Pirate Electrician Supplied Power To 1,500 Homes 373
fridaynightsmoke writes "A former electrical engineer for utility EDF has been prosecuted for illegally supplying power to some 1,500 homes in north London. Derek Brown, 45, was arrested in 2008 after being seen tampering with the electric grid in a manhole. He specialized in connecting separate supplies to houses that were split into apartments. One landlord involved, Haresh Parmar, was jailed for 9 months for stealing £30,000 worth of electricity for 22 of his apartments. Brown's assets will be seized and he has been sentenced to 8 months suspended, and 150 hours community service."
Re:Bad puns aside... (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe it was the landlord doing this, not the tenants who probably paid the landlord for utilities. And people will always want free stuff.
Re:freedom (Score:1, Insightful)
No, electricity wants to be *grounded*.
What it really wants is for the first 20 posts to be a bunch of stupid puns! Readers just love scrolling through "crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, yup more crap, crap, crap, lame attempt to be funny, crap, crap, crap, dumbass slashdot meme, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, stupid puns, crap, crap, crap, crap, hey look an interesting post!"
No Pirate, a Thief (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:freedom (Score:2, Insightful)
Dear Anonymous Coward, That is why most stupid, crap-spewing dumbasses post as Anonymous Coward.
Dear Pseudononymous Coward,
I am glad to see you personally demonstrate that every rule has an exception.
Re:freedom (Score:1, Insightful)
Dear mwvdlee,
Apparently not only the ACs are crap-spewing dumasses...great post. I guess maybe it's a square-rhombus situation...All ACs are crap spewing dumbasses but not all crap-spewing dumasses are ACs? Thanks for providing me with a real thinking for this weak.
Yours truly,
Another AC
Re:British Power Supply (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not piracy (Score:1, Insightful)
This is not piracy, its actual theft.
If you pirate a song, a computer program or a movie, you are merely making an unauthorized copy. You can't do that with electricity. It still has to be generated by burning fossil fuels and adding to the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Re:Power should be free anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Roads/Schools/Libraries are classified as public goods, which the free market does not allocate very efficiently. That's why we use taxes to pay for them and provide them for everyone. I think the parent understands that they aren't "free" in the sense that you mean.
Go take an introductory macroeconomics class and then get back to us when you're slightly more educated. We really don't have the time or patience to deal with you until then.
See ? Another good use of DRM! (Score:3, Insightful)
.. They wouldn't have stolen it that fast when it had DRM!
(I can't believe I've said pro-DRM crap; my low-uid must be tarnished for life now!)
Re:No Pirate, a Thief (Score:4, Insightful)
Does that minus sign next to the story title do anything? I'm going to press it anyway.
Re:Logical disjunction? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to point out that this sort of thing is very common in third world countries. When it happens, it drives up prices for actual paying customers by making it exponentially more difficult for utilities to provide service and maintain infrastructure due to the uncompensated stress put on their systems. As the increased taxes and regulations of the modern socialist nanny state crushes entrepreneurship and throws ever larger numbers of people out of work and onto welfare, expect to see more of this as a harbinger of things to come.
Remember, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Re:This is not piracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Libertarian fantasy wank. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah I hate how high taxes and over regulation created those third world countries... oh wait they are almost universally libertarian fantasies in which even local policing is "outsourced" to "entrepreneurs".
This sort of Libertarian fantasy wank gets modded insightful?
P.S. The freedom crushing is being done at the behest of under-regulated corporate behemoths that can buy laws. Which is the end result of Libertarian fantasy wank.
Re:Libertarian fantasy wank. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing you just said there made any sense. The guy wasn't connecting taxes and regulation with third world countries, he was just remarking that in developing countries many people steal electricity, cable TV, and so forth. And it's true.
P.S. There's nothing libertarian about "buying laws". In a libertarian society, those with wealth wouldn't have the same opportunity to use it to buy coercive legislation over others that they do in the real world. A strong state tends to amplify the influence of the wealthy, not mitigate it.
Re:British Power Supply (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Libertarian fantasy wank. (Score:3, Insightful)
Those are not bribe, those are just people with money getting to the front of the line; which according to libertarians is how it should be.
\
Yeah, by default, 3rd world countries become the end result of libertarian bullshit. The people with money get what ever they want, regardless of the harm to others, and people without become slaves and live in a hell hole. Naturally people with money want to stay being the people with money, so they do what ever they can to ensure they stay on top. As has been shown for hundreds of year, this includes bulling possible competitor, making laws that favor you, and a variety of other uncivilized actions.
Look about to the turn of last century and the beginning of the industrial revolution. Yeah, not a lot of regulations. Basically a libertarian wet dream. Libertarian is only endorsed by corporation who stand to gain from less to no regulation and ignorant middle class people.
We did the ;ibertarian experiment, it failed as a reasonable choice for civilized people.
Let me explain how it actually works: (Score:4, Insightful)
Trickle-down: When an already wealthy entity receives money, it becomes more and more conservative with it. It invests it outside the core business (diversification) or it squirrels it away (hoarding), sometimes in the form of non-cash (art, land, etc.) What it doesn't do is turn around and shower that money on the workers, or the consumers, of the products it is currently selling. This trickle down idea is a myth, a myth started and maintained by those whose only goal is to collect as much of everyone else's money as possible.
Credit: The function of credit is to expand the gap between the wealthy and the poor, by transferring money from the poor to the wealthy. Here's how it works. At some interest rate, $100 is made available to the poor by the wealthy. The poor pays back $110. That $100 then is actually worth $90 to the poor, but $110 to the wealthy. At the end of the transaction, the wealthy have more money. The poor, however, have less, although they have $100 worth of goods, with a probable resale value of far less, should they try and exchange them for cash. It is worth noting that in general, they goods they purchase they also buy from the wealthy. The result of the credit process is a continuous transfer of money from the poor to the rich - never the other way, unless the debt repayment is defaulted, and even then, statistically speaking, this doesn't slow the process down much.
This is why the libertarian idea of corporate freedom is bunk. Corporations are not people; if we compare them honestly to persons, they're a lot more like psychopaths. No society that lets them run free can remain healthy; the US is one recent example; when unregulated, jobs are sent overseas, healthcare is not provided, products are not made to last, warranty and service are only given under profound duress, copy protection, software differentiation, IP hoarding and other anti-consumer practices become not just common, but the standard for behavior.
The libertarian outlook has major value in that area where it recognizes the liberties and freedoms of people, and says that government should have no authority there. When those freedoms are extended to corporations, the libertarian ideal turns immediately into a nightmare, one not all that unlike the one we're currently experiencing. Corporations are not people. They completely lack empathy, sympathy, compassion, courtesy, loyalty, and honor. They are, quite literally, psychopaths. Given the strengths of a legal person, they will act along the same lines of the worst criminals society has ever known. All the while smiling to your face.
Re:Libertarian fantasy wank. (Score:4, Insightful)
A strong state tends to amplify the influence of the wealthy, not mitigate it.
[reality check needed]
Let's take a case study:
US: A "weak" state in terms of taxes and regulation
Europe: Mostly "strong" states with more taxes and regulation
Where does wealth buy the most influence? The US. Sure, money talks in Europe too but not nearly as strongly. In fact, I would suggest that most of things that cause Americans to shout "Socialists!" are good for the masses, not the wealthy like universal health care, better unemployment/disability/retirement/whatever benefits, stronger consumer protection laws, stronger worker protection laws and so on. The wealthy could afford to buy it on their own and it'd probably be cheaper for them than the taxes they pay instead.
All of us have to deal with megacorporations even if we're not employed at them, many things have to be driven at a large industrial scale to be profitable today. They are the people that can and will screw you over because they're often a little oligarchy, sure they may push the customers around a little but in the end they can't leave the handful of companies that supply it. So you got burned by Intel and go AMD or burned by AMD and go Intel. And if you get burned by both? I suppose you might find a VIA board somewhere, but that's it.
They also supply many enough jobs that people will jump at them in a poor economy or even a not so poor one. The wealthy never have to deal with being a peon of an employee, the corporations run wild on behalf of their masters which are the wealthy ones we are talking about. You can pretend that "at will" is an equally strong tool in both directions but it's a lie, most companies can easily absorb losing an employee. Not so many employees can easily absorb losing their one and only job. Not to mention that in the US, your work is tied to your company health insurance.
The reason it seems like more laws means more laws written for the wealthy is because in the US the wealthy write the laws. Just FYI, that's not how it should work.
Re:Taxes: not magic, but not obvious, either (Score:4, Insightful)
So, if you pay 30% taxes, then you had to earn $142.85 to pay the plumber $100, for which you got less than $70 worth of services. In the end, $142 of your dollars bought something less than $70 worth of services.
But by your logic, I only had to do $100 of work to earn the $142.85 (you say the plumber does $70 of work for the $100). So there's no double dipping.