What Oneman said, pretty much.

LoveGravy, you are clearly in some serious dudgeon way out in space. Did I say I was organizing any Starbucks protest? I don't go there myself -- I like my local cafe much better. I'm talking with *you*, about your idea that private property rights trump every single other matter. Read more closely, for crying out loud.

I'm talking about what people in the US have the right to do -- and maybe they do in Hong Kong too, for all I know -- which is peaceably assemble and complain. Even about something stupid. I'm not organizing the protest, man, get a hold of yourself. I'm saying that customers and companies are on a more equal footing than you care to believe, if the customers choose that path.

Yes, no matter how stupid you think it is, people have the right to start complaining to the management IN ANY WAY UP TO AND INCLUDING STARTING A PROTEST. Yes, they take the consquences, but they still have the right. You act as though saying "and then you'll get arrested for trespassing" stops the conversation. Maybe some people would, for whatever quixotic reason, choose to get arrested over this. So what? What's your point? Is doing so stupid? Probably, in this case. Is it their right to do so? Unquestionably!

In your anger you seem to have stopped drawing any distinction between rule-breaking as protest -- up to and including civil disobedience, though I have trouble imagining a die-in at a Starbucks over this -- and rule-breaking because someone's a thoughtless or evil moron. But that distinction still exists.

I decline your attempt to muddy the waters by positing yourself as a rude fellow doing bad things to me personally and saying, "How 'bout *those* rules, huh, buddy, how about *those* rules?" You're setting up a straw man, and I'm not going to light that straw man on fire.

As far as how you tell when someone's practicing industrial espionage, you use your head, just as was described in your original quoted material. (I pointed this out when you asked me the first time.) And, as Oneman also said, if anyone wants to take pictures of a Starbucks innards, all they have to do is stand up against the plate-glass windows. If they want to be surreptitious about it, all they have to do is cut a hole in a briefcase and push the camera hole up against the window.

Crikey.