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Originally Posted by Nodrog
Using someone's wireless internet is of course not exactly like any of these things. It does share some features with most of them though.
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This is true, although analogies seem like the only practical way to understand certain things (I am speaking for myself here). To use an analogy based on your point on analogies - if I learn a new word (foriegn or English) then for a period all might have to represent this word is other words. But words are not usually perfectly synonomous with anything and so while lady=woman=girl (sort of) there are nuances one needs to develop to master a language.
Analogies can similarly develop, although this process seems to break down in debates as people cling to whatever they have as a representation of the problem at the time. The rules seem to be that analogies will then become shit unless people
i) Aren't too precious about them
ii) Don't endlessly debate the (irrelevant) specifics
iii) Are open about
why x is kind of like y because of z (where z is a fundamental point at the heart of the discussion).
So you might be against wireless "theft" because...
- You might just dislike the idea of other people getting stuff for free (especially if it's off your own back)
- You don't want your bandwidth horribly throttled and thus internet experience adversely affected by the interaction.
- You might view this as a tragedy of the commons type situation - while we could all hang off the one internet connection off one guy in Bristol we'd all have a shit time and no-one would bother investing anything into the next generation of pornography dissemination.
- You might have (valid) privacy concerns that the person could access your data, see what you're doing, etc.
And so reading the paper over someone's shoulder is perhaps a pertinent analogy if your main concern is someone getting something for nothing. But then the general acceptance of shoulder-reading is precisely because newspapers do not face slow down based on the number of people looking at the page, nor are they likely to have someone's private data in them or mean someone can gain access to your eyes.
And thus, the most important rule:
iv) Do not agree with a silly exaggeration of your analogy simply to appear consistent.
If you had a magic tree in your garden that had unlimited apples on it, which would never wither or die, and all the people in the world could have as much fruit as they wanted without any other problems (be they ecological, economic or dietary) AND your garden/front lawn/local motorway was never crowded/damaged by this endless fruit picking mob AND you were never personally inconvenienced/damaged by this AND you had a promise from God himself that this tree would be there forever more (etc, etc) then of course that would change the dynamics of a legal/ethical/economic system based on scarcity and labour investment. In fact, you'd have to be a Grade A cock to want to restrict this wonderous thing. But you do sometimes hear people baited into saying something like "No, even then private property should apply and I'd build a wall to keep those scum out!".
These people miss the point that private property (as a basic principle) exists precisely because any realistic scenario
would involve negative side-effects of one form or another to the tree's guardian/owner.
Wireless internet "theft" (sigh) is not ideal behaviour in the longer term for a range of reasons - most of which are specific to this issue. But it's also silly to equate it with certain other theft type crimes - again because it has specific features which makes it dissimilar. I've had to fix countless machines where people were using one of their neighbours connections - usually blissfully unaware (although I enjoyed telling my colleagues husband - a CID Police Officer that he was probably committing a crime).