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Originally Posted by geekmaster
It costs almost nothing to duplicate and share information.
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Almost nothing = something.
By contrast, if you shoplift physical books not headed for an additional printing, you may save the business community the cost of returning and pulping that book. So it often costs them
less than nothing if you take a physical book against the owners wishes, and yet this you, I gather, oppose.
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Doing something that actually COSTS somebody money, such as hacking 3G so amazon has to pay for your internet bandwidth, is definately stealing.
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Since the terms of the contract(s) between AT&T and Amazon are not, as far as I can tell, public, this is speculation. It may be a fixed cost multi-year contract.
As you can perhaps see, I don't think looking at the consequences of your acts provides a sufficient basis for morality, although it is part of it.
In the case of hacking the ads off a $79 Kindle, I'd not do it myself. My imperfections lie elsewhere. If hacking off ads is the worst thing some other person ever does, I'd still have a high opinion of them.