Slashdot Mirror

There is a good example of how they are using the Noerr Pennington doctrine along with lots of other interesting related case material on Hackhu.com

There is a good example of how they are using the Noerr Pennington doctrine along with lots of other interesting related case material on Hackhu.com

Unless you want to risk being sued...

I mean, who, other than a pirate, would buy a couple hundred blank CDRs/DVDRs?

Learn your lesson from those who got sued by DirecTV because they merely bought something that could be used for an illegal purpose.

Want to get illegally sued and threatened to get dragged into court and explain how you used every last one of those blank CDRs/DVDRs you purchased?

Think I've been looking for black helicopters? Ask the aforementioned THOUSANDS of people who got sued if they could do it all over again if they would pay with a credit card again?

Don't leave a paper trail, electronic or otherwise.

Bottom line: If you are gonna use blank media for quasi-legal purposes, then be smart and do it via "cash and carry." Let some other poor slob get sued.

Suing Your Customers a Good Idea?

Dunno...ask DirecTV that question.

As scary sounding as the DMCA may be, copyright law is worse. Look at the penalties listed at the beginning of a movie in the FBI warning. Yet people copy movies all the time knowing there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting caught unless they're doing it on a large scale. It will be the same for DRM mod chips. A few guys will get busted selling them, but many people will use them undetected. This will be just like every other pointless and unsuccessful copyright scheme, easily defeated, inconveniencing legitimate customers, and having no effect on real piracy.

Yeach right...

Tell that to the over 14,000 lawsuits filed (over 24,000 people sued) by DirecTV for just buying smartcard readers on a small scale.

Anyone who buys one of these "DRM modchips" even if only for legal purposes in a traceable manner is either naive or a fool.

DirectTV was able to use CA's anti-SLAPP statute to have the case thrown out without a trial. Demand letters are protected communications, not extortion.

It is interesting how the roles are reversed here. Normally an anti-SLAPP law is used to protect an individual from a large corporation, but here it is needed to protect DirectTV's rights.

DirectTV was able to use CA's anti-SLAPP statute to have the case thrown out without a trial. Demand letters are protected communications, not extortion.

It is interesting how the roles are reversed here. Normally an anti-SLAPP law is used to protect an individual from a large corporation, but here it is needed to protect DirectTV's rights.

One group sued by DirectTV, counter-sued alleging extortion. The judge dismissed their case (Blanchard vs. DirectTV). The judge's reasoning was, in part:

As Plaintiffs explained during oral argument, their claims turn on the fact that DIRECTV's demand letters demand settlement sums. Plaintiffs contend these demands constitute extortion, First, no authority supports Plaintiffs' contention; case law does not hold that pre-litigation demand letters cannot demand settlement sums. Second, and significantly, DIRECTV's demand letters do not settlement and/or possible litigation. On calling the number, any caller can explain his or her situation. If he or she has not pirated DIRECTV services, DIRECTV does not request fees or pursue litigation. Accordingly, DIRECTV's written demand does not necessarily end in payment of fees or litigation. By demonstrating to DIRECTV that he or she did not steal DIRECTV services, any Plaintiff using pirating equipment in a "lawful" manner can avoid fees or litigation.

One group sued by DirectTV, counter-sued alleging extortion. The judge dismissed their case (Blanchard vs. DirectTV). The judge's reasoning was, in part:

As Plaintiffs explained during oral argument, their claims turn on the fact that DIRECTV's demand letters demand settlement sums. Plaintiffs contend these demands constitute extortion, First, no authority supports Plaintiffs' contention; case law does not hold that pre-litigation demand letters cannot demand settlement sums. Second, and significantly, DIRECTV's demand letters do not settlement and/or possible litigation. On calling the number, any caller can explain his or her situation. If he or she has not pirated DIRECTV services, DIRECTV does not request fees or pursue litigation. Accordingly, DIRECTV's written demand does not necessarily end in payment of fees or litigation. By demonstrating to DIRECTV that he or she did not steal DIRECTV services, any Plaintiff using pirating equipment in a "lawful" manner can avoid fees or litigation.

• DirecTV has shut down dealers. From the Great White North to Florida, DTV has sued and prosecuted anybody involved in selling programmed cards or smartcard equipment. (Often this equipment has many legitimate uses, but that is not a concern for them, is it now?) Dealers, wary of spending 20-30 years in prison for a victimless crime, turn over their customer lists as part of their settlement. Which brings me to my next point:
• DirecTV has sued end-users. You can see them brag about it here. They presume guilt and ask the end-users of perfectly legitimate smartcard equipment to pony up $4000 or risk being sued in Federal court. The vast majority of these users, lacking backbone, settle. This makes a lot of money for DTV and allows them to expend even greater amounts of resources suing more innocent end users.
• DirecTV has shut down informational sites. Starting with blatantly money-grubbing sites like decodernews.com (which sold subscriptions for hacking software) and progressing to the milder sites like hitecsat.com, they have stemmed the flow of information on conditional access technology. Their goal is to squelch all public discussion of smartcard technology and to keep the populace ignorant of how these systems work.
• DirecTV has introduced two unhackable access cards. They have introduced a P4 card and a "P4.5" card, neither of which are vulnerable to any of the security holes that were exploited in their P3, P2, and P1 cards. The P3 was an exceptionally strong card, protected with encrypted ROM, encrypted EEPROM, encrypted RAM, an ASIC designed by Ron Rivest (of the RSA fame) with 256-bit stream ciphers, and strong physical security. The P4 is proving to be even more invincible than any other access card in existence; disassemblies posted at dssunderground.com point to the use of 3072-bit Diffie-Hellman private keys and dozens of booby traps hidden in the code. It may be virtually impossible to develop a commercially viable crack for the P4 and P4.5. Since the P3s are scheduled to be swapped out by the end of August, a lot of pirate TVs will be going dark very soon.
• DirecTV is introducing new receivers. These new receivers (which are denoted by an "RID" number on the box) are specifically designed to detect hack attempts and to notify DTV of any anomalies. For instance, hackers attempt to "emulate" an access card with a PC, by setting the card slot serial baud rate to 19200bps instead of the usual 57600bps, to compensate for latencies introduced by the software. These new receivers detect this change and "flag" it as abnormal; DTV can detect this condition and send a technician to "check" on the setup, just as cable companies do when they see an unfiltered pirate box on the line.

A site that DirecTV took over, www.hackhu.com better explains their intensions. Infact, DirecTV has take about 100 sites and made them anti-hacking sites like the one above.

As a follow-up to my own comment, HackHU.com was another very popular site whose domain name DirecTV claimed. If you check this page at HackHU.com, you'll see list of many more hacking sites that DirecTV took

In case others didn't know, DTV (aka Dave) recently shutdown 63 dealer sites in a huge bust. You can check out their own enforcement page at hackhu.com (a former info site). They are also suing end-users at an alarming rate based ONLY on shipping records for standard ISO smartcard devices. It has actually gotten pretty out of control with intimidation letters and complaints in the amount of $10,000. Lots of people don't even know they've been sued (many people have moved in the 2 years it's taken DTV to sue them). People are getting default judgements against them for the full amount request by DTV. Florida has been particularly hit hard with THOUSANDS of cases. I urge everyone to stay informed about this, because once again, they use the veil of the DMCA as justification for their efforts. Some of these people are being sued for buying a completely legitamate ISO7816 device that can be used for millions of other things than just DTV hacking. Check out http://www.legal-rights.org/ for more info on DTV legal info. I also have a forum section dedicated to the DTV legal battles with up to date lists of who has been sued and in what state. There is no discussion of hacking there.

forums.wumarkus.com

To anyone who has received an intimidation letter or summons, GOOD LUCK!

I have two suggestions (or three depending on how you look at them), based on recent experiences.

One is legal, the other isn't quite (unless you're in Canada)

1) TiVo: As has been discussed quite often on here, the TiVo is a fun little toy that you can get for ~$200 at your local electronics megastore. It's a linux box inside, and you can do lots with it (drop it to shell, add additional hard drives, install Ethernet (TiVoNet) and stream stored MPEG files to your other PCs on a LAN, etc.). Check out these links for more info:

http://www.tivofaq.com/hack/
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=TiVo

2) DirecTV. This is slightly shady, but still loads of fun. There's a large community of people out there (mostly in Canada, where they don't sell DirecTV service so they're forced to hack it) who spend inordinate amounts of time learning about the DirecTV datastream and how to do crazy things with it. For ~$400, you can get a complete setup tha includes an 'Emulator' that allows you to unlock all channels. The more interesting part is how emulators work (they involve having a Pentium-class PC emulate some functions of the DirecTV access card).

For $80 (for the dish and IRD) + $300 (for an H-Card, emulator hardware, and a cheap $30 emulator PC from eBay) you can have the whole thing, wires, bare circuit boards and all, sitting in your living room. Check these:

http://www.hackhu.com/
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=DirecTV

3) This is the hybrid: There's a box out there called a DirecTiVo that combines a TiVo and a DirecTV box (hence the name). If you wish, you can combine these two hacks into one piece of hardware (DirecTiVo boxes support both TiVo tinkering and DirecTV emulation). Neat-o.

--noah

http://www.hackhu.com is gone. Actually, even their goodbye message is gone now. They said they were folding because of the threat of DirecTV hounding them into the ground. It was *the* source for great information on the DirecTV war.

I can see DirecTV 'going through the motions' trying to scare subscribers. I can also see them actually prosecuting a handful of little people just to put up a good front. But I really don't see them nailing the end user. Just scaring the bejezus out of most of them into, 'Gee. Should I subscribe to this site that has the latest emulator code? DirecTV might get my subscription information and go after me!'

Gee. I submitted a story, only about it being System Administrator Appreciation Day. Rejected. About HackHU giving into the threat of legal action and going down. Rejected.

And this piece of crap story makes it through?!?

I beg to differ. Previously, you could hack DirecTV recievers simply with modified cards. They might be expensive, however, it was quite simple to do once you got the card - no time, only money. Shell out a couple hundred bucks, stick in the card, you get instant "free" access.

Now, with DirecTV's incredible, unbelieveable, insanely cool counter-hacking campaign (read all about it), they have brought it to the point where in order to hack DirecTV, you must buy several pieces of custom hardware (card-readers, emulators), find an old computer, set it up next to your DirecTV receiver, connect them all up, install software (possibly including Linux, and installing Linux is still out of the reach of your normal DirecTV watcher), have an always-on broadband internet connection, and actively monitor sites like HackHU.com in case DirecTV starts hax0ring again.

DirecTV has essentially won. The cost of an emulator+PC+Linux+always on broadband connection might still be less than the rare hacked cards (which don't even work anymore), but it requires lots and lots of *time* and *effort*, both to set up and maintain. Only the most dedicated hax0rs will continue to pirate the signal, while the rest of the world decides it isn't worth the effort anymore and just pays the monthly fee. The cost of pirating DirecTV might have just decreased in monetary terms, but it has gotten *much* more expensive in terms of time and effort, to the point where it just isn't worth it anymore for most people. And "most people" is all DirecTV cares about.

This is a site dealing with DirecTV hacking. Some of the stories are lame. But others are quite compelling?

Why? It documents the back-and-forth battle between DirecTV and hackers. Live. And it consistantly gives a very thorough and understandable explanation of what is going on. A good example is this story:

We're Ready -- 06/13/01.

Scroll around and ready some of the stuff, and some of the archives. There is some good material in there. Even if the site isn't quite 'above board'.

Worse, the MPAA fervently fights the DeCSS, while there's little actual harm, and little potential harm (how much does illegal copies of video tapes hurt the motion picture industry?). From the article:

Actual harm, the judge asked? "Yes. Actual harm," he replied. "Well, actual threat of harm." That got a laugh from the audience,...

Yet, the MPAA does nearly nothing about theft of DSS satellite signals -- which could be shown to decrease actual royalty revenues. Not potential, but actual.

I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, but it seems to me the MPAA's fervor is misplaced, if you take their arguments at face value, and therefore: they must have some other underlying vendetta against Open Source.

eh. do a little looking into and get free porn all the time on your TV. Amen.

For all the time and effort spent into developing a hack for DSS, they could buy a thousand subscriptions to the service...that said, I always find the disclaimers on these sites amusing:

You understand that www.HackHu.com does not promote nor condone signal theft of any kind and you do not hold www.HackHu.com responsible for the actions of any of their users as it is the users' responsibility to comply with all local and State laws of their territory and country.

This site is for educational and informational purposes ONLY. It is not our intention to assist you in committing fraud or performing any illegal acts

The news page mentions how much traffic the site will be getting this month. I'm sure everyone who's downloading these programs are using them completely lawfully. Yeah, right. Ah well, I bet the site just loves these /.s they've been getting recently. I'm a bit surprised they don't make enough in advertising to have to ask for PayPal donations (or maybe they really don't need them, and are just looking to feed themselves).

It appears that hackers are now considering a piece of hardware that sits between the DSS receiver and the smart card. It would emulate the damaged area of memory and, presumably, prevent that area from being written to again. You didn't really think the game was over, did you?

see this