Hook,
I get your frustration, I really do. The vast majority of the people I've dealt with returning discs have been decent people and are either grateful to get their property back or simply don't want it back. However the people who expect you do to all the work, or are not grateful at all tend to be the ones you remember. Combining that with the holier than thou attitudes of Ru4por and others here makes it really hard to want to do the right thing sometimes. But at the end of the day it is the right thing. Someone here (big sky maybe?) has a solution that I adopted for a while. Just don't pick the disc up. In my mind that's a better way to handle things that assuming the guy who lost the disc is a bad guy and keeping him from finding his disc by chucking it in a pond or stream. The odds are that the next guy will keep the disc, but at least it's not on you.
Lol. I never thought of the attempt to simply do the right thing by others, opposed to struggling to find a loophole to benefit me, as holy in any terms.
I think the poster stating he no longer picks up lost disc, does so to avoid the hassle of returning other people property, not because he gets no reward or thanks. Nor because of any ethical dilemma. Honestly, I no longer put my name on discs, because I don't want the hassle of making others have to call and attempt to return. As usual with this debate, (re-hashed here dozens of times) there will be no consensus of opinion.