Originally Posted by
Bakpapier
Why are you talking about a wholly other subject (movies) in a thread about airports?
Why don't you just rebut my logical argument instead of starting to talk about something else?
I think it's a sign of weakness that shows that my argument is right.
It's not a sign of weakness. It's a benchmark question. You support stealing WiFi because no resources are being stolen (false in its own right). If you support movie piracy, I can then see you're consistent and show the myriad laws and legal precedents that show it to be illegal. We can then debate whether a non-harmful law that someone doesn't like - is it acceptable/appropriate to break it. If you don't support movie piracy, then we can discuss why you make such a differentiation.
That being said, talking about airports, stealing WiFi.
If an airport charges for WiFi, good chance it costs them money to run. There are certainly fixed costs for the WiFi, whether used or not. But the airport isn't an ISP, so they're contracting it. Perhaps the deal they have charges per MB used. If so, then when you take WiFi that you didn't pay for, they are indeed being charged. Any surfing you do, regardless of they're payment structure, uses resources and could use bandwidth that someone else was willing to pay for. In fact, your internet use could slow the speeds for others (who were willing to pay) who are now no longer willing to pay in the future because of the perceived lower speeds.
Sure, that sounds far-fetched. After all, can 1 person have such an effect? Maybe not, but if multiple people utilize a similar strategy, it can absolutely have an effect. Now you can then argue that that's not the same as a store where you don't need multiple person to steal an item to affect them but I'd argue. Stealing 1 bottle of soda from Wal Mart isn't affecting their bottom line. But if everyone takes a bottle without paying, it absolutely affects their bottom line. And yet we accept that even 1 person doing so is wrong.