[Don Joe]

I do believe that if someone puts something out on the internet, it is in the public domain and it is as good as freeware.

You might feel differently if it was YOUR information -- especially if you made your living creating intellectual property.

The fact that there are scumbag lawyers who abuse the fair use provision of copyright law does not mean that it's right to go to the other extreme.

There are concepts such as "baby" and "bathwater" to keep in mind.

But let's take your logic and run with it and see where it takes us.

* The fact that someone leaves his front door unlocked means that it's OK for me to enter his house and take whatever I like.

* The fact that someone leaves his keys in his car means that it's OK for me to take it for a drive.

* The fact that a farmer doesn't fence in his field means that it's OK for me to go and pick his tomatoes, corn, and so forth, and take it without paying him.

Well, we could keep on going in that direction, but frankly I don't really like where it's taking us.

So I'll conclude by saying that the fact that it's easy for someone to steal something does not mean that it's right for them to steal it.

[jonrick46]

The cable TV industry uses technology to keep people paying for pay-for-view movies rather than getting them free with cheater boxes. A photographer will put his logo on wedding proofs to prevent copies being made. In the computer world, one could have software to protect one's copy write material rather than stiff-arming someone who copied and pasted for resource material and had this raw material get inserted without citation into report.