Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin  I have a bit of a problem with people saying that piggbacking is "stealing".
Any definition of "stealing" that I can think of includes depriving the victem of some object or the utility of some object that he lawfully owns. The case law in the OT set out specific restitution plans based on the value, and loss of use, as well as the loss of future use.
My difficulty is I can not imagine how I would "restore x-fold" to some one the value of my piggybacking. After all they never lost the object (internet access) or the future utility of the object.
Am I wong to think that a person who invites a bunch of the teens from church over to watch a dvd that is clearly marked "licensed for private home viewing ONLY" is also guilty of stealing liscencing fees from the distributer of the movie? This seems to me to be an analogous situation.
Civbert, you are the logic teacher what do you think? |
You're getting service from a provider for which you are not paying. In this sense you are
first stealing from the Internet Service Provider. It's the same reason why burning your friend's cd is stealing. The artists should've gotten $30 for the sale of two cds but they only got $15 for the sale of one, yet two people still get the benefits. This is analgous to "piggybacking" internet.
Secondly, as has already been said several times, when multiple users are on the same connection bandwidth is used up. That means that you are slowing down the person's internet connection when you use it. If I live in a culdesac and everyone's using my internet, that means I'm going to download more slowly, etc. So the utility is being degraded for the person who is actually paying. Most people just don't realize this because it's more specialized knowledge of how technology works. If I pay for a 384 kb/s internet connection but only get 192 kb/s because people are "piggybacking," there is a problem.