Renegade Knight

That's your solution. It doesn't have to be a lot. I had one cacher who hid one that would respond to the sound a cacher made when searching. I doubt he spent much on the entire project. Likely adapted a cheap toy to a cache. Using a cheap "responds to noise" toy you can eastly adapt a flashing LED, or leave the noise maker intact. Your cache might sound like little mermaid, or the singing fish that you picked up at a garage sale, but does that part matter?

This matches my experience. After a couple of months I generally need to recharge them as capacity is down enough to notice.

Very nice.

The defense to larceny in New York is a claim of right, which depends on who is the legal owner of the property in question. The anti-caching people equate caching with littering, ... Keeping it simple. You got it right when it comes to abandoned property. It's a land owner function and not so much random folks. Litter by most laws I've read is defined by the intent to discard which a cache clearly isn't discarded. A land owner can (and they have) invoke the abandoned property rules to get rid of a cache, or to cite why they don't want them. Joe AntiCacher can't so they go for "litter" but caches don't fit the defintion of the various litter laws I've read. I don't think the ownership of a cache has been tested in court, but there are laws on the books (Keep in mind I was working with an Attorny on a similar issue here) that do cover caches and which can be used to presecute. At the time I had an Attorney cache a LEO cacher both working on this. Then we had a murder and the department resources were focused on the higher crime. After that it was never revisited. Ignoring all of that. I flat out claim to own my cache. Most of us do. Most of the rest of us recognize who owns a cache. You can find the owner of a cache quite simply. It's listed on the cache page. There is perhaps more legal claim to be made for a cache and more public records of ownership than most peronsal property out there for which we would not be having the debate.

I own my caches. No question. It is as simple as that. People keep questioning it because they can't get their mind around the concept that personal property doesn't have to be in your own yard, or on your person. That people keep asking doesn’t change the reality of ownership. So to reverse the question. Do you have any doubt that taking a field instrument used by Fish and Game on non fish and game lands would be theft? Would it change if they spent as much on that as we do on a cheap cache? No. The only thing that does change is the level of effort the property owner (and often the police) put into dealing with theft.

Abandoned property laws allow land owners to deal with personal property left behind by people. The park service (or whoever) has to follow a prescribed process. I haven't read any variation of abandoned property laws that don't have a process (which if you don't follow it's not considred abandeoned) or where a person other than the land owner can make the call. Especially when there is active evidence that the property isn't abandoned. It's an angle but it would be a short lived one.

Definitive answers have been provided. People believing them is another thing. I have no reason to doubt the advice given to my by the Assistant US District attorney in my area. Stealing caches is against the law. He was willing to work with police and cite specific laws they could use. Short of going to court, or paying an attorney to write up a legal opinion, you really can't get a better answer. If this actually does get prosecuted we will have the first real test that goes beyond citing laws that could be used.

Kind, loving, and forgiving, is different than enforcing laws that someone should respect. If you do care for someone you actually wouldn't allow them to do wrong things and they did would make it worth their while to do it right next time around. It's where "spare the rod, spoil the child" comes from. It isn't actually easy to be kind, loving, and forgiving towards your maggot, but that's how you are supposed to go about it even as you prosecute them. Edit: Added 2nd post on topic to quote: Your point is taken. Any one cache is essentially a 'nothing'. Somewhere between one and hundreds you cross over the line into felony. More importantly though, I don't mind if a cache is muggled by someone who doesn't know any better. There is no malice in their intent. When their is malice in the intent I'd be plenty happy to nip that crap in the bud with the first cache. I trust the judge to sort out the random doof from the guy with the black heart who hates his fellow man.

There is (or was) a similarly persistent cache thief working part of Idaho. Every year the guy rises from the unsavory depths and works hard to put a new spin on his maggotry. We have learned to torment him, and ignore him at turns. The one is fun for us as he does react. The other isn't fun for him because it's like boiling a frog in water from, the frog grows used to the heat as it rises and doesnt' react. Our maggots new and fresh is merely a variation on an old theme that just doesn't get us worked up anymore. He's a technical type. Maybe even an engineer.

The question is what the definition of abandoned is. I say that a cache is not abandoned it is cached. Thus the name geocache. But that is just my opinion and I do not set legal precedent. First, thank you for posting this. You made my day. Caches can fit the defintion of abandoned property, save for the simple fact that they are not abandoned. They don't meet the spirit and intent. Ignoring that, I worked with an Assitant US District Attorney when we were having issues and he was ready and willing to cite the laws the police would need to make a charge stick. This isn't a felony, so it won't have priority in the system, but it's still against the law. Maybe we will get lucky and get some follow up on his side of the story, plus the final outcome. I swear the engineer types are the worst.

Has to be mentioned, we just pummeled the stuffing out of this rather dead horse in another thread. Groundspeak isn't going to comment here, and they sure aren't going to bow down to your requests for "Someone from Groundspeak". They almost completely ignored a near riot with a bunch of cachers threatening to cancel their premium memberships and quit caching and such. This thread should probably be moved over into that one by the PTB. I slogged through half that thread and never actually saw what the program did that caused the ban due to the TOS. Of course deleting all mention of it didn't help figure out what the real problem was. This thread is fine. The OP wants to know what they can and can't do. They have taken the right steps and the only problm is they don't know who to contact at Groundspeak to ask the question so they came to the forum.

That is one big assumption on your part! Funny, we always thought that was the number one job of a reviewer! Geology drives urban development as well as the location of urban centers. That really isn't an assumption so much as simple fact. Then we pave it up and slab it over making it hard to find examples of much of anything. I think cezanne has a good grasp of this. Quality has nothing whatsoever to do with a list of criteria. It's a subjective measure that can't be quantified while the other items can at least be somewhat nailed down to a checklist.

WinMo "7" is on the horizon. It makes a large leap from the WinMo of old. I suspect they cut out a lot features and power of the mobile OS. If the leap is big enough the old WinMo apps will be broken and as the best of them (that i used, there could and likely are others) are no longer supported or updated. There is likely room in 7 for your efforts even if they are PQ based. I'm not sure what the android app developers do but I'm messing with 4 applications that work with this site or pocket queries. Some of them have you log into this site. Some of them work with PQ's and some of them seem to do both. You could contact them and see how they work their magic in getting the data that make it all possible. As for me as a user, I'm not sure it matters who developes my interface with the website. Chrome, Opera, Firevox, Safari, IE 6,7,8 or even Netscape... All are merely programs that let you access your account. I'm hard pressed to see why you can't use that angle to let WinMo users access their accounts, PQ's and look things up and export the information we already export into maps and such. You wouldn't be doing it. Just providing a tool.

A few years before these screens were on GPS units I had a touch screen PDA. That had a transflective screen that worked far better than what I'm seeing on the newer GPS units. So you can imagine that I would have thought they could at least do as good as older tech. Maybe not.

I didn't say anything about denying anyone a "found it" log. As far as I'm concerned, if a person finds the cache they have every right to log it as found whether they trade an item or not. I realize the cache would require the same amount of maintenance as any other and simply suggest that if an item left doesn't meet the cache guidelines, I would remove it and place it in a more relative cache. I also agree that not everyone would "play by the rules". That is something that I, as the CO, would have to deal with. As I said, this is exploratory at the moment and if the negatives outweigh the positives then I won't do it. Thought it would be a nice approach though. Your good to go. Your clarification says that your willing to do the work to keep the them pure, and that a find is separate from the theme. Some will enjoy the theme. Most will just log and move on to the next cache. Good luck.

I've eard this but never like seeing a forced solution in the form of a crappy multi (Can you tell I don't like them?) when a far better solution exists. Were I traveling to this town I'd miss out on a good cache because I filter out multi's because I may not have time to finish and may never get back to do so. Multi caches have a place but that place isn't as a solution to an artificial problem.

First, email Keystone directl and ask. There are exceptions to the 528' rule and since the rule is about saturation, and not so much what you describe there is some room to work and failing that since it's a good idea he can even champion the higher powers who decide exceptions. The other part of the puzzle is making the GPS integral to the hunt. Clues are fine, but the start location would then have to be found with the GPS, but I'm fuzzy on that. Lastly if you fail in your quest, it doesn't change that it's still worthy. You can list caches that qualify here on GC.com and caches that this site chose not to publish on another site. Some caches deserve to live in spite of guidlines that get in the way. Good luck.

Perfect ending. If he had asked, the best course is to tell them exactly what you were doing. Then next time maybe they can ask the next cacher "find it?". Plus Leo's in caching is a good thing. Of the forum Leo's that I know about, I can honestly say that I respect each one.

I've thought about this. I'd create a system to archive caches and user names. They would be a separate database from the active caches. That would allow the reclying of names over time. Long periods of time true, but there is a lot of history in the logs and caches worth preserving.

Oh I know, and I like that idea. I have heard of caches where the premise was 'take a container, hide it, and you can log your find when your cache is published,' and those were a bit questionable. Now, of course, they're not allowed. I did one 7 years ago. It worked out very well. Another in my area did the same concept with an Event and gave out caches and made it into a contest to see who could place the best caches with the containers. That worked out well. My area went from a geocaching backwater to a regional powerhouse in spite of or because of a derth of micros. They did work in some cases and work well. Others may have had different luck.

I don't recall the OP promoting bad caches? Did you read that into it?

Wise finders who are mindful of the cache owner would have a better result than others less wise. This has nothing to do with the tools, but a lot to do with being smart enough to use them well.

The coin is alive and well. The tracking number though has been placed into service separate from the coin. It would be a courtesy to call the tracking "Proxy" or some such thing so you have a clue that the coin itself isn't being used to track travels under the tracking number.

Bob had an angle. You need an angle if you are going to compete in the FTF arena. Next time don't wait for Bob to talk to George, talk to George first.

I just use my initials on those. RK, BS, DW. It all works.