Originally Posted by foreverwar

If your neighbour had a cordless phone, and you set up a handset on the same frequency, and made calls through his base-station, would that be stealing?

You appear to be confusing physical entities with non-physical; if your neighbour was having a barbie, you are perfectly entitled to enjoy the aroma of the incinerating flesh, but it would be a bit OTT to reach over and take a steak/sausage/tofu burger, which is what anyone who uses their neighbour's broadband is doing, as it is being routed through their neighbour's modem on their neighbour's property, using the bandwidth the neighbour paid for.

Theft is theft - be it burgers, jewellery, bandwidth, or intellectual property. If you are going to do it, just do it - don't try to justify it with specious reasoning.

Aren't metaphors wonderful (and often so misleading ).