[schettj]

Is it theft of service though?

You pay for internet. It's not like ICS gets you access to internet if you don't pay for internet.

All it does is let you use that internet you pay for on a different bit of hardware.

I can browse and check email on my phone. I can do the same thing with my phone tethered to my laptop.

Sprint (for example) has a PAM plan, it has smart phones, and it used to have fairly dumb phones that could access the internet.

If you had a dumb phone and started using it tethered, you could conceivably use significantly more bandwidth then just using the phone itself. This was back in '00-06 range.

Today, with sprint tv freely included with every internet plan on every device capable of internet, its entirely possible to burn gigabytes of bandwidth right on your dumbphone just by watching sprint tv.

Likewise, with a smartphone, you can download massive files (I've got plenty of room here on my 4GB card, and download clients for every major protocol) and then move that card from your "phone" to your laptop.

So PAM remains as some weird appendix, mostly as a backup stick to be used to smack the truly insane should they run a porn distribution ring off their vision service (I can only assume...)

You're not stealing a service, you are violating your terms of service without PAM.

That is a different beast then warez (stealing software)

Bottom line (for sprint) if you buy a TP and plug it into a windows box, even *without* launching ICS, it will share the internet to the windows box. It does the same with a linux box (Ubuntu 8.10) - all STOCK, as SHIPPED.

Nothing hacked, nothing changed, nothing installed.

Sprint knows the same either way that you're doing it, and violating your TOS.

But is that the same as cracking (or downloading a cracked copy of) photoshop? Downloading some mp3 music? A TV show? a Movie? Nope. You'll be breaking a law for those. Violation of your TOS is between you and the service provider, not between you and a court of law.

No one ever has been legally found guilty in a court of law of violation of PAM TOS. They (maybe) have had their vision service or entire phone service revoked - that's the right of the service provider if you don't play by their rules.