On Wednesday 09 February 2005 2:44, Jack Trout wrote: > > > > Sure it is. If I leave my car in your driveway with the keys in the > > ignition and the car running and you decide to take it for a > > "test-drive" can I report my car stolen? > > > > Just because they didn't put the filter on doesn't give someone the > > justification to be able to help themselves to whatever they want. They > > still own the content. > > IF you left your car on my property with the keys in it etc, I would > still have to perform the action of entering your car and driving away > with it. but I would be within my legal right to have it towed away... > > What I am saying is you have content being delievered to your lines > you cannot control without performing something illegal IE climbing > the pole and hooking up a filter that is the Cable Companies domain. > > If your television is passively on the wiring in your house and the > wiring is recieving cable its a grey area, because you are not paying > for that specifically, but you actions did not cause the cable to be > there, if everyone is self reporting you could call the cable company > and complain about why are these annoying channels interfering with > your normal Snow Pattern you normally get, But if you find 20$ in your > mail box, do you call the post office pissed off because you got > money? > > Its the Cable companies job to install and block thier services > correctly, if they dont the consumer cant be blamed, if the consumer > has made no action to obtain these services, and has not requested > these services. > > But saying we are advocating illegal actions no one has said go to the > pole and rip the filters off, no one has said run a line from your > neighbors house, no one has suggested running a cablebox not provided > by the cable company, so I dont see how anyone is advocating illegal > activity >
One point no one seems to have mentioned yet in this thread is that, for the most part, the cable companies are completely aware of the situation (in general, maybe not specific instances). Their pricing structure contains allowances for instances where content is being delivered beyond what is being paid for; this is one of the reasons why cable internet (at least from Comcast) costs an extra $10/mo if you're not already a basic cable subscriber (and that's 'basic' cable as in '125 channels', as opposed to 'antenna service', which is their $10/mo 'broadcast channels only' package). Keep in mind that it doesn't cost the cable company anything extra to allow a signal to travel to your house; it does cost them money to send someone out to install a filter. Ever notice that they'll hurry out to your house to install/add a service, but when you cancel something it is only truly turned off when they happen to have a truck in your neighborhood. Watching cable channels that the cable company is 'accidentally' pumping into your house is not like stealing. Cable service isn't a resource that gets consumed, like water or electricity. Watching it doesn't use up any more or less bandwidth than not watching it. A few years ago there was a court case in Philadelphia. Bascially, the principal interests in Veterans Stadium sued some local homeowners whose houses were positioned in such a way that they were able to view stadium events from their porches, or rooftops, or whatever. The (Phillies/Eagles/concert promoters/whoever) wanted to charge them some portion of a season ticket price. The verdict came down on the side of the homeowners... if something is viewable from your home without you taking an explicitly illegal action, you are perfectly within your rights to watch it. I'm sure there are nuances to that case, and certainly there are differences in how it might be applied to cable TV (after all, IANAL), but basically the cable company can't charge you for content they've 'accidentally' pumped into your house in the clear, and which you may or may not have watched (after all, how could they prove you ever watched it?). Bottom line: IANAL, but I seriously doubt you could ever be convicted of anything if all you did was passively watch content that the cable company 'inadvertently' pushed into your home. Ethically, I also don't see any problem with watching said content. Once it enters my home it's mine (the signal, not the content). As long as I don't take any illegal action to modify the signal or the content (i.e., decrypt an encrypted signal), then I consider it a windfall and leave it at that. I'll stop now before I ramble too much... -JAC _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
