🚀 go-pugleaf

scheeler@primenet.com (T.M. Scheeler) writes:
>Hey, Boris, if I enter the banks computer system and transfer all your 
funds to 
>my 
>account to satisfy my intellectual capacity it would be okay, right? I 
mean the 
>banks 
>system is just sitting there with all those records, and they reside in 
>computers 

Banks aren't transmitting the account information of all their customers 
to anyone who cares to pick them up.  To get at bank funds you have to 
physically enter their property which is a little different than playing 
around with a TV signal which anyone can recieve.

As I indicated, I have no objections to cable TV companies encrypting 
signals in a manner which requires a much more determined effort to 
break.  Electronic funds transfer systems would be interesting to play 
with, but in my present line of work I can make a lot more money legally 
than I can make in figuring out how to hack bank computers.  I suppose I 
might be bored at some point in the future and get back to this problem, 
but there is a considerable difference between knowing how to make cash 
dispensers do ones bidding and actually putting this knowledge into 
effect.  To consider more primitive technology, there are a lot of people 
who have the skill to duplicate the printing on a bank note so that it is 
indistinguishable from the original.  Some may even go ahead and do it to 
satisfy their curiousity.  Criminality only arises should they seek to 
pass their forged notes as the real thing.  The current scrambling system 
for pay TV is analagous to a bank using crayons to scrawl "this is a $100 
bill" on a scrap of newsprint and threatening anyone who "duplicates" 
their legal tender with legal action for counterfeiting.

>And, I mean, playing subjective games I can 
>validate anything, so I guess if you leave your home unlocked I can just 
help my
>self 
>to your stuff, right? Well, hell, even if it is locked, it's just a 
challenge to
>my 
>finger dexterity to pick the lock.

There was a time when people could leave their homes unlocked and not 
expect them to be broken into.  Unfortunately this isn't the case now.  I 
don't mind if you work on your finger dexterity, but I would also expect 
that you wouldn't greatly object to my using you for close range shotgun 
target practice should you unexpectedly appear in my residence - it is 
one of the expected risks of engaging in the profession of thief of 
physical objects.

Information is not property, and this is what the cable TV descrambler 
legislation misunderstands.  There is no scarcity of information.  Any 
society which seeks to apply the same paradigm of material scarcity to 
information is doomed to extinction.  US legislators seem to be 
determined to do this through their approaches to patent law and
"intellectual property" (application of this label to TV programs is even 
more absurd an oxymoron than its application to "military intelligence", 
the previous winner in this class).

Boris Gimbarzevsky