Manhattan/Cartooniverse:
Wrongo. Descrambling a signal is not theft, not is copyright violation. Theft is a specific crime. You can feel bad about IP violations if you want, but calling them theft is outright lying.
You got to love it when people say ‘you can do it, but you’re just rationalizing’ and everyone else is suppose to shutup. How about, you can avoid doing it if you wish, but you’re just rationalizing a controlling law into something that you can feel good about obeying? Don’t like it? Of course not, either way you look at it, it’s crap.
The whole point about being a thinking being is being able to decide what to do, if you never question a law, just because it’s a law, congrats, you’re candidate #1 for supporting an oppressive dictator.
And don’t go telling me it’s just the rationalization of a thief. The cable room in my building can be opened with a butter knife, and when I was in there watching my line be installed, I saw how filters were applied. I could, if I wanted, have free extended cable. I don’t, and it’s not for fear of the law.
Why don’t you go equate traffic violations to speeding, you’d be wrong, but that doesn’t seem to stop you.
dhanson:
As far as I can see, there are no laws stopping you from using a DSS dish, just company regulations, and various legal reasons they can’t sell it to you. But, having the dish, and using it, shouldn’t be illegal. If they’re checking for PO boxes, go to one of the stores that uses Apt/Suite #s for their boxes.
Technical stuff:
A TDR could detect different equipment, and theoretically, they could detect a signature from various equipment. But, I don’t think a TDR would be used, being a specific device used to find cable breaks. What they’d find is that the signal stopped some distance inside your house.
As for the cable company spying on you with a tempest device… I wouldn’t be suprised if you could sue them for it, there have to be a few laws violated by monitoring what people are doing like that.
And, am I the only one who didn’t sign an agreement when getting either cable or phone service? They hooked both with only my landlord here. I guess because it doesn’t really cost them anything (asside from one month of potential long distance calls) to provide the service, they’re willing to take the risk of losing a month of service, especially because they know I’ll very likely be a long-term customer (How many people don’t have a phone?)
But, it means I didn’t sign anything agreeing to let them inspect the equipment, or giving them any right to claim access to my house.
I did sign something when getting the cable modem, but that was all to do with the internet service, and the cable modem. For instance, I’m technically not allowed to move the cable modem, if I want it on the other side of the desk, I have to call them.
Watching the install of that was funny, I no longer have any worry that they could detect non-standard wiring, unless you managed to wire the cable into a ham radio or something.