Stealing bandwidth, and internet morality ...

[TomJoe]

Oy vey. Let me see if I can come up with an analogy that describes what I mean.

Say I have an electrical outlet that sits in my front yard, very close to the curb. It's just an outlet, so anyone could come up to it and plug anything they want into it. Now, if someone does plug something into it, they use electricity which I now have to pay for. They didn't ask me if they can use the outlet, and since it's not locked up, they just assumed I don't care if anyone uses it. However, I do mind, I use it to run my electric mower for my front yard, and it didn't dawn on me to cover/lock it up until I found a huge spike in my electricity bill, but by then ... it was too late. I've already been saddled with an expensive bill for at least one month ... and maybe some months went by where I didn't notice the increase in my bill because it wasn't very huge, but added up over the months it's still a sizeable cost.

Now, if someone had asked me if they could plug it in, I might've said yes ... depending on who it was, and what they wanted it for. If they wanted to plug it in to light up their entire house, I would say no ... but if they just needed it for some light mowing of their own yard ... I might not have a problem with it.

The point is ... irregardless of whether or not I block access to that electrical plug or not, it's still my property, it's still something I pay for out of my own pocket and I haven't given any people permission to use it, they've just assumed they could because I didn't lock it up.

Does that make any more sense than what I've already said?