Let’s say I send bits of data of someone else’s bank account username and password and transfer money to my account. Nothing physical has been taken has it?
If someone sends me bits of inside information about a company and I use that to buy or sell stock, is that wrong?
Concepts don’t automatically change because things happen “on the internet”.
Re: stealing money from homebanking and inside info.
I don't think either of these examples are analogous to what is going on. And even if they did, they are already regulated on specific jurisdictions (not worlwide though). The web is global. WSJ doesn't have to serve to a global audience. It is possible to have global regulation, but I'm not sure it's productive/intelligent to regulate how the technology works worldwide (ie. Regulate what links you can click and which ones you can't. Or regulate the legatity of source code of extension in this example). These are technological problems and should be solved by technology. In my view, they will be solved by technology before any regulation could be in place.
You can trade based on inside information and steal money from anywhere to.
Yes, the paywall is sloppy security. But if the bank had sloppy security and you found scripts on the internet that allowed you to steal passwords, would it be okay to use them?
But closer to this post, what if the extension relied on data breaches and anytime you went to one of the supported sites, it looked up one of the stolen login credentials to let you log in. Would you be okay with that?
> Concepts don’t automatically change because things happen “on the internet”.
There's no magic to the web: it is and always been pages you can access by knowing or finding urls. It's up to servers to decide how to serve things.
I'd propose a better analogy to what publishers are doing on the web: they are renting public billboards, posting contents on them and somehow wanting people to close their eyes or pay to look at them. This is what most (but not all) web is today.
And it doesn't have to be that way. Web3 is hinting at a different world. Not saying it's a better or perfect world but in theory it is one where content owners have more control over who/how they distribute content to.
There's no magic to the web: it is and always been pages you can access by knowing or finding urls. It's up to servers to decide how to serve things.
If that’s the case can I have your bank account user name and password so I can access that over the web? If you don’t want to give it to me, are you okay if I find your login information from one of the data breaches? I promise I won’t break into your house, I’ll just use it to transfer some bits....
Yeah, it's strange people think shoplifting is a moral way to protest. It's not. Boycotting is.