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DirecTV to Pursue Pirates
Trinity-Infinity writes "This story from CNNfn details DirecTV's & Hughes Electronics' plans to eliminate the piracy of their signals through a direct-mail campaign. Their source for creating their list of who to mail letters to? Searching bootlegging operations the feds have already busted. It is interesting that as many as 1 million people may be pirating, in comparison to DirecTV's 10 million paying customers." Ya know, I really want to pirate DirecTV, but not to get all the channels... just to get a damn FOX affiliate over my dish so I could use my DirecTivo for The Family Guy and That 70s Show. Is that to much to ask? I already pay for HBO and Sci-Fi channel. Anyway, there's definitely going to be a lot more cracking down on pirated dish stuff: they are getting crazy with the protective measures.
Actually, the cable and dish situations are not quite the same. Dish has shitloads of channel space and probably actually wants to carry the extra channels because specialized channels gains them viewers. Cable operates under a federal law which gives local broadcasters the right to control retransmission -- the cable guys used to be able to put up an antenna and rebroadcast for free, but now are subject to the demands of the networks and their local represenatives. These guys are using the main networks (ABC, ESPN) as leverage to claim scarce channel space (so ESPN3 gets carried instead of Bravo or something).
As mentioned, the reason is revenue sharing... I believe however, that channels would be forced to put on better programming if companies such as DirecTV, cable company, DishNet, etc. offered channels a la cart ... if they can't put decent programming on that people want to watch... the channel will go away... and what is left behind is decent programming people are willing to watch.
Not to mention on top of paying for cable or satellite service we have to watch commercials as well. DirecTV service was better when it was seperated into USSB (movies) and DirecTV (network channels, etc.)
I've given up watching network channels (channels with commercials) ... I'm willing to pay for channels without interruption and with the article yesterday about Tivo I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one... however we're getting stuck with packages that have'em and companies working to force commercials down our throats with no workaround.
I have heard of the same pricing in TV markets in general. For example, for a station to carry the Oprah show, they will have to carry other lame shows by contract to increase their exposure.
I'm sure the Direct TV people are just continuing the tradition.
Your password has expired, please login to change it.
For God's sake, get a life.
Anyone who wastes their life watching a passive medium like TV deserves to have their arse kicked anyway -- whether they're paying for the service or not.
Come on guys, life's too short -- don't waste your time watching -- get out and start doing!
TV is for people who don't have lives of their own -- surely that can't be anyone who uses /. ???
>I write code
Careful where you say that, dude. There are some countries where they put people in jail for doing that sorta shit...
Hmm... we've already got the lyrics to that DeCSS song deemed a circumvention device, on the grounds that a posessor of a brain might understand it and subsequently write code based on it.
I wonder how far the MPAA is from going all the way - deeming "a brain" as a circumvention device, and criminalize posession thereof.
Besides, there's probably no greater threat to the mainstream media industry than people who prefer learning, coding, or reading books than watching movies and TV.
Only brainholders crack software! Brains are circumvention devices! Write your Congressman and demand that he get on-side and endorse the "Anencephalitics' Declaration of Universal Rights" We must Criminalize Encephaly Now!, if for no other reason than to ensure a bright future for all our beloved actors, actresses, directors, newsmakers, congressmen, senators, direct marketers, and of course, for the children!
Seriously, many subscribers don't have a real choice. Of the people I know that use DirecTV, they do so because they either can't get cable where they live, or get AOL/TW cable. They could always just not watch TV, I guess, but I think that's a a seditous act.
Carl G. Jung
--
"With one breath, with one flow, You will know Synchronicity" -La Policia
I have a DISH Networks Dish 500, I get all the broadcast networks including 3 Fox 1 UPN and 2 WB channels, along with the NBC, ABC, CBS, ect. When you order ask for the "superstation" channels, this is where the UPN and WB channels are. I got a PVR too with the system, along with 3 recevers...
Perhaps the eminenet domain theory could be applied to direct tv making the channels available for a reasonable cost on a per channel basis?
As for buying a little government, I think their fear is more with other megacorps than a government regulation.
(Oh, CBS as well. Sorry.)
I don't see why they wouldn't, as I have a couple of the E/W packages with my DTV. (I also subscribe to local channels.)
I believe they consider the E/W packages outdated, though...
Do you like German cars?
> Next thing you'll be telling me is that this is all "ironic."
No: I guess one of your guys would call it fascism.
FBI has the same right to monitor Chinese military radio as I (who am not a USA citizen) have the rights to monitor your ???whatever???'s private phone calls. If I can, and they don't catch me, it's OK.
You CAN get local network affiliates on DirecTV now. Although I think they should be free, I believe they are $2.99/month. A lot cheaper than a pirated card...
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
Actually, I don't think the DMCA can even apply to this. Nobody is copying the signal, it's being broadcast onto my property whether I like it or not.
Access device -> Smart Card
Circumventing access device -> violation of DMCA
I wonder how far the MPAA is from going all the way - deeming "a brain" as a circumvention device, and criminalize posession thereof.
Well, the DMCA does not say anything about mere "possession", and only covers devices "primarily" for circumvention, anyway. Read the DMCA some time. It's really hard to be for copyright but against the DMCA.
I know you're joking, but I really think that attacking the DMCA is going to get us nowhere. Even if it is deemed unconstitutional, there is no doubt that it'll just be changed slightly to close the loopholes and reinstated. The DMCA merely tries to enforce a law which most of the country already breaks, by closing some loopholes that some unscrupulous individuals have used to get around it.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
it is MY SIGNAL to do with AS I PLEASE. This precedent has been to court and stood up in 3 states that I know of. This is the gist of an FCC ruling in the 70's, sorry no real details. I am quit sure the sat. companies disagree but until they can figure out how to get past my cut-out, they can't even burn my HU card out, much less find my address. Maybe they should contact the BSA, and work with them for a more Threatening and Sinister campaign designed to produce results.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Last time I checked, my direct tv has NOT cut out the comercials. So why the FUCK should I pay for it? Take out ALL the ads, I will pay for it.
The rates can't be too high and the content can't be too crappy... because otherwise 10 million people wouldn't pay for it. There's always land-line cable. I don't know about you, but I don't (voluntarily) pay for things I don't like.
Developers: We can use your help.
Because not enough people would pay for Outdoor Life Network, or other channels with smaller targets. It's a form of Revenue Sharing, the people paying for ESPN are helping support 24 hour Lawn & Gardening.
"You want our standard CATV package plus internet, sir?"
"No, I just want the cablemodem."
After the install, I plugged a TV into the cable and found I had 75 channels of stuff tere.
Hey, I didn't ask for it. They're giving it to me. I don't have to pay for it nor tell them about their mistakes.
>People generally only get DirecTV for a couple of channels they wouldn't otherwise be able to get in their area.
Too bad this cannot be true, since most of the non-cable channels tend to require huge package purchases.
In México Direct TV is really cheap. I pay about 10 dollars for the montly service. You can also choose to pay a yearly fee including Payperview. Since payperview is no popular in mexico. What I did was buy a receiver in mexico then I brought it to usa. I use the address of my grandma who lives in mexico. I also left money for her to pay the bill. There is also another company called Sky TV wich is more popular, and carries more Mexican chanels.
> Huh?
> Doesn't sound like very business friendly an attitude.
and you are saying:
> if you're charged every time some moron dials a wrong number...
it seems to me that in this case, the morons are those customers who keep up with this kind of wireless service providers's not customer-friendly an attitude.
When is the Family Guy returning? Or has it already?
last time they shut people down during WWF pay-per-view match. what could be worse than that? haven't they done enough?
DirecTV is an American company. Recently, DirecTV tried to sue a Canadian supplier of programmer for their smart cards used to pirate these signals. The CRTC got involved, and they determined that there are no legal grounds, claiming that DirecTV shoudn't be in Canada in the first place, so they have no legal basis on the lawsuit. So my question is, will DirecTV be targetting Canadian residence?
If you ignore the amount of technology needed, it is possible to remotely obtain any information from any place. Would you object to my use of a laser to eavesdrop on your house? Your vibrating windows are visible from my property.
Say at some point in the near future, no one at ALL cares about piracy. The "come on, its nothing" attitude becomes ubiquitous.
It simply needs to stop. Because.
What's next?
*getting off the immediate point, just addressing this fellows point*
People have and will always push the limits of what is *ok* in a society. "If I can pirate a game, what's the difference if I just take it from the store. I mean, the end result is the same, I just made it a little easier for myself." Can you picture the progression of this? After several "generations" of this attitude, couldn't one reason stealing a computer too? Come on, they sell MILLIONS of these things. I just want 1, WHAT'S THE PROBLEM? I would have to say that this seems to fit into ALL crime/social standards in society too. Think back 100 years. Could one be openly gay? Of course not, but it is now accepted (NO I AM NOT SAYING THAT IS A BAD THING). Couldn't one stand to reason, if I can be with a man, or a woman, why can't I be with 2 men or women. No, that's polygamy society says. So? Think back to arguments gays have made over the years. Wouldn't they also apply to that situation. Can't one do what they want to make themselves happy as long as it doesn't hurt anyone? What it someone wants to be involved with a child. Most modern people believe that to be VILE (rightfully so), but......who is to say you can't do what makes you happy if the other consents? I just wanted to stress the point that permissiveness can turn into something bad.
Kiss my shiny metal ass
Then you've been out of the loop for 15 years! Thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, it is very much illegal for you to receive a signal 'not intended for your receipt'. This law was ramrodded by the cellular phone industry so that radio enthusiasts with scanners wouldn't be able to listen to your wife ask you to buy bread and milk on the way home.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Almost everybody I know who watches TV has
some kind of cracked system for it. My problem
with this is that *I* can't make myself pay
for something that I know is widely available for free, so I basically do without TV.
If the situation were that everybody really and
truly paid, instead of the "H-Card/PC" situation
I see everywhere, I might be able to justify
subscribing.
This is one case where widespread "piracy" has caused me to evaluate a service as not being worth paying for! (If all my neighbors get the
service for free and take it for granted, I do
not wish to be a chump and pay for it.)
If I paid for satellite tv, I would definitely become the only person I know, and I know plenty,
who pays.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Back at home, all I had to do was to buy a sat receiver, an 80cm dish, a small motor and the 'converter' (whatever that was called, which goes into the dish's focus point), and I was able to get hundreds of channels:
I don't want to start a flame-war: I just want a similar service here in the USA while I am here. How can I get it?
Or is it so that, in a similar fashion as for cellphones in the USA, I have to pay even for things which are (or should be) paid for already by someone else?
thanks for any detailed help.
PS: what I mean with the cellphone comparison is:
PPS: I don't want to mess with sat dishes larger than 1m for that, nor to spend more than $300 total for the whole rig (as I'd do in EU).
Are you pirating our signal?
Turn yourself in and be eligible for FREE DirecTV service for LIFE! Simply call 1-800-YOU-SCREWED, give the operator your name and address, and wait for our offic... er, prize patrol to arrive. It's that easy!
Too bad it's really hard to get the prison warden to install your dish for you.
I'd pirate Directv too, but I don't have a ship and I can't sail. And I don't have a TV. No really, this "pirate" business is starting to get on my nerves. Why the hell they're calling US pirates? They're the ones who rip us off with high rates, crappy content, bad customer support and questionable service...
All 100,000 people whose information was found during those raids, should ALL fight it in court.
If DirecTV is stupid enough to sue/prosecute ALL 100,000 people, then they deserve to be run into bankruptcy by all those legal feesx100,000.
Moreover, there aren't enough courts and there aren't enough jail cells to hold a sudden influx of 100,000 people.
This will also cause a TREMENDOUS uproar among the American public.
More likely, DirecTV will decide to pick a few random users, and go after them. Squash one pirate and make an example of him/her, and scare everyone else into compliance.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
IANAL, but I remember a precedent being set where someone using a C-band dish was sued by HBO for illegally descrambling their signal and the judge stated that if HBO didn't want this person to descramble the signal they should not deliver it to his property.
Anyone else remember this?
Also, if I recall correctly, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 says you're not allowed to receive a signal not intended for your receipt if you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Since DirecTV is blanket-beaming this to essentially the entire hemisphere, there's no expectation of privacy.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
So what are you gonna do when they ask for your official ID? Don't tell me that in the U.S.A. asking for a government supplied ID is illegal...
Last I checked, TechTV (ne ZDTV), and MTV2 were in the
clear on C-band (Big dish) and have been for a couple
years now. You could put up a big dish and get them for free.
2nd hand big dishes are dirt cheap. A lot of people are trying
to get rid of them in favor of DirecTV or Dish Network.
Sadly, I don't have sufficient front (south) yard space for
one.
...Sean (who hasn't posted in so long he forgot his password.)
no I think not, DirecTV would like you to think so but the airwaves are PUBLIC DOMAIN...pump your signal out there and kiss it good-bye.
I know this since working for their competitor a few years ago.
They don't control the channels they offer as much as who they buy the channels from. Say they setup a deal with Disney, Disney now says you must require everyone of get ESPN and Disney Channel or no Disney at all. The same with Viacom channels (or whoever owns them now.)
Dishnetwork had a deal called dish pix, $10 10 channels. BUT you couldn't get MTV, Vh1, and a lot of others since their required bundling didn't allow them to be a low tier package. But you could get other "lesser" niche based channels. But those started disappearing as they were being bought out by bigger companies and being tied to other channels.
Discovery was the best at not having requirements, but they may have changed now (with about 20 channels in their lineup)
It all comes down to the provider; DirecTV, DISH Network, and Time Warner are locked down to the channels they offer with others.
They are even restricted by the providers competitors. So if the mid package has A&E, A&E's competitor must be in that package as well.
Now if you go and get yourself a BUD (big ugly dish) you may be able to find a provider who sells more channels ala carte, but they usually have a fee for changing your schedule. They make their money off of fee's and have more options that way.
PPV is actually becoming the preferred solutions for long events. You can sign up to watch a week long cricket match already. I'd think in another couple years you'll probably pick and choose events. But the price will probably be higher (like $20 for the entire Tour.)
DSS box must be connected to a phone line. They will (should) see that the area code on you box's line is not in the boondocks. If the box does not correctly respond to a call from their service setup guy your card will not be activated as you want. Likewise if you want a 2nd box billed for the the few bucks additional to your regular service, it's gotta be on the same phone line as your primary box and respond accordingly.
Probably very easily through public court documents (The busted companies' customer lists published in court exhibits as evidence); or in a more dire scenario, the ubiquitous Freedom Of Information Act?
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
But as someone kindly pointed out, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 apparently makes it illegal to 'receive a signal not intended for your receipt'. Did it not occur to our fine upstanding legislators (snicker) that such a law would be extremely unenforcable? Imagine making it illegal to own an un-government-licensed radio receiver. No way would they be able to track down everyone tuned in. All you can do is go after the people who sell them, and still most of them will slip through your grasp.
Dyolf Knip
"This story from CNNfn details DirecTV's & Hughes Electronics' plans to eliminate the piracy of their signals through a direct-mail campaign." I don't get it. How, exactly, are people using direct mail to pirate DirecTV? kj
Why is receiving DirecTV any different, legally, than tuning in a normal radio or TV? In both cases you're listening in to broadcasts and decoding the signal for display.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's illegal, but I'm curious what law covers it.
(Usual gripe about the absurd term "piracy" deleted for brevity.)
Where I live you do need an ID for cash purchases in excess of $100.
That the Feds insist that it is perfectly OK for them to listen in on Chinese military radio communications, but it is illegal for a private US citizen to watch a satellite TV broadcast for private use without paying the broadcaster?
After all, they are BOTH radio broadcasts, and supposedly the RF spectrum is a public resource... The public nature nof the airwaves is, after all, the reason the FCC is allowed to crimp free speech on-air. A curious contradiction, what?
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
I know not everybody can. I didn't say you always could, but I know for a fact in major, metropolitan areas, it's available...
They can't carry all local stations. If you believe that, you're most likely expecting too much of them.
They will give you FOX E/W, ABC E/W, and NBC E/W if you tell them you're out of range for your local stations.
Just a thought...
Do you like German cars?
I am glad it is not illegal in canada.. hell I know cops who have emulators!
Naturally, reception wasn't terribly clear. Regardless, DirectTV refused to offer us service without someone from the satellite store coming up and measuring the signal strength. Even then, if they determined it was "clear enough", we would have been outa luck.
Yes, fortunately it was only ABC.
When was the last time you peered up at the sky and saw the direct feed? or were even able to make sense of it with just your eyes (like you could the car)? You can't. DirecTV is offering a service. You are paying for the service. A better analogy (perhaps?) would be if you were to paint your car with an *invisible* paint. You then offered a service whereby you would let people look at your invisible car through goggles that can see invisible cars. You'd be pretty pissed if people started hacking together their own goggles and came and looked at your car.
Why don't you complain to the organization that runs the Tour de France? They are the ones who signed an exclisive deal with OLN. I'm sure our local public access channel would have carried it if they had been given the coverage for free.
I get Comcast Digital Cable, around 400+ channels and I can't get FX? WTF? For $70+/month!
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
ha our triple-super-duper-protection device will foil you!!!
Oh yeah, the Z34Vfds3 shreds your protection HAR HAR HAR!!!
ahh-haa!! quadruple-super-dee-duper protection device 4943jffj$, try to stop this!!!!!
Oh jeez, it took 25 minutes for my pet chimpanzee to figure out a work-arround with his model: sld2383D slide ruler....but my parrot had to help him, so I guess you made progress
hmmmm, let's get them arrested. HAHAHA.
Jeez, you got two of us, out of 3 million....good job.
now repeat from the beginning accept change the letter/numbers of the devices arround and add a few dee-dupers.....Piracy will continue no matter what, accept it and concentrate on making your products better, nothing has worked yet and nothing ever will.
"
One guy I know pirates this service by putting a cheap PC inbetween their satellite and their DirectTV receiver, thus eliminating the "shutdown" signal they occasionally send out to cancel the pirates' signal. When the PC locks up due to the signal, all you have to do is reboot the PC. I don't know how it works, but it does.
The DirecTV signal is not something that can be "taken" (unlike a car or mail). Someone who "pirates" DirecTV inflicts no harm on anyone, including DirecTV.
A more apt analogy would be that you park your car on your lawn in plain view and announce that anyone who wants to look at it from the street must pay $30. Do you think that someone who looked at the car without paying would be stealing?
When the Feds busted the retailers of illegal satellite equipment they got all the customer records too, everything sold might have been recorded... its like them saying we know you bought something naughty, in order to scare people.
"Smokey, this isn't Nam, there are rules." -Walter
Here.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
The way things are going, if we ever discover alien life the first thing we'll do is to sue their asses for stealing all those radio signals from earth. How can RADIO WAVES BE PIRATED!!!!! The mare concept is just INSANE! If the signal is out there damn RIGHT people will be able to capture it. If they don't like it then they should not use sat's.
In Canada, the CRTC regulates how channels can be distributed. I don't know all the details, but there are "linkage rules". For instance, you are required with any television package whether it is cable or satellite, to have a certain set of local-type channels. Even after that, you can't get certain premium channels with having a different type of premium channnel first. These regulations and not necessarily the fault of the distributors.
The first notion of copyright is less than 300 years old. Books have been written for thousands of years.
Don't let facts get in the way of a good argument-by-conclusion, though.
Makes his DirecTiVo pretty worthless though, huh?
There's no reason to believe this is any different from the BSA mailings featured a while ago: They're fishing. No crime in sending a nasty letter, no legal fees or protracted court battle. I suspect the direct mail piece will essentially say: we know you're up to something, ya no-good dirty pirate, but if you go ahead and subscribe to our service right away we won't bother to investigate you...
If, as the article suggests, they've had patchy success prosecuting the big middlemen operations, how the hell likely are they to succeed in running down the a million diffuse and unfederated end-users? Far as I know class action suits only go one way, and this ain't it, meaning they'd have to prosecute each user individually, and what are they likely to get? A back bill for a few years' service at best? Tell me it could come even close to covering the staggering legal fees.
They're just beating the bushes, hoping to scare some people into subscribing. Note that in the final analysis, they don't gain anything if a pirate simply gives up on stealing the signal. They either need to get retroactive compensation or get them to sign up.
Take a look at the stock graph in the article: that's your whole story. Just trying to prop up sagging revenue. The real question is... just how did they get those lists of names? If they were part of a separate case, under what jurisdiction were those names released to DirecTeeVee?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I don't have any friends who live in the middle of nowhere, but I do have friends who live in the areas where DTV is allowed to broadcast local networks. Will this tactic work this way? Also, does said person then have to forward all of my bills to me? Can I set up electronic payment or something?
I can understand the "just the channels I want" argument, but it has been addressed elsewhere. If the time comes when it is available, you will probably have to pay a premium for them because you are breaking up a package offered by the studios to the broadcasting companies. (see other posts above for more).
Overall, though, comperable packages are still cheaper than cable (about $10/month cheaper here). Most times, you can get a deal for a free dish and receiver in exchange for a year contract. I have had DirecTV for 2 years now and I must say that I am extremely satisfied with their service and pricing. Time Warner Cable (as most cable companies), treats their customers as a commodity. They think that they are the only game in town. They didnt ask me why I was discontinuing my service, but it sure didnt stop them from calling me once a month for the next year; and they still send me snailmail.
In order for DirecTV/UBS/etc to be able to break the cable monopoly, they need to be supported. Personally, I dont think very highly of people pirating DirecTV because it really does harm them in more ways than just their revenue stream. Once their user base reaches a number that the camble companies are unable to ignore, you will start to see competition in the market. Until then, DirecTV is still cheaper, more reliable, and has more package options.
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
When did he say something like that?
If he's anti-drugs I'm gonna stop reading this site right now. Or even better. I'm gonna start trolling it!
There are basically three methods out there...
H Card programmed to be an 'aux card' for emulation via DOS (SLE) and Linux (Pitou), if the card has been Black Sunday'd (Super Bowl thing) then an unlooper in Phoenix mode is required. If the card is 'virgin' or 'clean' a programmer will do.
The difference between DOS and Linux emulation is... the Linux version allows distribution of authorization packets from only one 'H' Card using TCP/IP in a LAN or low latency connection over the 'Net (cable/dsl preferrably within the same provider)... from what I've gathered this must be under 100ms to maintain authorization for the receiver. This program is known as 'pitou' it can be found at http://pitou.sourceforge.net/ It was mentioned here a few weeks ago. Which has DirecTV in a frenzy... this has probably prompted them to more scare tactics, this article just details yet another.
H Card w/ bootloader (to get a Black Sunday'd card working with a script) ... the scripts are far and few between now?
The newer HU card programmed using an unlooper, right now these cards have been taken down fairly quick (loss of channels mainly).
For more information, go to... http://www.dssunderground.com/ http://www.hitecsat.com/ you'll find everything you ever wanted to know in the forums...
I myself spend more time reading/testing it out then actually watching TV.
I think the reason why so many people pirate tv is because there are no choices. You have to buy this package or another package, you can't get the 4 tv stations you want. I've been switching back and forth from cable to dish because of better prices for each. I myself don't pirate, but to many people it is probably very tempting. Like in order to get the 4 stations i wanted (TechTV, TLC, Discovery, and MTV2) i had to buy the package of 50 stations from dish. I probably never watched any of those for more than 30 minutes. The reason i got the dish was because at the time i bought it, they said after one year you could pick 10 stations and only pay for those. Well after a year of using the service, i called up and it's no longer avalible. If people could pick the stations they want, i think the number of pirates would go way down.
Direct TV: Avast ye scurvy channel surfer.. Stand an deliver , your money or your life
Victim: Sorry, I was looking for DirecTv customer service..
Direct Tv: And Ye have found it, ya miserable land-lubber! Now .. would you be interested in upgrading your service or will ya be spendin' the night in Davy Jonse' locker?
Victim: Screw this, I'm going back to cable.
Direct Tv: Threaten me will ya! We'll se whos laughing when you get a Black Spot on yer bill this month!
Victim: 'Click' tone.......................
I can't comment on wether that's true about DirecTV, but Dish Network boxes don't need a phone line except for ordering PPV thru the box.
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
Isn't this what everybody's been asking for? We've asked companies to stop copy protecting their "intellectual property" at the cost of convenience to ordinary consumers, and go after actual pirates instead, and it looks like this is what they doing.
Just remember not to let the rum sink with the ship. That would be might bad alcohol abuse.
Do I play Hockey?
What you say!!
He's a Supreme Court judge. Why do you ask?
Looking at the quote again:
just to get a damn FOX affiliate over my dish
He is already paying for his service. He's just pissed that he's not allowed to get Fox.
If it is an encrypted signal (it is) then wouldn't the DMCA cover this?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
But no Speedvision, damnit! I *NEED* my Speedvision!
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
There's nothing really remotly interesting on TV, and there hasn't been since the Internet came around, perhaps even a bit before during the BBS era. And the rare interesting things on TV, such as TLC, Discovery and perhaps some funny shows, most of this "real" information and discoveries can be read on the web a lot quicker, and without any useless information being fed to you. Just jump into IRC, you'll laugh more than any stupid 70's show (which is beyond lame). The Family Guy might be funny, but you can only watch premature comedy for a few hours before wondering about the intelect of others watching it.
TV, as it is now, a company-to-one medium, should go the way of the dodo birds, bring back the birds though :)
Hmm, you learn something new everyday.
The point is not so much that if it's in plain sight it's fair game, even though it is the case that DirecTV is sending their signals onto my private property without my permission and shouldn't have any say in what I do with those signals after that. The point is that there is no marginal increase in the production cost of the system for the system operators due to one more person decoding the signal correctly, rather than just letting the signal pass directly through their body. Therefore, I don't agree with the argument that "piracy" costs them anything at all, since the major costs of the system (the satellite constellation) were incurred before any legitimate or illegitimate signal reception even occurred.
There's a difference between stealing my mail, which would deprive me of it, and decoding this particular radio signal, which doesn't deprive anyone of anything. If I had a conversation with my wife on the front steps and didn't sufficiently obfuscate the language I was using, could I really complain that you heard what I was saying from the street? Even if it somehow cost me money to say it?
I don't have a DirecTV, hacked or not, so the question is really more academic for me. I just don't like to see "pirates" blamed for DirecTV's security failings. You can make the argument that it would be morally and ethically correct to help pay for the satellites that send you the signal, and I would probably agree with that. I just don't think that I have a requirement to not decode this freely-published transmission just because DirecTV said so.
You could make the argument that it will be harder for DirecTV to pay for content for their network if they've made some sort of deals that mention specific numbers of subscribers or something like that. But that is a failure of their business plan and their lawyers rather than an effect of extra people decoding the signal. A business plan built upon the assumption that you could literally throw content to the winds and somehow prohibit unauthorized users from understanding it had better be backed up by some pretty invulnerable hardware, software, and signals security. If it gets hacked, DirecTV only has themselves to blame (well, and Hughes :).
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The law requires ID for purchase of alcohol.
I don't see the law requiring ID for purchase of a DirectTV system or "accessories"
They can do more than just search databases of people who sell pirated cards. I've been able to pick up the audio from the channel I'm currently watching on my TV using a $79 handheld scanner. With that in mind, they could monitor from the street what people are watching and cross reference that with their database of known subscribers to generate a suspect list. That would be a major invasion of privacy however. Another tactic they could employ would be to offer rewards to those who turn in their neighbors. I could see this working the best for them. "Earn one free month or a package upgrade for reporting signal theft. After all, piracy ends up costing you, the paying customer." I know people who'd jump on that deal.
'Same speed C but faster'
Don't click on that link! Click on this one instead!
Taco said:
Ya know, I really want to pirate DirecTV, but not to get all the channels... just to get a damn FOX affiliate over my dish so I could use my DirecTivo for The Family Guy and That 70s Show. Is that to much to ask?
Then geomcbay said:
Is paying DirecTV for usage of their system too much to ask?
I don't know, is growing a sense of humor too much to ask?
He's joking, people! Is it really that hard to tell?
I 'steal' my DTV (Im canadian) Cause I can! The signal is there, I have the tools and the knowledge to do it, so I do it. That should be the catch, a reward for smart people: If your smart enough to do it yourself, you can have it for free. Otherwise, pay the huge company more money that they really don't need. All these Joe nobody's buying $300 cards from other 'pirates' is whats wrong. These pirates are reselling the service, and thats what I have a problem with.
Find Escorts, Strippers, Massage Parlours, Swingers
I write code.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Switch to Dish Network. They carry Fox. I am the happy owner of a Dish Network system, and I get my local Fox station through it. If you live in the sticks, you can get your network TV from somewhere else (including FOX). Dish Network is WAY cheaper, and has pretty good customer service, too. The "Everything Pak" at $69.99 on Dish is almost identical to the "Total Choice Platinum" package on DirecTV, which costs $82.99. I subscribe to Dish's "Top 150", and for $39.99, I get everything in the DirecTV "Total Choice" package ($31.99), plus everything in the DirecTV "Family Pack"($5.00), the "Sports Pack" ($10.00) and even The Movie Channel, Encore, and a couple of other movie channels that you would pay extra for. Just my $0.02.
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
Heh, the other day a cable sales guy came to our house and was like "We know you're stealing cable, would you like to subscribe now at reduced rates?"
:)
More companies should offer this kind of piracy discount, I think it'd be a great sell
There are two main methods used for gaining "illegal" DTV access:
1. Cracked H card.
2. Emulator system.
A cracked H card is just that - back in the beginning of DTV, the smart cards used for access had an "H" designation or some such (am I showing my ignorance of the subject yet?) - these cards, when inserted into a legal DTV system, get programmed based on data in the video stream and data from the phone line. Due to various reasons, certain ones of these cards were never programmed, and as hacking them became more widespread, some were held back as blanks (as it was seen that they would soon be valuable). For the hacking scene, these "virgin" H-cards could be programmed to allow for all channels - so, buy or program a virgin card, pop it in, and get all the channels, for nothing.
Hughes et al. knew this, and developed ways to "destroy" these cards (ie, reprogram them - including the last "famous" Super Bowl hack of this past year) remotely. Sometimes the cards could be reprogrammed. But there is something about a "virgin" H card still - and they are tough or impossible to find cheap.
Now, there are emulators - but not a lot of people use them. Basically, an emulator is a piece of software running on a DOS PC (the software is well known - runs in DOS). Two serial ports are required on the PC - one is hooked up to a smart card reading device - and the other goes to a special "smart card" (actually, a custom PCB shaped like a smart card with pads and traces etched to put the pads in the same spots as an H card, and the traces come out to the edge to be hooked to the serial interface circuit, which is hooked to the serial port). Now, in the smart card reader is inserted the H card.
But what does this "emulator" software do? I have heard everything from it acting as some kind of "digital" filter - so that it doesn't all certain writes to occur (to blow away the H card functions), to that it does actual emulation of everything, and that the card handles the encryption, to other things as well...
This is a DMCA related issue - is the encryption being "cracked"? Or is the PC emulator system simply being used as a "go between" - and the smart card does the decryption?
Like I said - I am ignorant of most of this stuff (though no doubt I obviously know enough that with a little work I could set up a cracked system - problem is getting that damn H card) - does anyone know the answers to my questions?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Hmm, this is a troll, right? I ask for no claim to the words I speak or write. I think this is evidenced by the fact that my name isn't even attached to them.
Your "nobody would write books or produce films" argument was already debunked by pointing out the fact that books are much older than copyright. Films would be easily sold in a scenario without copyright. Simply make a contract with the theatres to not copy the film. Books would be a bit more difficult, but they are also much harder to copy. You could claim that people would just scan them in and publish them on the internet, but if that's true, why aren't people doing it now?
The fact is that for all realistic purposes, copyright never did exist for noncommercial entities anyway. The internet is starting to make noncommercial, global distribution easy and efficient. Now we're starting to see laws like the DMCA come into play. But even that will eventually be noneffective, and we'll have to resort to even more intrusive measures. Copyright is dying. It's time we start coming up with more effective ways to "promote the progress of science and useful arts".
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
I live in a city, right across the river from most of the local broadcast stations, and I still can't get a decent signal. Originally I used an antenna (a fancy one with a signal booster) to get the local channels, but I got tired of seeing everyone with a second blue head. Not all of us can use antennas.
"I strongly urge both the faint of heart and the faint of butt to leave the room at this time."
- Strong Bad
There are many issues. The first and easiest one for me is that I don't believe in copyright law. I don't believe in crimes without direct victims, and in my opinion copying something does not involve a direct victim. Perhaps copying and distributing to kill a competitor could be illegal under anti-monopolistic laws, but other than that I just don't see it.
Second. DirectTV is using public airwaves. They are sending signals into my home, onto my property. I should have the right to do anything I want with those signals. Actually I thought the supreme court had ruled that to be the case, but I guess I was mistaken.
Third. I don't believe in laws which are blatently ignored by most of the country. That leads to a situation where the government has the power to arrest anyone, for any reason, because everyone is breaking some law. If you're going to make a law, it has to be enforced. For this reason, I'm all for the 1 million people "pirating" DirecTV being arrested. Hopefully a few will be members of congress, a few will be great lawyers, a few will be rich, and a few will be mobsters. Hopefully we'll get a relative of each member of the Supreme Court. We'll see how quickly the laws get changed and/or overruled then.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Of course I wonder if the article will be pirated too. :-0
to impinge on my radio telescope so I figured out what it was and then started watching it. Screw DirecTV
I can see pirating the signal as an exercise of technical skills, but when you do the math, it's cheaper just to pay for it. I bill out at $175 per hour, my Direct TV package costs me $55 per month. If I would have to finagle with the "work arounds" in order to decode the signal for more then 18 minutes a month, I've lost money. Plus it's not like the skills I'd hone to do so would further my career. Perhaps we should pity the "pirates" for having no job skills instead of admiring them for "screwing with the MAN".
It's all in the contracts that DirecTV signs to carry the channels on their system. In order to carry popular channel X they are generally required by the owner of said-channel to carry startup lameass channels G, O, A, T, S, E, C, and X, plus the usual chunk of the profit. This is what Disney and one of the New England cable companies tussled over last year when there was that blackout of ABC in the area.
So, in order to get "The Discovery Channel" you'll also have to get a dozen other crap channels.
Sometimes I think that here the drug fascists have actually won.
The pirates spend enough time/money on pirating signals, why doesn't DirecTV just make a deal where you can buy your dish system for $2000 - $3000, put that money in an escrow account to pay the monthly fees, and then allow the escrow holders to watch everything?
i don't know if i should laugh or be angry because of this American reasoning, which i do hear a lot. someone recently claimed that if music was not controlled we would only get bad musicians and horrible music. such a consumer logic. such a CNN TV conclusion.
some idiot producer might not be in the film creation, some pedestrian writer might not write, but artists will always create... as they have done since the cave drawings.
i am not saying they do not want to be rich, but it is quite false to assume that is the main reason.
You're looking at it from the wrong direction. Suppose nobody payed for DirectTV?
Then consider this far out idea. What if no one paid for their operating system? This would put all commercial OS'es out of business.
This of course would never happen. There will always be a large and lucrative market out there who doesn't want to deal with the "hassle" of putting together a free operating system/satellite descrambler. And at the current overly-inflated prices that broadband television is being billed at there is no way that I would pay for it. So if I did hypothetically decide to make use of those signals beaming into my property then whichever company "owns" the signal wouldn't be losing any money.
DirecTV were pursuing "Ahoy, matey!" pirates. I'd pay to watch that over the 500-some channels of rubbish they now offer.
Got Rhinos?
Who doesn't know someone who got cable for free and "forgot" to tell the cable company?
That said, now that there are 3 choices for television programming (cable, air, satellite) for many people they can no longer use the excuse that they are just fighting the man.
There is finally at least the hope of competition in this long-time monopoly. Honestly, I don't know why this is news worthy of a Slashdot post, unless theft and Slashdot are somehow linked.
Moderate me down if you must.
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
I had on a number of occasions said how cool I thought DirecTV was for targetting non-paying service users (I won't call it piracy, because I don't believe it really is) through technology rather than the courts. Apparently they're just another lame company who's willing to abuse the courts (who in turn will blow any corporation with enough money) at the expense of peoples rights.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
mailing strongly worded letters to thousands of individuals and families suspected of pirating DirecTV signals, the report said.
Let me get this straight....they're gonna mail people suspected of pirating their signals? So there is a possibility that perfectly innocent people will receive strongly worded letters from DirecTV?
If any innocent parties receive said letter please use my handy reply template below:
Dear Sir/Madam
FUCK OFF !!!
Yours Sincerely
-----------------------
Moderator's essentials
I personally wonder where they get these stats...Big software companies always attribute their losses to piracy, what's to stop them from saying "We had 30% less profit this month, our software sucks, but that can't be it, must be piracy" No one's there to stop them from saying that or proving them wrong. Couldn't DirecTV pull a similar stunt in an attempt to explain 1M customers leaving or falling 1M customers short of their expectations(or at least bloat their piracy numbers a bit)?
If owning hardware to freely intercept DirectTV signals is considered privacy, then only pirates will have hardware to freely intercept DirectTV signals.
If the knock ever comes, the DTV gear is the least of your worries. When the cops show up for hacking-type-crimes, they typically sieze every piece of electronic equipment in the place: printer cables, CDs, telephones, the works. They may have been clued in to you hacking DTV, but they'll get you for all those warez CDs you have too... and you can say goodbye to all your hardware and legitimate data.
There may be anomalies in a small business. But in this case about one million (mostly honest) people are cheating.
You cannot even sue one million people. The only chance is to pick a few and serve them a fate so horrible that the intimidated others comply with your rule. Works great at least short term (some third world dictators reading this to confirm?)
CU, Martin
Didn't think so.
The above should in no way be mistaken for any lack of animosity towards "give them a license to print money and they whine about the cost of the printing press while they try to stick you with the bill for it" cable companies on my part.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
For instance, you are required with any television package whether it is cable or satellite, to have a certain set of local-type channels.
This particular rule was meant to advance Canadian content on Canadian TV. I agree with that stance. We have a national broadcasting network - *CBC* (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) which offers very high quality TV viewing. It includes programs like "The Fifth Estate", various news programming spinoffs, and comedy nights, etc. The CBC is available locally throughout Canada including remote areas such as the NWT and the Yukon. I live in the USA now and have yet to see an American TV network supply anthing even remotely close to the quality CBC offers. Canadians can still get a certain amount of American network TV in, but IMHO, it's generally cheap sitcom garbage TV.
The answer will prove that TV is way fucking overpriced by at least 3 orders of magnitude. Much like phone service where an LD minute actually costs less than $0.001 (yes that's one tenth of a cent).
it's more likely that they get the adds. from those "entertainment supply companies" - the type that also sells plans to cable tv descramblers and such. i'm sure they'd cave in and fork over a list of adds. they shipped cards to if uncle sam stood over them long enough.
===== Warble://VX
and as we slip on our asbestos trousers and sail into the sunset...
I will bite. Why should TV be free for all? If the producers want to sell to a network who only want paying viewers, then shouldn't we respect their wishes? Why should anyone respect the GPL, say, if at the same time the open-everything crowd do not respect other people's choice of license?
Just because it is possible to pirate DirectTV does not give anyone a right to do so. Empowerment is not Entitlement. No arguments as to the price, quality or fairness of the incumbent system are valid whatsoever, if we want people to respect our own practices as much as we desire.
and lo, the asbestos pantaloons fluttered mightily in the seabreeze
will DirectTV get probable cause for searches? It'll be interesting to see if judges grant the warrants based on product sales, etc. Especially when cops raid legitimate places using the cards (for what I have NO idea :) ) So DirectTV has some addresses, but is that enough to grant a warrant - what if the person just bought a non DirectTV hack product from teh same company - it could get messy.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Jeepers, why don't you vote with your wallet and turn the idiot box off? Idiots. By purchasing all these bullsh*t services you pay the media and entertainment lobby.. you buy the legislation against yourself.. very bright read a book regards, dave
TV is free for all - you can go setup an antenna and watch the local FREE channels all you want. But somewhere along the line if you want to get what directv offers you have to pay them for the investment they have made. Besides they also have to pay the channels to carry their signal - it's not as if directv gets HBO for free then sell it to you.
Is that to much to ask? The former usage is wrong, the latter is correct.
I agree, but they could be equally exploitative by overcharging for individual channels. Imagine:
MTV $10/month
ESPN $12/month
TNT $5/month
and on and on...
One could rack up a pretty hefty monthly subscription bill.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
Because when you take a game from a store, the store is now missing a game. When you copy a game, there's no evidence of theft , i.e., a missing item.
It ain't theft if nothing's missing.
If it was, then why don't software companies list so much as dollar one in their annual shareholder reports where the SEC absolutely REQUIRES that all profits, losses, expenses, costs, etc. be fully disclosed. Fudging these numbers has sent many a CFO to jail. Looks like piracy is a "loss" everywhere but where it matters, eh?
I live 2 blocks from NBC, 3 from CBS, and 6 from FOX. They all come in crappy over cable, since the cable system acts as an ineficient antenna, which interferes with the cable broadcast of the same channel (they're on the same channel number on each). Luckily, when routed through my VCR, channels 90-93 duplicate the networks, without the interference... An amusing undocumented feature.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Why can't they just offer the channels I want.
event but to get that I needed to buy 50+ extra channels. Not worth it in my opinion.
You just want 20 channels not 500?
Ok, that will be $50.00 per month.
DirectTV's costs are not deliniated on a "per channel" basis. They have very high fixed costs ie. satellites. The marginal costs of adding the other 480 channels you your "favorite 20" is negligble. this idea that the cost of 20 channels should be "20/500 x monthly cost" shows an extreme naivete in the way business works.
Same false logic that if record companies sold music by the song than that hit single you like would only cost 1/10 x $15.00 == $1.50. Weell, no average "hit group" only produces 1 hit single per year. I doubt your $1.50 mp3 download would support music creation effort behind that years worth of work.
Due to really annoying federal regulations DTV cannot legally offer a lot of people the channels they would like to get.
Taco can't legally get Fox, no matter how much he pays. Still the signal for many Fox stations are transmitted to his receiver, but it just won't show them. Pretty frustrating situation.
I'm in the same position regarding WB and UPN. If I could I would pirate the signal and continue to pay my $40/month...
If the signal passed through my backyard I am sure as hell going to do whatever the hell I want with it.
DirecTV has to pay for the content that they send out over the air. They have every right to expect to be payed for a service they provide. Don't give me the lame excuse "But I did not ask Directv to beam the signal on my house" because then you would also have to allow any wireless transmition to be free for any one to use as they please. This would include your cell phone, wireless phone, and wireless networking.
you'll feel differently when a radio station decides to charge a subscription fee and it becomes illegal for you to have a radio that can receive station xxx.xx . How is this situation different from the direct TV situation? both services broadcast information through the air, one just has pictures. What should happen is Direct TV should charge stations that want to be included on Direct TV, the stations should charge companies for advertising, and the end-user should get the service for free (of course he'll have to watch advertisements. How about if I decide the Direct TV signal is annoying and I don't want it in my home, shouldn't they have to find a way to get it out of there. Your last statements are flawed because I don't purposefully reflect light, it just happens, and as for sound....if I'm too loud I beleive you can call the police for disturbing the peace.
"
Man, I wish I got the goatse.cx channel!
All prolapsed rectums - ALL THE TIME!
C-X C-S
It's been done. Check out this guy's website.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
My SS card says "For social security purposes only". That pretty much says illegel to even ask for it, IMO, unless the DirectTV vendor plants to contribute to my retirement.
So true! It's a sad, sad truth. People will steal anything that isn't nailed down or hooked up to an alarm (And well, even then). It's SO hard to get worked up about these things when you realise that the ONLY reason they're doing it is because they are already being ripped off. I mean /. gets all pissy anytime something OS is ripped off. But Huges, MS, (insert anyone you don't like here) can just go to hell? It's the constant /. hypocrasy that really hurts. It's a daily stab in the eye to read articles like this. There is absolutely no reason Huges shouldn't do whatever is necessary to keep people from stealing from them. How much does it cost to put up a satelite anyway? Look what happened to Iridium. If enough people steal there'll be no DirectTV at all. (Ok, no one stole from iridium, my point being, if they don't MAKE ENOUGH MONEY, it won't exist.)
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
For instance, if you rent a video they have to be able to track you down if you don't return the movie in time.
Imagine that, an informed answer on Slashdot!
This has always been nonsense. They have had legal recourse under US federal communications law for many years. It has nothing to do with DMCA.
The only good weather is bad weather.
>Ah yes, the good old "if it's in plain sight you >should expect it to be stolen" defense.
More like, "if you dump it in my yard, it's mine."
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Rolling? Eh?
the DSS satellites beam the digital signal to practically every square foot of land in the united states of america. last time i checked, it has never been illegal to intercept a signal that is being delivered to your property.
so what exactly is being stolen here?? let's see, they broadcast a signal at me that i did not ask for. i intercept the signal and do what i will with it. if you pay some company, they will furnish you with equipment which makes it easier to use the signal (that is being beamed at you, with or without your consent).
does this "crackdown" seem ludicrious to anyone else? how do you steal what you are being beamed for free?
-inq
Why would they even ask for it in the first place?
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
just to get a damn FOX affiliate over my dish so I could use my DirecTivo for The Family Guy and That 70s Show. Is that to much to ask? I already pay for HBO and Sci-Fi channel.
I get FOX via DirecTV, Taco. Get the local channels pack that includes your local affiliate.
As much as Slashdot advocates free speech and free reception of products (among other things), the unauthorized reception and decryption of a DirecTV signal is illegal...
Do you like German cars?
Yeah, that would be cool. And sell extra time units on cards from vending machines. I gurantee you you'll sell more service this way. Many people I know refuse to buy dish systems when they learned you have to hook a phone line up to it. People hate being tracked. Period.
better programing is an opinion, I don't like home and gardens as much as my mother, just like she doesn't like sci-fi as much as me.
But is it illegal to refuse to serve you if you won't show your federal ID?
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!'
Because rape and murder enhance the revenue streams from entertainment companies. Who would pay to see half our movies, three quarters of our news, and damn near all of our "reality-TV shows" be without the possibility of witnessing or hearing lurid descriptions of real or simulated rape and murder?
(Yeah, I'm agreeing with you. I'm just feeling like a supremely cynical motherfucker today ;-)
"Sex and vi'lence and rock and roll... this is - serious business"
- John Cougar Mellencamp, Serious Business, 1983.
"We got the bubble-headed bleach-blonde / comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash / with a gleam in hear eye
It's interesting when people die -
Give us dirty laundry..."
- Don Henley, Dirty Laundry, 1982
Piracy occurs when your product is actractive to people, but you price it such that it exceeds what they are willing to pay for it. And, yes, there will always be people that are willing to pay nothing.
If there are 10 million DTV customers and a million pirates, DTV has to simply make a business decision: Would lowering the subscription rates to their service increase demand sufficiently to make up for the lower rates? If so, they should lower their rates and reap the rewards. If not, then they've already found their optimum business model and pricing schedule, and the pirates aren't affecting that.
Personally, what I find completely unethical is for DTV (or any cable provider) to CHARGE for packages made up of channels that have commercials. I'm willing to pay for HBO, Showtime, or PayPerView where I'm paying to see uninterrupted programs. But why should anyone pay for channel packages made up of channels that have advertising? They can't have it both ways; charge me or charge the advertisers--not both.
Channels with commercials should be part of the basic package, be it cable or DTV.
I kissed a boy.
It was like kissing me.
I seem to remember from the past /. story ( DirecTV's Secret War On Hackers ) that sateliette broadcasters had no legal recourse against pirates, on the principle that they are beaming their signals on private property, and the people who live there can do whatever they want to with those signals. It would be the content providers' responsibility to keep the signals off non-customers' lawns.
Though I suppose the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions do apply to doctored smart cards. Sigh.
If enough people in a community start relying on satellite and cable and if they get direct feeds of NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX from them, how long until local broadcasters can't make enough to survive? That means no local news, no local weather, no operating "in the public interest".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Why bother with DirecTV at all? As far as I'm concerned, what good is a satellite service that only broadcasts shows in a couple of languages. When they can offer me Fox and the Cartoon Network, the Food Channel, the evening news from Tokyo and Madrid, and Hong Kong action flicks direct from Hong Kong, then I'll be interested.
Information wants to be $1.98/lb.
> All prolapsed rectums - ALL THE TIME!
Who are you, and how did you get your hads on the FOX new season lineup? I'll have you know, trading in SirCam-leaked information can still get you sued ;-)
Well you know who owns the media. They want their pound of flesh!!!! Go one better ... stop watching the crap they make all together.
They'll never catch me! I've got the fastest ship in the fleet!
Where the fuck is that? Canuckistan?
And as for purchaces that require some sor of monthly service to be useful, there's still the "pre-paid" option. All cash up front. No ID. e.g., here in the US I can buy a pre-paid call phone all cash, no ID, good for X minutes, and buy more minutes anonymously from a vending machine. Note I never call any number which could track back to me.
golly
The laws are fucked. And there's lots worse a person can do than pirate. Go jail the real dangers to society here.
The ultimate slap in the face are CATV commercials that imply that stealing cable will get you condemned to hell.
It's just not much of a crime and ranks right up there with people photocopying magazine articles in the library.
Hey I have an idea. If they don't want me to see their content then kindly stop sending it to my backyard. I'm not doing anything but translating what they carelessly flung across the universe. If I develop my own language and start screaming it from my rooftop, do I have a right to charge a toll from everyone who understands? and if they don't pay me are they stealing? These decoder cards are not cheap and they belong to the people that buy them. D-TV has (or should have) no legal leg to stand on.
hmmm, on fire you say? have you tried re-booting?
Because they don't currently accept a payment mechanism that would allow them to automatically take such small payments with halfway-decent efficiency. They'd need automation, authentication, low fees, and a total lack of fraud problems to make your idea work, is my self-serving, venal, greedy, profit-oriented guess. Given their present payment-acceptance cost-structure (whether it's checks or plastic, it costs them more than you'd think in order to get each payment banked) I'm not surprised.
They could, of course, try something different...
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
But does this apply to internet access as well. Astound cable has VERY DIFFERENT policies towards additional TV's VS. additional PC's. I just put up a firewall, spoofed the MAC address and told them to getr out of my house. But they tried to charge me per PC for the same bandwidth. Is that legal ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I'll let everyone in on a little secret. Its a super-high-tech space-age device which allows you to watch television without paying a cent. I get all the major (read: Worth watching) stations here in the city, and I don't pay a dime.
ITS CALLED AN ANTENNA! The thing that most satellite providers need to realize is that if you transmit an open-air signal (although its laughably and easily decrypted) someone SOMEWHERE will listen in for free. Sure, they'll go after the pirates.. but like the hordes, as soon as one falls to the sword of the law, three hundred more will spring up in his place, almost invisible.
Mouse, Mice. Goose, Geese. Moose... Moose?
Is paying DirecTV for usage of their system too much to ask? Nobody really needs all those channels. People generally only get DirecTV for a couple of channels they wouldn't otherwise be able to get in their area. If DirecTV can offer these programs you want to watch in a better way than you can see them now, why not just pay for the service?
IMO Its really damaging to the Geek community to have people who want to pirate DirecTV yelling in chorus with the people who think the DMCA is evil and corporations are trying to strip us of fair use, etc. Just paints us as an unruly mob that wants everything for free.
And, before anyone posts the 'well they broadcast their signal onto my property' defense, I don't buy into that and never will. The fact that these same people would be outraged if they were videotaped and/or voice recorded if they walked by my property (despite the fact that they are reflecting light and broadcasting sound waves onto my property) just makes it more ridiculous.
Ah yes, the good old "if it's in plain sight you should expect it to be stolen" defense. I guess I'll just help myself to your car (parked on a public street no less!) and the contents of your mailbox. And it was your fault for not keeping these items inside your house.
I assume the "lousy" part of their business model is that they have something you want and you aren't allowed to get it for free. Tough shit. They have to pay for the satellite, so they charge the people who use it. You want to watch their content, so you pay them for its percieved value. What's wrong with that?
...
What he's saying is because of the crappy FCC regulations, he can't get local channels on his dish and thus use his TiVo to record the channels. Would Taco pay DirectTV to get the local channels via satellite? I hope so.
I don't think TV should be free for all. It's a medium for entertainment. We pay for movies, videogames, strippers, music, etc. and people don't complain about that...so why should TV be free?
"I strongly urge both the faint of heart and the faint of butt to leave the room at this time."
- Strong Bad
I really don't think an underground distributor of illegal parts is going to check your DOB and do a background check on you.... :P
Give me a break.
Without the notion of copyright, you have no claim to the words you speak or the words you write.
The victim of a wild-west style world that you seem to want is the public at large. Without copyright, nobody would write books or produce films at all.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
If direct TV would just offer channels on an individual basis at a reasonable cost less people would pirate it. There are only about 20 channels I ever watch but to get them all I have to get the Super Duper Bazzillion Channels pack. Why can't they just offer the channels I want. Also for things like the Tour De France I would have gladly paid for Outdoor Life Network for 3 weeks to have that event but to get that I needed to buy 50+ extra channels. Not worth it in my opinion. Any thoughts on why they can't sell "per channel?"
As a loyal Slashbot and staunch advocate of open-everything and coolness in general, how am I supposed to think.
On the one hand, there was a positive article about the DirecTV anti-piracy stuff a few months ago on slashdot.
On the other hand, isn't it evil and wrong to restrict TV from anyone? Shouldn't TV be free for all??
What is the Slashbot groupthink on this issue?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Direct TV and all other brodcasting open casting services (Over Air TV, Satalite, Radio, etc) know that any attempts to charge for thier service will only be patialy sucessfull. They work it into there business model. Since its the cheapest way to go, they know that thier service is vunarable to theft. As long as the numbers are kept down to a small percentage they don't care. (its much cheaper to let 5% of the subscribers be pirates then it is to wire the country with a network)
Right now the numbers are too high and most importantly too many people are figuring out how to get it for free. So they make some nosie, shut down the big players. Sure you can still grab the signal in other ways. (A PC hack for example) but the number of people who do this is low enogth not to matter.
Since this is Slashdot, somebody out there should be able to come up with a computer mod that lets you hook into an old 12' dish and descramble the signal. I'd imagine that you can pick up an analog dish for a couple of bucks these days.
/.ers from going off and getting the feeds from analog.
If DirecTV wants to crack down on the pirates, what's stopping a few interested
FOX, Sci-fi, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, and piles of other stuff are already available for feeds on analog, why not save ourselves the trouble?
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
Didn't think so.
Doesn't need to be. The Supreme Court ruled long ago, that charging for additional CATV outlets and telephone outlets was illegal. The utility only owns the wire up to the provided junction box. After that , All wiring is your own responsibility. Connect anything you want to it so long as it doesn't cause problems in the utility side of the box.
If the utility wants to block some access, they have to do it on their side of the junction box.
This preempts anything counter in the contract.
Several people voice the opinion that since the DTV signal is broadcast onto their property, they should have the right to do whatever they please with it. And I do have some sympathy with that position.
But as far as I can see, if that were to be the law, I can't see how a satellite TV system could possibly be viable. Those satellites cost billions to put up and run, and with no revenue stream that would simply not happen.
Or do I miss something?
I'm just waiting on something like this to show up.. I mean people who grab the DSS signal and use it need to spend quite a bit of money to get set up.. emulator board, card reader, spare pc, dish, reciever, H-card. about the amount that it would cost to buy a c band sat. and that's not illegal..
Actually, I would disagree with that. They already have to blanket the country with their radio signals. The cost is the same for them whether those signals go through my head, a large rock, or a legal DirecTV receiver.
It may be against the terms of your contract to hack your decoder, or to sell it to someone else with the understanding that they would hack it. I don't defend those who have broken such an agreement with DirecTV. But it's not my problem that DirecTV picked the lousy business model of "let's send our signal everywhere, and just sell secret decoder rings". If they weren't going to be able to develop unhackable decoders, maybe they should have picked a different business.
Sigh... The Canadians are the only real heroes in this story :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Well, their costs are still the same, except they don't have to pay for programming now :) Their problem is being in a business where the costs of the business aren't proportional to the sales of the business. This is good if your sales happen to be really high, bad if your sales are really low. In DirecTV's case they can't build up capacity as their paid subscriber base increases, they had to put up the money up front and then hope that they could keep enough paying viewers. But this means that just as adding another paying customer brings in more revenue at zero additional cost, adding another non-paying "pirate" brings in no revenue at zero additional cost. It's not a win, but it's not costing DirecTV anything more.
I think that is more of a privacy issue; in this sense I'm not peering into DirecTV's plant somehow, they're sending me the signal of their own free will. I'm not sure where I draw the line on privacy in the law, but I do know that if I really cared about the security of what I had to say, I'd protect it with appropriate technological measures (shielding from Van Eck interception, vibration-proofed windows, etc.) even if if was against the law to snoop on me anyway. Laws that deal with information interception like DirecTV's broadcasts or cell phone scanning are pretty hard to enforce since there's no direct way to tell that someone's doing it. The reasonable person would use sufficient technology to protect their communications, or expect that they will be compromised.
And that's the crux of the matter. I agree with you that if you signed a contract not to alter or resell your DTV receiver, then you're SOL (in fact, I think I mentioned that in the parent post or somewhere else in this article). Although I don't think DirecTV/Hughes was wise to just rely on this contractual provision, since as they're finding out it's pretty tough to track down the folks that are breaking the contract. Like I said, if they really wanted to keep it a secret from the whole world, they probably should have protected their hardware better.
Yes, I really should put my money where my mouth is, I suppose :) Considering that I'm backed up about a year on the projects-to-tackle stack, maybe I'll do that someday, but probably not.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Tell them "No"?
It's not illegal to ask. And in most cases, it's not illegal to say no either.
In in some cases, yes, it is illegal to ask for government supplied id (SSN)
O.K. we have search and arrest warrents for a Mr. S. Clause, I.P. Freely, Phil McKraken, and George Washington. We're still waiting on the ones for Clark Kent and M. Monroe. Let's roll.
Ha ha, what chumps. Why don't they just go door to door and ask people if they're stealing Direct TV's signal?
Agent: "Sorry to bother you sir but I'm Agent Thompson from the FBI, are you stealing a Direct T.V. signal?"
Man at Door: "No."
Agent: "Fair enough, thanks for your time."
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Sorry, but he deserves to get busted.
This chair be high says I! (Who can name the Simpsons episode that's off of?) What does this have to do with a bunch of men on ships firing cannons, pillaging and plundering?
"...just to get a damn FOX affiliate over my dish so I could use my DirecTivo for The Family Guy and That 70s Show. Is that to much to ask? There's definitely going to be a lot more cracking down on pirated dish stuff: they are getting crazy with the protective measures."
/. You are saying "I only want to pirate this for 2 shows, so then it must be ok" Amazing.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever read here on
Also "they are getting crazy with the protective measures". What would you expect them to do? They are losing revenue to people pirating the signal. Being easier to pirate than cable TV, they have to come up with some pretty ingenious measures to prevent the rampant piracy that exists. Of the 15 people I know with DirectTV/Dish service, only 1 of them actually pays for the service!
Honestly, what do you expect? I'm sure if you were the president of the company you'd be singing a different tune.
...is some hard numbers on DirecTV's new purchase contracts. For the past several months, most DirecTV retailers have gotten contracts from system purchasers, asking that they either:
1) Connect the new equipment to DirecTV within 90 days or:
2) Return the equipment to the store.
Failure to do either of these things results in a charge of $200 to the purchaser's credit card. What? Don't have a card? You can't buy a dish.
I'd love to know how many of those $200 charges they've collected on.
-mike
Ever hear of "cash and carry"?
I would have directv NOW if I could get a freakin' fox affiliate. They should really get on that. I don't understand why they aren't allowed to give me my local channels. Can't they buy a little government like every other media-related megacorp? There's no other good solution. My local "lifeline" cable deal is $8/mo, I think it's actually a bit more now, and antenna reception sucks. I was seriously considering buying one, paying for it, and getting a bootleg card so that I could tivo-ize network TV. As it stands, I have no cable, no tivo, nothing. A Fox affiliate from Directv is the only missing link...
I'm sure he, and a good many others, would be quite happy to pay for the service of getting a certain network.
The problem is that DirectTV WON'T SELL IT TO THEM, not that they won't pay for it. Or maybe CAN'T SELL IT TO THEM, rather than they won't pay.
Why is this? Because some pinhead out of the area decided that a "local affiliate" covers them. In many cases, this is true. In many others, this is not at all true. But no amount of telling anyone that this doesn't work will change anyone's mind.. you'd have to get the denier to move to the site before they'd acknowledge that yes, indeed, there is a lack of coverage. What is needed is an easy (but hard to fake) means of showing a lack of coverage, short of buying some bozo plane tickets, paying for his hotel and rental car so he can waltz around for a couple minutes with a strength meter.
What's particularly galling is knowing that folks the next county over, WHO ARE CLOSER TO THE TRANSMITTER SITE (and in the field pattern, yes) are in another artificial zone and can get the channels you are not allowed to get.
Give a person a chance to be honest, and most times he'll be honest. But make it illegal for him to do what others just like him can do, and then maybe you better hope he's a saint.
--
The Coward
"This story from CNNfn details DirecTV's & Hughes Electronics' plans to eliminate the piracy of their signals through a direct-mail campaign."
Are these letters genuine threats to sue, or is it just another BSA style marketing tool to sell more product?
This man starts to become a good customer, so finally, the bartender asks him, "I've really aprecaited your business this past week, but what's with the wheel hanging out of your fly?"
So the man says, "Aye there matey, It's driving me nuts!"
You transmit a signal that passes thru my property (i.e. no cable) then it mine to do with as I like. Don't want me to watch it without paying? better scramble it better. Because what's in my physical air space is mine and no one else's to do with as I please. And yes TV should be free -paid for by advertisers. delivery is not my problem.
I work as a phone support for DTV. Just ask for a DNS waiver. Tell them you have a roof top atenna in good working condition on the television. And you live near a radio atenna or to close to tall buildings. Then 30 days later you should get a waiver for the FOX east or west affiliate broadcast. Also send a letter/call or talk to your local FOX affileate. They are the ones who decide if you get the waiver.
So...they're combatting piracy by using junk mail.
What happens with pirates who have opted out of junk mail? Get off scott-free?
Beware typoes.
"Failure to do either of these things results in a charge of $200 to the purchaser's credit card. What? Don't have a card? You can't buy a dish."
It's precisely this kind of behavior that is why many places that claim they need my credit card number won't get it.. and if they won't sell without it, they lose the sale. This type of behavor is why I try to use postal money orders for services - if they try to screw me, they get to talk to postal inspectors. (Postal inspecters: The guys the IRS rejected as being too humorless and overzealous.)
Now, I don't begrudge them getting paid for their service/work, but I see cc abuse as too easy. Am I paranoid? Probably. But I'm not dying of debt either.