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.

Comments

Why they can't

[Mordac]

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.)

Re:But how...

[nanojath]

If they had probable cause they wouldn't be doing the mailing campaign; they would just bring the hammer down.

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?