Well Zoo and readers, I recieved a letter from Customs called Notice of Seizure of Parcel.


They will "take no further action unless any further detections are made".

But it does say I should seek a solicitors advice.
Probably not the best 40 Euros I ever spent!

Bad luck Mart... expecting any more parcels? (Hope not )


Back to topic - the MP3 analogy is a good one:

"I only copied an MP3, where's the harm?"

"I only used some bandwidth, where's the harm?"

In both cases neither person is aware of a problem. People on this board understand the MP3 problem but the majority don't seem to understand the bandwidth problem.

The arguments are very similar from both sides in both instances.

Ah no Zoo; an MP3 has owners, writers, artistes, copyright...

Bandwidth is provided for all to use unless the hirer chooses to make it unique, which they are both entitled to do and easily able to do.

Water is provided free for anyone to drink in public drink fountains. If we prefer we can buy bottled or only use our home tap supply.

If the state wants to restrict consumption of free water they can close the fountains.

If it wants to restrict use of bandwidth, it can make password registration compulsory.

Until it does, anyone can use whatever is freely available.

And still on MP3`s, there is a worrying amount of sites selling MP`3s with no obvious sign of where the actual payments are going.

I have figures of sales, which I reveal names of whom from, after FINALLY getting responses from them, but it does seem like a new worrying trend emerging, in which the public are paying for what would appear to be a genuine item and the monies are vanishing elsewhere.

I have absolutely no worries with great supportive music sites like the Fab Chart or Slice the pie, but a few "un-named others" I shall say for now, are starting to worry me.

Lets go off topic again, and back to Mart's fags. I find it disturbing that you should get a letter from customs so long after the event- if I recall correctly, Mart, you didn't continue to buy them. What sort of snooping around have they done to contact you after all that time, I wonder.

But then, you're a dangerous criminal evidently. Forget gun crime, street violence, armed robberies, yob culture and the like. Well, they have literally been forgotten, it would seem.

Interesting that the ever tightening tentacles of our paranoid state have banned us from smoking almost everywhere, (for our own good?) yet remain so keen to make us buy the product UK duty fully paid. Nothing to do with the nearly

JK2006 wrote:
Ah no Zoo; an MP3 has owners, writers, artistes, copyright...

Bandwidth is provided for all to use unless the hirer chooses to make it unique, which they are both entitled to do and easily able to do.

Water is provided free for anyone to drink in public drink fountains. If we prefer we can buy bottled or only use our home tap supply.

If the state wants to restrict consumption of free water they can close the fountains.

If it wants to restrict use of bandwidth, it can make password registration compulsory.

Until it does, anyone can use whatever is freely available.
You understand the MP3 issue, many people do not. In the same way you don't understand the bandwidth issue.

Bandwidth is provided for paying subscribers to use, not all and everyone. An open door is not an invitation to come in and help yourself, just like no DRM is not a open invitation to copy it.

Regarding water, if you have a tap outside your house that doesn't mean I am entitled to use it just because you haven't locked it.

Someone using another's wireless connection can have a real cost to the person paying for the subscription.

The question must be why someone will go to some effort to find unsecured wireless connection - we're not talking about your computer accidentally connecting to your neighbour's connection. This is a deliberate hunt for unsecured connection, for what purpose?

Please remember I do agree that someone who has an unsecured wireless port is being foolish - they should use a password.

In reply Anthony and all, it is rather petty isn`t it what they have hit me with.
I am debating whether to keep quiet or not, in many ways in can be said that I already have not, but I am intrigued as to what the sentence and the fine is regarding the

The only Freeweb I know of is for hosting websites not getting online. So no comment on that from me.

It is very true if you don't want you car nicked don't leave the keys in it. Although we are used to keys and their use. Something like a password on a wireless connection is something alien to many people.

People are not aware that others can use their wireless, if you point out the range is 50m it becomes clear to them.

We may not think a password is terribly techy but some do.

JK2006 wrote:
Totally agree Mart; we are living in a totally mad world.

Thinking of something now gets long criminal sentences; talking dirty to a middle aged cop pretending to be someone else means prison; using something free because the owner has decided they don't want to protect it is a crime; human beings are rejecting human rights...

BARMY!

Is taking items from a household skip a crime I wonder?

After I moved out of the first house that I bought, I had a skip delivered to get rid of a Steptoe's yard full of junk that I had collected over the six years that I had lived there. Because I had moved in with my new wife by then into her own house, I was filling the skip with this junk during the day, driving home a good 20 miles then returning the next day to - an empty (or 3/4 empty) skip. I must have saved a fortune!!

E bay also is of course good for this Steve, you could have not only saved a fortune but made one.
(bubble rap taken into account of course!)

Mart wrote:
E bay also is of course good for this Steve, you could have not only saved a fortune but made one.
(bubble rap taken into account of course!)

This was the stuff that even eBay couldn't get rid of!

steveimp wrote:
Is taking items from a household skip a crime I wonder?
[/quote]
I think it may be.

Your normal black bin rubbish is still your property IRC.