“Hmm… you know, this shareware author isn’t pricing his stuff right. I think I’ll just hack his software and not pay.”

“Geez, I can’t believe that pianist is charging $20 to see his performance! What a rip. I’ll just sneak in the back.”

Or, closer to home,

“What a pain in the ass all these site registrations are! Sure, these companies are spending millions making content available to me for free, but screw ‘em… I’ll use bugmenot.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Just because you may not like the terms for a particular product or service (or the terms are, frankly, indeed fubar’d) doesn’t give you the right (legally or, IMHO, morally) to use that product or service and ignore the terms. Don’t like the terms? Don’t use the product or service. Simple as that.

I completely agree that Google *should* be embracing RSS and Atom more fully, and in fact, I spoke personally with one of the Google News folks last week and urged them to do so.

But the bottom line is that it’s Google’s bandwidth, it’s Google’s engineering resources, and so on. Violating their terms is rude and counterproductive. Want them to embrace RSS and Atom more? Start a petition, fly a plane-with-banner over the Googleplex, etc. etc. etc. But quit the ‘civil disobedience’ crap. This ain’t a matter of civil rights or life and death

Sorry, just a trifle testy this morning