So how does Microsoft back up its future plans to infest its computers with spyware?

________________________
If Linux made cars, you'd have to start it by typing "sudo euphoria -fwd -abs --donotstall /usr/bin/kia/korean-car-manager"

Wow,you guys are harsh. Which one of you is Billy Gates? ----- and while your here,define "intellectual property".

Let me help you out:

A product of the intellect that has commercial value, including copyrighted property such as literary or artistic works, and ideational property, such as patents, appellations of origin, business methods, and industrial processes.

"Ideational" is not even a proper word yet. (See your upcoming politically correct dictionary.)

---- and just exactly where do you guys get off lecturing about morals and ethics in a cesspool of spyware,viruses and whatever trojans script kiddies can conjure up. This is the only free society on the planet. Leave it alone.

That's interesting. Please provide a citation for your definition. Because the source I use doesn't agree. My source is Black's Law Dictionary, which provides:
Black's Law Dictionary 824-25 (8th ed. 2004).

I'm also looking up case law to find a court's definition, but that will take time. It may be fun to hunt down a questionable definition and use it to undermine an opponent's stance, but unless that source is actually relied on by decision-making authorities, it is ultimately irrelevant. Because this is a question of legality, the source the courts rely on for definitions are paramount: statutory wording, prior court decisions, and Black's Law Dictionary. It is possible for a court to cite other dictionaries, but the vast majority of cites to a definition are from Black's.

Ok, there are so many things to address with this.
Your first statement about a "cesspool" requires at least two comments. First, are you trying to generalize? That is to say, any person that uses a computer is necessarily incapable of passing a legitimate moral judgment because someone else has committed an immoral act with a computer? Or are you trying to insinuate that the members of this message forum are the same people--that members create spyware, trojans, and viruses when they're not posting? I disagree with both arguments.

The second point, assuming you meant one (or both) points above, is that you are used a computer to post your message. Therefore, if your reasoning was valid, you have no basis to pass moral or ethical judgment on others either. Your first statement fails on multiple levels.

On to the "free society" statement... I really can't figure out where you're going with this. What does a free society have to do with trojans, viruses, and spyware? Or are you implying that a free society should allow it members to take whatever information/content they want without getting permission from the creator? I don't consider that a "free society" but rather a "free for all".

And lastly, the "leave it alone" statement... Where, in this discussion, has anyone suggested a change of any sort? Nobody is changing anything--statements are being made observing the way things are--not the way things "should be" or "ought to be".

For the record, I believe the activity is illegal. Another example (building on the jewelry store earlier) would be: a clerk leaves a printout of customer information on the counter, gets distracted, and a customer memorizes sensitive information from the printout. There are two problems here: (1) the failure of the store employee to properly safeguard the information and (2) the theft of the information by the customer. Both are wrong, and both carry some liability (civil liability for the store and criminal liability for the information-memorizing customer).

Illegal? I would call it a gray area. Unethical? Not at all. I wouldn't give a second thought about it, as I would not have purchased the media, they incur no loss (except some minimal bandwidth). I guess the ethics of others might be different.

I've heard some stories of admins putting their password files in /var/www/htdocs, by accident, and they could be found with a google search. Of course, this would not be cracking, technically speaking, as they put the password files in a public access place... But it still would be wrong to download the file, and even more wrong to use those passwords...

This would be only a more extreme case of the same situation.

To make another analogy, such as the diamond earings thing, take the following situation: You are in front of a newspaper stand. Taking and reading a newspaper costs money, of course. Now say that you go in front of the stand, pick up a newspaper, and begin reading it, then put it back down. Would the salesman agree? Technically, you didn't deprive him of anything physically, but he is at a loss, because you didn't buy a newspaper. If he saw you, he would tell you to put it back on the stand or buy it if you want to read it.

So it's illegal.
But is it ethical? That depends on each person's moral values. We each have our own deffinition of what is ethical and what is not, so nobody will be able to give an objective answer.

He is only at a loss if you would have otherwise purchased the newspaper. Otherwise he loses nothing from them reading it.

well, there are 2 cases:

1) you really want to read it. He gives you 2 options: either you buy it, or remain with that curiosity. Eventually, the curiosity will probably make you buy it, especially if it has an attractive front page. (well not you as in YOU, but you as in most people)

2) you don't want to read it, but would so out of boredom maybe, and you wouldn't have bought it otherwise. So why stand in front of the counter and take up the space that somebody who is buying could have taken? Why allow you to read it, and give others who would buy it the impression that they can read it for free?

If you find one newspaper salesman who would give you the right to read his newspapers for free, then I will 100% agree with you

Although you are right, he isn't technically losing anything very valuable, but he isn't winning anything either (well maybe just your gratitude, but that's not enough for most people).

It has been my experience that if anyone really wants to read a newspaper, or use some software, they'll just buy it. I've met very few people who would purchase the item if they couldn't figure out how to get it for free.

This is where making software analogies with physical objects fails. Software has no counter to stand in front of, no people who are watching you get the items for free. In the newspaper situation you are correct, it could hurt the guys business to let you stand there and read the paper. But it doesn't apply to 1's and 0's. ;]

Actually I kind of doubt this is illegal.If it is you also need to outlaw any app that can mirror a website and follows the links in the process.

---edit---
realized I'm slightly off subject - misread the original post. Nevermind, I'm still in the same area - kind of.
/edit

I'm not joining the discussion but...

TV has become absolutely unwatchable.
I want to come home watch the next episode of whatever series I'm watching while I'm eating pizza, and then go about my day.
This has been possible for a long time but the media industry has failed miserably to keep up.

I'd be happy to pay for a subscription for such a service, until they get their act together I'm watching TV on the internet.

The site you mentioned is very likely to be illegal - it's just the part of the illegal filesharing network that has figured out that there are people stupid enough to pay for a false sense of security.
If you enter "tvlinks" in google the first site that comes up does exactly that for free.

*Getting back to my daily monk episode*

This argument gets thrown around and, in my opinion, has no merit. If this were legitimate, then everyone would say "I don't want to buy this. So let me read it and I won't have to buy it."

If there's no interest in purchasing it, then there should be no interest in reading it. The justification of the theory is:
Assuming for the moment that this is true (which I do not agree with), the argument looks at the situation from only one perspective: the newspaper salesman. What about from the perspective of the reader? Isn't the reader gaining something by reading the paper? Knowledge of the world around him/her? Information? Doesn't information have value? Maybe that newspaper had an article discussing a topic that allows the reader to break the ice in a job interview. Maybe the newspaper listed the job interview itself and the reader would otherwise never have known about it. The problem is, the reader is being enriched. The reader is gaining valuable information. Information that had a cost associated with collecting it, organizing it, printing it, and distributing it for sale.

If the reader has no interest in purchasing the paper, then the reader is not entitled to the information it contains.

The same can be said for online music. The downloader may claim "I don't care about Britney Spears. So I'll download her album because I wouldn't buy it anyway." First of all, if the album had no value, why would the downloader want it in the first place? Even saying, "I just want it for my collection" means it has some value (and the downloader is being enriched). Second, the downloader is gaining access to music that took time to write lyrics for, compose music to, record, publish, and distribute.

EDIT
No counter? Really? So, an HTTP request to a server doesn't consume server resources that could be used elsewhere? The request doesn't cause wear-and-tear on the machine's hardware? How about for providers that are billed at a data-rate? X number of bytes per day costs Y dollars. There are a lot of costs associated with providing digital content.

It's ok as long as it's not a big loss? So, you wouldn't mind if someone stole $1.00 from you because it was a "minimal" loss, right? What dollar amount would make it wrong? How many individuals stealing from you would it take to make stealing $1.00 wrong?
/EDIT

If the creator of the work expects some compensation for their work, then it's unethical and likely illegal to go against the creator's wishes. Unless of course the argument is that everyone's wishes should be disregarded when those wishes are inconvenient.

Well, that depends. Has the website owner given permission to run a mirror, or does the mirroring individual otherwise have legitimate access to the content? If so, then it's perfectly fine. Otherwise, how is this any different than before? Rather than copying individual content against the creator's wishes, the entire site is copied. Even if the copying is done with the best intentions (reducing server load for instance), it's still wrong--just as it's wrong to commit a crime even with the best intentions.

I really can`t imagine Google getting permission from every website owner on the internet and thats basically what they do.Thats what the robots.txt file is normally for but nobody has to comply with that.Its the responsibility of the guy that runs the site to secure it if he cant do that he has no reason to be in this business.And yes doing a job you are not qualified for will cost you no matter what job it is.

Lets say -just for the matter of argument- that I sell legitimately movies from some Studio for download on the web.
If I link the downloads so people can get there without paying and the goods get downloaded the studio would come after me not the people that downloaded the movies for the cash.
If it is deemed criminal by the downloader would likely depend on local laws - unethical? - sure;but ethics are for suckers in the real world.

In most countries the insurance won`t pay if your car is stolen when you leave it unlocked with the keys in the ignition but the guy who stole it will still be prosecuted -that seems to be a pretty similar situation.

No, Google certainly isn't getting permission from every website owner. The fact remains, however, that copyright protects a creator's interests in controlling the distribution of the work/content. If the creator does not wish to distribute the work except to a subset of the public (paying customers for instance), copyright law protects the creator's interests regardless of whether the content was effectively secured or not--this goes back to the example of leaving a car unlocked. If the car is stolen, it certainly does not mean the thief avoids prosecution because the car was left unlocked. That means Google is allowed to use its spiders to crawl through websites for public content (content the website owner intends everyone to see), but no more. If the website owner discovers Google has cached non-public content, making it freely available to the public, Google is liable for infringement.

The response is typically, "if the content's not secured, how can Google know what not to cache?" The simple answer is: Google can't know without human inspection. The logical follow-up is "it's impossible for them to check every website for that kind of setup." That may be true, but tough luck. That's a problem with running the type of service Google has chosen to provide. The law doesn't grant a free pass when conforming with the law is difficult/impractical. If it's impractical/impossible to provide the chosen service without breaking the law, then that business or individual can do one of three things: (1) Stop providing the service altogether (2) Expend time and effort to develop a new way of providing the service that conforms with the law or (3) Save up cash to deal with the eventual lawsuit.

If Google gets slapped with a copyright infringement suit by a website owner, I'm sure they have an effective solution: blacklist any and all websites belonging to that particular owner.

I'm not entirely sure where you're going with this, because I can't figure out who to analogize the insurance company with. Google would still be the infringer (equivalent to the car thief) while the website owner would still be copyright owner (equivalent to the car's owner). Whether insurance pays or not because the website was not secured has no effect on whether an infringement occurred.

Yes, they would come after you for one primary reason: practicality. They can't sue you for copyright infringement however, because you did not make unauthorized copies. They can sue you for negligence though--for failing to provide reasonable security to protect their works. Actually, now that I think about it, they might be able to go after you for copyright infringement as well. I don't recall the exact wording of the law, but it may be possible for liability to attach if one person makes it possible for another to infringe. Regardless, the Studio would have the option to sue the individual downloaders for infringement, but suing on a piecemeal basis would be costly and time-consuming.

And I certainly hope you were joking about the "suckers" thing--otherwise, I was just insulted!

Maybe a better analogy is needed. If I "replicate" the ring it apparently doesn't cost the shop owner anything. But with internet content, the site presumably pays for bandwidth costs. If they don't someone else does. So it has the same issues with IP as p2p, with the additional cost of the bandwidth used to download the content.