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From: ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist)
Newsgroups: net.tv,net.legal
Subject: Re: Satellite dish cleanup : Technical Practicalities
Message-ID: <787@hou3c.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Aug-84 18:59:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: hou3c.787
Posted: Mon Aug 27 18:59:20 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 28-Aug-84 00:28:35 EDT
References: <705@security.uucp> <385@vortex.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
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> In our society, we have
> laws to provide certain protections and penalties.  If a burglar
> came through your house and stole your TV and was caught carrying
> it off, would the case be dismissed if you had not locked your house
> securely?

I don't think that this (or any of the other examples given) are
very accurate analogies with the protection of transmission rights.
If the burglar enters your house and carries off your TV set, he
is guilty of a crime.  If you mail your TV set to the burglar, the
burglar is not guilty of a crime.  If you can show that the burglar
agreed to pay you for the TV, then you have a civil suit.  If you
can show that you did not intend to mail the TV to the burglar, you
may be able to get your TV back.  But if you intentionally mailed
the TV to the burglar, knowing that the burglar had made no agree-
ment to pay for it, you have almost certainly lost your TV.

To develop an even closer analogy, let's consider the case where
you insist on throwing a newspaper on my front lawn every morning.
I may be able to sue you for littering, but I can also pick up the
paper and read it if I so desire.  What I most likely cannot do
legally is to reproduce the paper, because the copyright on it is
still valid.  This is very similar to the case in which you insist
on broadcasting radio waves at my front lawn.  The analogy is still
not perfect because it is a lot easier to stop throwing newspapers
onto my front lawn than to stop throwing radio waves at it.  The
point is that analogy with existing law does not support your
position.  If broadcasters claim that they have special needs which
require the government to place new restrictions on what people can
do in their own homes, it is clearly incumbent upon them to show
that technological alternatives cannot be found.
				Kenneth Almquist