The way I see it, if they beam a signal through my house, I should be allowed to "read" it if I want to. If they don't want me to tune into their signal, don't beam it through my house!
I know for a fact that back in the days of garage-sized dishes, two people I know (their parents, actually) got hit with suits against them and my friend's parents ended up paying a settlement fee to them.
I'm all for the "you put it out there, I should be able to use it" argument, but the way it's legally looked at is that it IS out there, it is NOT beamed "through your house" (I know, you may mean something different, but that's irrelevant to the main point, just using it as an example, is all

), it must be "CAPTURED" through some means. By "capturing" the signal, you are "subscribing" to their service which requires payment to them for some reason, be it hardware, or the programming, whatever they want to scheme up to get your money.
While I DO NOT fault you for wanting to do something like this, according to the law, it IS stealing. To take the argument to ridiculous extremes for the sake of illustration, if someone leaned their bicycle against your fence and left it there overnight, you do not have the right to take it just because "you used MY fence, therefore, I am allowed to do whatever I want with MY "bike rack"".
People already have hacked sattelite cards for the recievers they have in their house. Does that mean it's legal for them to use the equipment "I paid for" to get the NFL ticket for free? Of course not!
Kinda ironic to be talking about the legalities of something, seeing as how the general population of mamers are doing something illegal, but....meh!
The men in blue still give you a set of shiny silver bracelets for it, and a free ride!

People