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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.
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.
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?
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.
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...
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.)
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
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
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
Of course I wonder if the article will be pirated too. :-0
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
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
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!'
> 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 ;-)
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.
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?"
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
Sure, DirecTV has every right to make money. What they seem to forget is that they have every right to lose it, too. If they want to make sure that only paying customers can decode their signals, sending out nastygrams and junk mail isn't going to do it. Making it illegal to own a cell phone scanner isn't going to stop it, nor will outlawing radar detectors stop people from exceeding the speed limit.
Pure legislation is very often the least effective means to acheiving a goal. Which is more effective: leaving your house unlocked and trusting to the illegality of theft or installing deadbolts on your doors? Printing money on typing paper and hoping that nobody counterfeits it (after all, that would be -gasp- illegal!) or using cotton paper and any number of tricks to make forgery as difficult as possible?
Obviously, there are many cases where both laws and preventative measures are necessary (murder comes to mind), but why should that include ensuring a corporation a steady source of income?
I would infinitely rather that my cell phone service put money into keeping the signal encrypted and private than have them spend it on lobbying and have to depend on some flimsy law that supposedly has my best interests at heart. Law can and will be twisted to serve any purpose and is written by people who haven't got a clue, while a technical fix to a technical problem is more effective, usually costs less (when you consider money spent on enforcement of the new law), and adds to the knowledge in that field. How much money have the RIAA/MPAA spent on their wars, and just how effective have they been? The RIAA's attempt at CD copy-protection may be nasty, but it's a heck of a lot more effective than what they've been up to till now.
Dyolf Knip
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!"