about it separately, for example, I cannot remember the 1970's merely because I was not yet alive at that point in time. Perhaps that is why? I consider it history worth learning, while older people may consider it instead as yesterday's news? In any case, it should be remembered as the last decade where US television was under the absolute dominance of the networks. Throughout the 80's, the networks continued to be the great department stores on the main street of TV, but increasingly, the trendy boutiques along the side streets were picking up business.
Executives of the Big Three refused to acknowledge the extend of the threat posed by the growing competition. Typical of their short-sighted outlook (a outlook now reflected, it would seem, by the RIAA and Music labels, but that's another topic) was a booklet entitled The Road to 1990, published by CBS in 1984. Largely an exercise in wishful thinking, the brochure was intended to assure advertisers, investors, and other interested parties that the networks would continue to be the driving force in television in the 1990's. CBS conceded that cable program services, then numbering about 30, might reduce the networks audience share somewhat, but at most only by 15 percent. It also predicted that with cable companies specialized programming and relatively small audiences, "It is unlikely that all 30 services will survive". Nowadays, what they once called "services" have essentially become what we call channels, and they number in the hundreds even for the more basic Cable packages, which has become a ubiquitous "necessity" to many people.
By 1986, just two years after the booklet was released, the number of cable channels numbered 54. In addition, there were five "superstations" beaming programs across the US and Canada by satellite, and an ever-increasing number if independent UHF stations. By this time, also, VCR's — introduced more the 10 years earlier — had become another important variable in the TV equation, and thousands of video rental shops were opening from coast to coast. There was no denying any longer that the networks day in the sun was drawing to an end.
In 1986, just as profits were beginning to slide, all three TV networks were sold to new owners. Capital Cities Communications Inc. bought ABC; The General Electric Company Bought NBC and it's parent company, RCA (and we all know who owns it now :P) and CBS effectively went ot businessman Laurence A. Tisch, whose stockholdings fell just a hair short of constituting a legal buyout. In every case, the new managements were composed of hard-nosed executives with no reverence for the history or traditions of the companies they bought. Concerned solely with profitability, they proceeded to slash operating costs by firing hundreds of employees and cutting executive privileges and other nonessential expenditures. Almost overnight, the glamour and fun went out of network television as it struggled to meet the cold realities of the "bottom line."
Over the next two years, Some 3,500 network staff members lost their jobs. The news divisions were hit hardest by the personnel cuts, in part because, being "in-house" operations, theirs was the only programming whose costs the managers could control. But the new owners reasoned that since local TV stations made money on their news departments, there was no reason why the networks should be losing money on news. As a result of all this belt-tightening, the networks were back on a profitable track but at nowhere near the levels of the past.
The shakeup of the big three did nothing, however, to stop the erosion of network viewership. By late 1989, the networks' share of the prime-time audience had slipped to about 64 percent. Down from 90% 10 years before. Meanwhile, more then half of US households — some 52 million — had been wired for cable.
The networks were now ready to try just about anything to broung back the good times. In their desperation, they ventured into a practice that ended up backfiring on them: sensationalist programming, also dubbed "tabloid TV" because of it's similarity to the crime,sex, and weird goings-on formula of many tabloid newspapers.
In making a foray into tabloid TV, the Big Three were largely following the lead of yet another competitor, The Fox Broadcasting Company, launched by Australian American media tycoon Robert Murdoch in 1986. Fox became the first new regular broadcast network — as opposed to satellite cable network — to last more then a year or two since the failure of DuMont more then 30 years before.
Most analysts wrote Fox off as a reckless and doomed undertaking. Murdoch, however, had conceived a clever strategy for his network. His plan was to offer programs that appealed particularly to younger viewers, to produce shows for less then the networks paid, to establish just one night a week of programming each year, and to introduce new series in the summer — opposite network reruns. The strategy worked. Television critics, having little else to write about in the summer, gave the Fox line-up considerable attention, while interest among young people spread via word of mouth.
Credit for the Fox's Success, however, goes mostly to them taking the low road. It's programs included such titillating shows as "A Current Affair" "America's Most Wanted" and "The Reporters" all of which tended to blur the line between fact and fiction by mixing reenactments of crimes and other events with actual news footage.
EDIT: I didn't realize how long that was...
I could go on for some time with this little "history lesson" but I think a good point that needs to be made is that this topic is NOT ABOUT TV. Therefore I hope the above has settled any possible arguments about what was and wasn't free or who and what advertised for whom during what point in time. There are also some relevant points of note, however; especially regarding individually owned satellites; at the time no legal action was taken, nor could be taken against the owner of a satellite dish, despite the fact that they were essentially getting Cable service "for free". I imagine this was because the equipment necessary was far more expensive.
WillyW makes an excellent point as well with regards to the owner of the access point, One which I initially misunderstood in my reply; the "subscriber" to the internet service, basically, to should some sort of responsibility for securing their network. many have responded to that with comments in the league of "poppycock" and "fiddlesticks". However, consider for a moment, with regards to the car analogy.
Some have said that "an unlocked car is not a free car". So then the question arises...
Why do we lock our cars? Perhaps it's because we really don't care wether the person taking our car feels they are morally justified or not and simply don't want them to take it. So too should that be the attitude with regards to Wireless networks, and it is the one I exercised when I first set up my wireless internet. The first thing was simply to enable WPA; the fact that I now have encryption means that, legally, if somebody was to "crack" my router (unlikely) and do nasty illegal stuff that get's traced to me, and I can prove that there was a breech of the security measures I put in place, I would not be liable.
However, if I left my router completely unsecure, according to law (here) I would be accountable for the other persons actions. It doesn't matter that they broke the law (if they did, I'm not even sure it's illegal for them to connect when the network is completely unsecure) the thing is- I can't prove anything. I can't tell them who did it, since if I was good enough working with the router to do that one would think I might have secured the network. It's not a case of making sure the people who don't have a clue how the technology works aren't being put on the hook for things they didn't do, it's a case where the people who don't have a clue should get one. Saying that people who aren't familiar with Wireless network protection should have some sort of protection to prevent them being held liable for misuse of their connection by others is like saying that people who don't know how to drive a car shouldn't be held accountable for what the car does while they drive it, simply because they "don't know better".
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BC, your posts are long on a 23" widescreen monitor, so I can't imagine them on a 800x600 screen.
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BC, your posts are long on a 23" widescreen monitor, so I can't imagine them on a 800x600 screen.
They'd wrap, wouldn't they?
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Yes, which would result in a very long page.
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Yes, BC, i agree that people should learn how to use their equipment, just as people have learnt to 'lock their cars', but i also reemeber my Grandparents telling me about a time when 'you could leave your front door unlocked and it was safe, nobody would pinch anything'. It seems that nowadays, anything that is not bolted down or locked will get stolen or used by the multitude of opportunistic chancers that seem to think that 'if its there, i can have it' and 'How can i benefit from someone elses mistake'. Whether it's legal or not to connect to an unlocked wireless connection I don't know, but where has the moral obligation to 'do whats right' gone? There is protection there for people who don't know how to use their equipment and it is encryption, but just like the people who could 'leave their doors unlocked' they will not realize that they can use the lock until it's too late and it's happened to them. Times change, i can already here people saying and this is true. We ALL now need locks on our doors because of the above stated 'opportunists', but i'm going to make an assumption that long ago 1 person got burgled and because of this their neighbours then locked up their own property, and so it starts.
People, slowly but surely, will learn to protect there equipment, but i still do not think that they should be targeted by these opportunists (yes, i like that word ;)). To use another car analogy, it brings to mind thieves that check every car door in a hope that they find an unlocked one so they can steal it. I dont think you can take the effect and make it the cause. People who are ignorant do not deserve to have things stolen from them or have their possesions, items OR unlocked wireless connection used.
and to WillyW, i understand what you're saying, i just don't agree with it.
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but i also reemeber my Grandparents telling me about a time when 'you could leave your front door unlocked and it was safe, nobody would pinch anything'.
This only ever existed in small, tightly knit communities. And it was rare.
Whether it's legal or not to connect to an unlocked wireless connection I don't know, but where has the moral obligation to 'do whats right' gone? There is protection there for people who don't know how to use their equipment and it is encryption, but just like the people who could 'leave their doors unlocked' they will not realize that they can use the lock until it's too late and it's happened to them.
Basically, you are saying that despite those people being the only ones who didn't lock their car in a line of other "cars" that did, they somehow should still get some sort of protection under the law despite them being extremely STUPID for leaving it unlocked? By the same token the "I Didn't know" defense should hold up with anything else. "I didn't KNOW the difference between gas and brakes, I'm ignorant and therefore I shouldn't be charged with anything for running over those nuns" or "I thought cruise control was like automatic pilot, I didn't know I still had to steer around corners! Therefore it's not my fault!" Most of these don't involve a second, malicious party, but the defense is still as valid. Of course, it still limited- nobody can reasonably say that a passerby getting shot was ignorant because they weren't wearing body armour (although that depends on where they Live)
I've always wondered what the *censored* people are so proud of when they purposely leave their doors unlocked. Technically speaking, my doors/windows are accessible almost all the time. I know this because on a few occasions I have forgotten my key and therefore needed to find an alternate way inside. Additionally, this has also had the excitement of a random drunk wandering in and crashing on our couch, simultaneously knocking several caged animals from a shelf onto the floor, and then wondering why we were in "his" house. Good times.
The interesting thing about such "unlocked" communities is that they never consider there might be people not from the town taking advantage of them. Is it their fault for being burglarized? Not really, but it's rather senseless since it's preventable with a lock that they simply refuse to use through principle.
Truth be told, it's easier for somebody to hide their tracks and existence on a wireless network (especially since the user, being obviously not very smart with Wifi since they left it unlocked to begin with, probably won't have any sort of tracking).
Times change, i can already here people saying and this is true. We ALL now need locks on our doors because of the above stated 'opportunists', but i'm going to make an assumption that long ago 1 person got burgled and because of this their neighbours then locked up their own property, and so it starts.
For the love of...
CRIME HAS NOT escalated in the last 100 or so years. Nothing has changed, except apparently there are still people who feel that locking the doors to their HOUSES which contain their PROPERTY during a time when they are effectively unconscious is unnecessary and draconian. Sure, being able to say "I could leave my doors unlocked" means you feel safe in your community, but to actually do it is the refuse to believe that there are threats outside the community, which means that said community has obviously decided nothing else exists. It seems rather silly to keep door(s) unlocked purely on principle (it takes less then a second to lock most doors, so it can't be the effort).
People, slowly but surely, will learn to protect there equipment, but i still do not think that they should be targeted by these opportunists
They won't learn otherwise. Some people learn the problems involved with a new technology right away; other people have to learn the hard way not to do something as stupid as drinking and driving. Some learn as a preventative measure. others only learn via consequences.
To use another car analogy, it brings to mind thieves that check every car door in a hope that they find an unlocked one so they can steal it.
Yeah? And if that person who had their car unlocked had instead locked it, they wouldn't have been the victim. Same with burglars who go from house to house looking for an open window or a unlocked door. It's not exactly often but you aren't going to get people meticulously breaking into some well fortified house when the neighbor left their window open, that would be an expression of pure stupid on their part, given their goals.
I dont think you can take the effect and make it the cause.
Nobody is doing that.
People who are ignorant do not deserve to have things stolen from them or have their possesions, items OR unlocked wireless connection used.
I disagree. They are only ignorant because they chose to be. The same applies with general internet use. I know too many people who want to use E-mail and web sites but don't want to learn the "technical" stuff, like what a virus is and how to recognize malware downloads. They will only LEARN to take the preventative steps via learning, and the only way they learn is through consequences, it's more an attitude problem then anything else.
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Basically, you are saying that despite those people being the only ones who didn't lock their car in a line of other "cars" that did, they somehow should still get some sort of protection under the law despite them being extremely STUPID for leaving it unlocked?
Well, I think, but i'm not sure, there is a law against theft (I'll have to check on that)
I've always wondered what the *censored* people are so proud of when they purposely leave their doors unlocked.
I don't and never have, but i was just trying to make the point that we seemed to have accepted that we constantly have to protect ourselves from totally unscroupulous 'people' and that this is the norm. So, instead of educating said people we have to educate the innocent to protect themselves. I know these idiots are part of life and that this has little to do with the original post. I just don't like it. It's an opinion.
I agree that the 'I didn't know' defense is incredibly weak.
Same with burglars who go from house to house looking for an open window or a unlocked door. It's not exactly often but you aren't going to get people meticulously breaking into some well fortified house when the neighbor left their window open, that would be an expression of pure stupid on their part, given their goals.
I think thats my problem. I see the burglar as the stupid one and the person who left the windows open as a victim of a society that would prefer to live in fortified castles, with a gun each. I know that the dream of a perfect utopian society is impossible, but i'm a dreamer.
I disagree. They are only ignorant because they chose to be.
I disagree. How can people who are ignorant KNOW that they are ignorant. Doesn't make sense.
Anyhow, I love these discussions, but i also like to keep reminding myself that there are alot of different opinions and beliefs etc. Everyone has different outlooks based on personal life experiences and how they measure their own intelligence, so i try not to make out that anyone is stupid, thick or pathetic just because there views or opinions differed from mine, like they do on some forums. If i've ever said the wrong thing, i apologize.
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I've only seen you say the wrong thing twice....
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ha ha, twice out 720 posts, is that good or bad. :)
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Not too shabby...not shabby at all.... :P
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Well, I think, but i'm not sure, there is a law against theft (I'll have to check on that)
Of course there is. Think of it this way.
How many people feel bad for Germany Because they were on the losing side of two world wars? And yet we are supposed to "sympathize" with people who essentially lost a battle of wits with people whom you yourself believe are the stupid ones.
Generally, there are fools, and their are knaves. A lot of consumer laws are in place essentially to protect fools from knaves. Personally, for example, I don't feel sorry, not in the least bit, for anybody who actually fell for a 419 scam. I'm sure you know of them; somebody sends an E-mail that essentially promises that they can give you millions of dollars but they need a couple hundred or a thousand to get the money out of some holding; they continue to pile on "oh no, there was another fee" type stuff until they bleed the victim dry or they finally get a clue. There have been cases where people have literally emptied their bank accounts, life savings, borrowed thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars from anybody, in order to send it through western Union. I don't know about anybody else, but that quite literally is the stupidest thing I had ever heard in regards to money management. And people still feel sorry for the idiot, despite the fact that it was his own personal greed for the several million dollars that drove him to do it in the first place. Scams take advantage of the stupid. Personally, I feel that laws that criminalize scams are sort of saying "you're not allowed to be smarter then your consumer". However, it's interesting because it's only illegal when it involves getting money or other material goods; I took advantage of a users ineptitude with regards to (what they called) the "cyber-world" with the whole "Possumboy" thing (posted elsewhere), and for payment I got lots of laughs; but it wasn't illegal. However if I somehow had cajoled them into sending me money through western Union, despite the fact that they are clearly dumb for doing so, that would be illegal. Laws are quite largely black-and white in a world of gray and gray, so it's difficult to make them make sense in all contexts; that being said, applying these black and white laws in gray and gray context's that had not been thought of when the law was created is simply naive. As you say, "theft is stealing".
In the Prince and The Pauper, there was a segment where the "Prince" (who had, as per the very plot crux of the story, essentially Swapped places with a poor pauper) was essentially framed for stealing a Pig from a woman by a villainous cohort. Now, ignoring the fact that they were framed, the fact was that the Pig cost enough to the lady to warrant his execution. So she essentially lied and said to let the record show it cost no more then X shillings (I forget the exact number, it's not like I read the book yesterday). And everybody knew she was lying about the cost of the Pig, so in a sense she herself was breaking the laws of the time and lying to the court; but the context was equally important since she was also essentially saving the boy (who was actually at that point the King if I recall). Which is a excellent demonstration of two wrongs making a right (although technically there was no wrong to begin with and it was a case of being framed, but nobody bought that story).
Despite people's perserverence in doing so, What is and isn't illegal is not what is and isn't immoral, if that was the case then there is no such thing as an immoral law, such as, for example, segregating races or sending people to concentration camps or making them wear 6-pointed stars; "if it's legal, it's moral" is not a particularly good definition.
Additionally, while Laws are largely black and white, the Moral ground they attempt to cover isn't; this of course leaves holes. Additionally, what is and is not moral is more or less defined by culture, and is not something that necessarily can be applied on a global scale to everything; In particular, Lions aren't beset with guilt because they took the innocent lives of gazelle; the very concept of morals at all is an entirely human concept and we've extended it to the animal kingdom (mainly domesticated animals, where it makes perfect sense anyway). This of course is not a bad thing; it's essentially required for most societies to exist. But if you ever have a society that believes that Laws dictate Morals, you have gone either too far left or too far right on the government scale, and are merely at a crux-point which occurs immediately before a revolution.
I don't and never have, but i was just trying to make the point that we seemed to have accepted that we constantly have to protect ourselves from totally unscrupulous 'people' and that this is the norm. So, instead of educating said people we have to educate the innocent to protect themselves. I know these idiots are part of life and that this has little to do with the original post. I just don't like it. It's an opinion.
What would we educate them with? The fact is, again, Morality is a purely human concept; but that doesn't mean that people can't reject societies idea of morality and substitute their own. In the case of "thieves", they feel justified in taking things for many reasons; perhaps because the person who rightly owns it is making no attempt to protect it, which would be more then enough of a reason for it to have remained moral a few hundred years ago. Additionally, once again, the morals that dictate this differ; first, in order to have thieves, you need to have private property. Some systems of government don't have anything that can be called that; everything belongs to the state and the state belongs to the people; therefore in such a system you cannot steal anything, instead you are using what belongs to you no more and no less then the person who previously had it under their protection. Some people like to say that the concept of private property is some sort of inalienable Human right; this is simply not the case. Sure, it may be a right preserved by many systems of governments, but it's hardly inalienable since it's rejected by any number of governmental forms, which are themselves of course vilified for any number of reasons (the most prevalent being nationalistic bigotry and ideological differences). Years ago, the stronger,faster, or smarter person would be the one who would get the spoils, regardless of where they came from. If a particularly dumb person had something in their possession that you wanted, you could either kill them or beat them up until they give it to you, outsmart them in some way, or something to that effect. In order for said person to keep that possession they would either need to fight off the person who wants it or outsmart them yourself. Nowadays, "laws" and "morals" essentially say that despite that person being smaller, dumber, and weaker then you, you cannot essentially brute force yourself into having what they have. intimidating them into giving it to you is illegal. scamming them is illegal. beating the crap out of them until they give it to you is illegal. Whats the one way of getting it "morally"? Exchanging goods or services rendered in exchange for said item. It makes society a lot less violent and far safer, as well as far more stable, but at the same time it skews any number of concepts and makes people all-around weaker; they no longer have to defend their "share" of things, since they are now "protected" by an invisible force called morals, and those who don't hold to this completely arbitrary definition are invalids and degenerates. At the same time, however, such invisible rules do not exist when those moral codes fight each other; the larger, stronger, faster mobilized, smarter army in a war will win. So despite the fact that people like to cling to a idea where the moral way is the right way, the world at large goes in the opposite direction. Nobody blames the Allies from WW1 for the outbreak of WW2, but any history buff can tell you that they set the stage for WW2 to breakout on their own.
I see the burglar as the stupid one and the person who left the windows open as a victim of a society that would prefer to live in fortified castles, with a gun each. I know that the dream of a perfect utopian society is impossible, but i'm a dreamer.
I, on the other hand, see the burglar (in most cases) as smarter then the person who left the window open, or the door unlocked, who is dumber then their neighbors who didn't; this of course isn't true if said burglar uses their computer for facebook and forgets to logout, of course. It doesn't make it right of course, but people who do bad things aren't necessarily stupid, despite the fact that villains on TV are often painted this way.
I disagree. How can people who are ignorant KNOW that they are ignorant. Doesn't make sense.
I never said they knew they were. However, they are deliberately choosing a path that means they clearly will be ignorant. Additionally, people can know they are ignorant of things. In my example, the people who refuse to learn how to use a computer and the various ups and downs of it's use and how to prevent bad things from happening with them and so on and so forth are ignorant for the same reason that the person that wants to drive a car without learning how is ignorant. They deliberately choose not to learn about the computer, but insist on using it. That is ignorance. By the same token, people who deliberately choose not to learn about the WiFi but insist on using it are also ignorant. They may not directly choose to be ignorant (my statement was a metaphor, I didn't realize I had to include a full paragraph to explain what I meant with it) but they are quite deliberately setting the stage whereby they will be taken advantage of. The best part is that they often blame the messenger; that is, they will blame whoever sold them the device for not telling them about it. Which is equally ludicruous. When you go to buy a knife, they don't have to explicitly say "don't stab yourself".
Looking at the wireless networks I can pick up from my desktop, there are about 13. About half of them are protected with WPA or WPA2; another quarter are using WEP, and the rest are unsecured. The unsecured ones are all using the default name scheme, and testing around with a few I find that only one or two of them were actually passworded, so in effect, with the ones that had no password, anybody could drive in, park their car across the street, change their password or make the router use a poisoned DNS, and they would be none the wiser. This isn't exactly common, but the fact that the people are essentially relying on others to not take advantage of the situation is asking for trouble. Why do you think many gas stations have bulletproof glass between the staff and the customer? Because people with guns often took advantage of the lack of such glass. The thing is, except for many cases, a lot of seemingly "black" (bad) things are in fact more a shade of gray. For example, somebody might have robbed a bank, but it was only because "evil insurance co." refused to payout for their house burning down because the neighbour had strapped TNT to his dog had crawled in through an unlocked basement window and exploded, and his daughter has cancer and was at the time trying to sleep while the evil neighbors were screaming and banging on he door; she is in the hospital and he cannot afford to keep treating her without it. This is yet another case where the invisible third party is only noticable to those of us who don't have to worry about it; the fact that said health-care needs to be paid for at all, which is a interesting hypocritical point that can be made since despite being all "goodwill towards all men" they essentially revise the hippocratic oath to "do no evil, as long as they pay me". That aside, of course, it could seem like said extremist neighbor is evil, but when you look closer, it turns out that his dog is dying of lung cancer, and because he can't afford to pay the vet to put the dog down, he has to do it himself, and all he had was some dynamite. So tearfully, he straps the dynamite to his beloved family pet, as the rest of the family watch in tears. Just as he sets the timer, the dog dashes off and squeezes into his neighbors basement, so they ran as fast as they could to try to get to the dog to stop the timer before 30 seconds, but nobody answered the door. So the insurance company looks evil, but at the same time, it only didn't pay them because the entire story seemed ludicrous and made-up, and even a joke, and they were suffering at the time from a lot of insurance fraud (which I might point out a lot of people do without feeling bad at all, same with tax evasion)... etc etc. Basically, except in very rare cases, "Evil" acts almost always have reasons that are otherwise benign.