Cable television piracy, a form of copyright infringement, is the act of obtaining unauthorized access to cable television services. In older analog cable systems, most cable channels were not encrypted and cable theft was often as easy as plugging a coaxial cable attached to the user's television into an apartment house cable distribution box (which often had no securing by a cable company employee such as a lock to prevent unauthorized access). In some rural areas nonsubscribers would even run long cables to distribution boxes on nearby utility poles.  Set-top boxes were required with some systems, but these were generic, and often in an unknowing violation of contract, former customers would donate them to thrift stores for sale or retain them indefinitely in storage when they ended their subscription to the service rather than return them to the provider.