full-disclosure - Hacking into private files, my credit card purchases, personal correspondence or anything that is mine is trespassing and criminal.

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Message-ID: <20041011192948.16027.qmail@web60303.mail.yahoo.com>
From: jessevalentin at yahoo.com (Jesse Valentin)
Subject: Hacking into private files, my credit card purchases, personal correspondence or anything that is mine is trespassing and criminal.

Hey Vince,

With all due respect,  while I find your argument interesting I think it’s a case of “mental gymnastics”.

You mention that descrambling is “copyright violation”. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary the term Copyright is defined as:

the EXCLUSIVE legal right to reproduce, publish, and sell the matter and form (as of a literary, musical, or artistic work).

If we are talking about the “exclusive right” to sell cable television as a service, then anyone who “violates” this right would be committing … ah what is that term, - piracy? 

The Merriam Webster dictionary goes on to define the word “piracy” as:

“an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery”

As we know “robbery” is…. yes you guessed it… stealing.

Interesting how that term “stealing” keeps popping up, huh? J

Jesse

Vincent Archer <var@...y-all.com> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 11:41:49AM -0700, Jesse Valentin wrote:
> How about using a digital de-scrambler for cable service? You?re getting something you?re not paying for? isn?t that stealing? True, its not a vital service, but isn?t this still plain ?ol stealing?

It's not stealing. The cable company has lost nothing. Every single bit
it had, it still has. The only part you might remotely have stolen is
the amount of electrical power required to bring the bits to your home.

That's how, in ages now long gone, an acquaintance of mine got charged.
It was the early days of X25 networking, you had plenty of computers
unsecured connected to access points (login: root, password: root),
so they created a BBS on one such. The BBS took off, until the company
noticed. Unfortunately, they couldn't demonstrate any loss; the computer
was still there, no data was damaged, the callers used charged calls (i.e.
the company was not billed for X25 usage, the BBS callers were).

In the end, the original BBS creators were charged with "theft of energy",
i.e. raising the electrical consumption of the computer equipment due to
extra activity. It didn't stick, but that was the only theft that occured,
and there was no legislation on hacking to fall back on.

It's the same with the MPAA and the RIAA screaming about "thieves". They've
stopped doing so, it's trivial to show that nothing was stolen, and they
are not facing lost property, they're facing lost customers.

Descrambling is counterfeiting and copyright violation, but not thievery.

(IANAL, of course)
-- 
Vincent ARCHER
varcher@...yall.com

Tel : +33 (0)1 40 07 47 14
Fax : +33 (0)1 40 07 47 27
Deny All - 5, rue Scribe - 75009 Paris - France
www.denyall.com

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