perelgut@utai.UUCP (Stephen Perelgut) (07/11/85)
At the risk of entering a debate I care little about... A request for information on how to build a pay-TV decoder is not illegal. Neither is building, owning, or possessing one. The only illegal act is using one in theft of communication services. And that is still not 100% locked down as illegal. Go ahead and post a description if you want. I won't build one. I won't use one. (I'm not sure I'd even want one.) -- Stephen Perelgut Computer Systems Research Institute, University of Toronto
nixon@utai.UUCP (Brian Nixon) (07/11/85)
Counselling others to commit an offence is, itself, an offence. Brian Nixon.
clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke) (07/12/85)
I think the relevant point of news-posting etiquette says something like,
"Don't tell anyone how to do anything illegal, or ask anyone to tell you."
It is apparently illegal to decode pay-TV signals without paying for them,
and we should not therefore post news explaining how to build a decoder,
since the building is the only part of the illegal decoding that would need
an explanation (... unless you really need to be told how to turn your
TV on!) It's true that this illegal means of watching pay TV would have
the non-illegal side effect of causing you to own your own decoder, but
that's beside the point.
Likewise, we should not ask for nor give instructions on how to set up an
illegal satellite dish, should we? -- even if the government would never
prosecute.
None of this has (I think) anything to do with the morality of do-it-yourself
decoding. Personally, I find the idea that I can't do what I like with
signals entering or passing through my property rather offensive. ("Entering"
covers my annoyance with the bit in the cable-TV contract about not connecting
a second TV to the cable. I don't want to, but I almost wish I did want to.)
But there are only a few news networks, and there's not much sense putting
this one, and in this case our university too, in danger of being sued.