81–90 of 486 posts
I thought this might be fiction because the amount of time for pirating cable seemed crazy.. However [1] there are indeed up to 6 month penalties for stealing cable. That's just ludicrous. How could copyright theft ever be anything other than a civil action? Jail time for stealing cable, that's just insane. Nobody gets hurt from stolen cable. We really need to look long and hard at what we allow jail time for. Jail t…
I thought this might be fiction because the amount of time for pirating cable seemed crazy.. However [1] there are indeed up to 6 month penalties for stealing cable. That's just ludicrous. How could copyright theft ever be anything other than a civil action? Jail time for stealing cable, that's just insane. Nobody gets hurt from stolen cable. We really need to look long and hard at what we allow jail time for. Jail t…
Copyright is a property right. It is not unreasonable for theft of property to carry the possibility of criminal charges. This is not strictly done in service of big media---if organized crime rings come in to town and do a ton of rogue hookups with impunity, then the cable company leaves and you have a cycle of degradation in the quality of life. Preventing organized crime is why it is a federal offense. Of course,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of this story is horrific and ...funny. You should write a screenplay. We had free HBO in my house in the early 90s because the cable guy apparently just decided to let us have it. I never understood how that worked.
A small in-line filter
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think the parent post was engaging in an ideological flame war. As a way to start educating yourself, I’d recommend reading about the correlation between long jail sentences and African American heritage. https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/racial-d... (Edit: this DOJ report is more relevant to the time period of the article. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/sfc-drmtsg8690.pdf ) Deny the ba…
[flagged]
I thought this might be fiction because the amount of time for pirating cable seemed crazy.. However [1] there are indeed up to 6 month penalties for stealing cable. That's just ludicrous. How could copyright theft ever be anything other than a civil action? Jail time for stealing cable, that's just insane. Nobody gets hurt from stolen cable. We really need to look long and hard at what we allow jail time for. Jail t…
[flagged]
I thought this might be fiction because the amount of time for pirating cable seemed crazy.. However [1] there are indeed up to 6 month penalties for stealing cable. That's just ludicrous. How could copyright theft ever be anything other than a civil action? Jail time for stealing cable, that's just insane. Nobody gets hurt from stolen cable. We really need to look long and hard at what we allow jail time for. Jail t…
Copyright is a property right. It is not unreasonable for theft of property to carry the possibility of criminal charges. This is not strictly done in service of big media---if organized crime rings come in to town and do a ton of rogue hookups with impunity, then the cable company leaves and you have a cycle of degradation in the quality of life. Preventing organized crime is why it is a federal offense. Of course,…
There is no theft. In the digital world there's merely copying, but in this case it was just tuning into an existing signal with a wire.
Theft of property would require that you broke into HBO's office and stole the master tapes, for example.
I was a "broadband technician" around then and AT&T Broadband did not give AF if you were stealing cable or not. I only handled cable modem installs and quit after a year to go major in philosophy and because: - Getting quietly threatened once (with AR-15 up against the customer's front door) on a troubleshooting call that I wasn't able to leave until "the internet started working". - Having to increasingly go do cab…
I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this.
I did a similar job early on in my career (involving cheap phone calling devices with customers including consumers and often dodgy 'calling shops'). But the most dangerous situation I faced was a customer with a heavy dose of the flu, lol. And roadside fastfood.
I was a "broadband technician" around then and AT&T Broadband did not give AF if you were stealing cable or not. I only handled cable modem installs and quit after a year to go major in philosophy and because: - Getting quietly threatened once (with AR-15 up against the customer's front door) on a troubleshooting call that I wasn't able to leave until "the internet started working". - Having to increasingly go do cab…
Little did I know that the antenna in Europe is actually energized by design (I think I found out later?) and I received several non-damaging but definitely "means business" shocks whilst trying to manipulate the cables.