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As the other commenter said, "private company gets to deputize the state legal apparatus".

You could make that argument about almost any criminal statute where the victim is a corporation of some sort. Another way to describe it is "private company gets a mechanism to deter people from taking the value they create without paying for it."

Not all the value going over those lines is created by the cable company. In fact, very little of it is, and it can only exist on the vast majority of its path with taxpayer support.

So what? They still have fixed and variable costs for delivering their product. You don’t get to take it for free just because some other entity creates the content they deliver.

Point was, what should be a civil matter is a criminal matter instead. With jail.

I don’t see what that has to do with what the previous commenter said about the cable companies not creating “all the value” going over their lines.

In any case, in the United States, theft of service is generally treated as a criminal matter. I don’t see why this should be treated any differently, or how it would be fair to single cable companies out for exclusion from protection for having their service taken for free. Inn Keepers, other utility companies, and many other businesses enjoy the same or similar protections for their services.

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