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Behind the Satellite Piracy Lawsuit
McSpew writes "This article at MSNBC is the most in-depth coverage I've seen from a mainstream news source about the $1 Billion Canal Plus lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch-owned NDS. For those not familiar with the suit, French direct-broadcast satellite (DBS) company Canal Plus alleges that NDS, a company owned by News Corp (which also owns BSkyB--Canal Plus's biggest competitor in Europe) hacked the smart cards used by Canal Plus and published the hacks on the Internet. Included in the article are conspiracy theories, a suspicious death and a look at the shady characters working for both sides." We had a previous story about this.
I admit it, I am the one who broke the cards so that I could stay up and watch porn. Are you all happy now?
When will we learn that the biggest threat to our liberty is not the government, but corporations?
Somebody call in Austin Powers, a new Dr. Evil has emerged (Rupert Murdoch)! Hurry, before he creates a Mini-Me, and an angst-ridden son, Scott!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Same thing we do everynight Pinky.......Try to take over the worlds media!
Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?
Didn't this kind of thing happen in James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies? So does that mean that a stealth boat will start a war between Afghanistan and the US?
From the article:
There's also a long-standing notion that piracy is good for the business. In an odd twist, tacitly allowing people to watch pirated TV is a way to gain market share, since many pirates eventually give in and convert to paying customers.
I hadn't expected to hear that on MSNBC. In fact, I'm led to wonder if the 'higher ups' even know of this policy. The management of media companies seem to be more prone to saying things like "Ad skipping is theft!" "Napster costs us billions each year." etc, etc. One really has to wonder why big media is really cracking down on piracy, if they have people in their ranks who have been encouraging pirates all along.
So if I give people my competitor's service away FREE it somehow increases my own?
Unlikely.
Hey - it is my property. I didn't give you permission to blanket it with satellite TV. I'll use your service unless you keep you damned dirty broadcasts out of my land!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
This looks an awful lot like the plot from "Weapons of Mass Distraction," with Ben Kingsley and Gabriel Byrne.
Great movie, albeit completely depressing, as the two media moguls don't back down from their feud until they've utterly destroyed the lives of their own families.
Specialization is for insects. - R.A.H.
One thing about the piracy in Canada that the article fails to mention:
While the signals have been ruled public domain (and thus don't need to be payed for) since the American providers do not have a broadcast licensce in Canada, it HAS been ruled illegal to sell the equipment for those services.
Best reference to this I could find can be found here.
Short version:
Illegal to buy, but legal to use.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
To be exact:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men
are almost always bad men."
-John Emerich Edward Dalberg
What, is Murdoch up with his evil schemes
once again? No worries, just make a phonecall
to the Phoenix foundation and MacGyver will
take care of it like he always does.
I wrote "Couch Wars" more than a year. It's a good introduction to the current world of satellite smartcard hacking.
.
http://www.wayner.org/books/f7.pdf
You're free to circulate it now because I've turned it into advertising ware for my latest two books Translucent Databases and Disappearing Cryptography
If anyone has thoughts, comments, or suggestions, write me at p3@wayner.org.
It is interesting that both Murdoch and the company ERG come from Australia. ERG is a major player in smart card technology, and has big players on baord such as Visa, Amex and MasterCard. I wonder if the blunder, came from down under?
YOu know I haven't read such a riveting story in a while. That sounds soooo much like something you'd read out of a book or watch from a movie.
It's really interesting what has been able to happen and *IF* NDS is responsible for this and the death, the big question is WHY? Why risk everything? I guess they're going on the Risk it all and reap the biggest rewards.
And the part in the story saying that piracy helps their business and it's now just coming back to haunt them has me very intrigued. We always hear the RIAA complaining about these P2P services when an album comes out waaay before its supposed to be released.
Come on now, think about it, if you kept better tabs on what you're doing then this won't happen. But it always begs the question in light of this article, is there some truth to this rumour and will we see it come out in this court battle?
If it does come out, I wonder what this will mean for the other companies that do this.
If you're pirating satellite, you're still probably watching the ads!
"And like that
...should be concentrating on instead of Napster. A couple of good triple-damages laws, some rigorous enforcement (featuring rewards for turning in corporate hackers, backed by a good witness-protection program), and so elite flying squads kicking in the doors of corporate labs in Israel (those scanning electron microscopes are neither cheap nor easy to hide, and this problem disappears.
Either that or Newscorp disappears. Either way, a desireable outcome.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
This link might help explore the background of this story.
This is a debate which has been raging in Europe, and especially in the UK for a number of months. Here in the UK, On Digital, later ITV digital, were in direct competition with Rupert Murdoch's SKY satellite services. Yet the suspicion was that millions were being lost by ITV digital by the sale of pirate smart cards, which by the end of the service could be picked up at most car boot sales for about ten pounds, yet would unlock all the premium rate channels for the service. Normally these guys sell dodgy 3rd generation videos, so how did they mange to crack technology which was equivelant in security to the triple DES algorithm?. The following articles from The Guardian offer more information.
How codebreakers cracked the secrets of the smart card and Murdoch security chief linked to TV piracy site.
The Guardian is a left leading broadsheet in the UK which carries influence beyond its half million (UK) circulation figure. Yet it even devoted an editorial to this subject whcih can be read here;
Breaking the code - Piracy on the digital airwaves.
So NDS is owned by the Flash?
Mod point free since 2001
And here I was clicking onto the story thinking it was all about the AUDIOGALAXY satellite...
In the UK there are/were four prominent pay-television services:
ITV Digital shut up shop recently due to financial problems most people have attributed to their overinvestment in football broadcasting rights (my personal belief, having been an ITV Digital customer at one point) is that there was simply a lack of choice of good channels, but that's irrelevant).
Fundamentally, it's worth noting that SECA, the system employed by Canal Plus is also the same system that was employed by onDigital - as noted in this Google cache of Hackwatch. Cracks relevant to Canal Plus were also relevant to onDigital.
In the UK Sky Digital employ the OpenTV system as opposed to SECA. Companies who also follow in this vein are ntl:digital and Telewest Broadband.
This all poses some interesting questions.
Included in the article are conspiracy theories, a suspicious death and a look at the shady characters working for both sides.
ah... the staple of most fun stories that don't go anywhere. I stopped watching X-Files a coupla years ago when it became apparent that there wasn't really much of a coherent larger story being told. Still, post-partum fans who go in for that sort of thing can use this satellite story as a fix, I suppose.
And lets not forget the same Rupert Murdoch has just been allowed to bid for one of the five *main* channels in the UK (channel 5).
Kind of offtopic but the most interesting question posed to me by the whole UK digital TV fiasco is what the hell happened to non-subscription digital TV?
I remember all the hype about how they're planning on closing down non-digital terrestrial transmissions and move everyone onto digital reception (by 2005 was it?). Apparently in Scotland they recently started to advertise a digital decoder without smartcards but the only ones I can see on sale in the UK are subscription based deals.
There were quite a few extra digital channels that were non-subscription (there are even more now itv digital has gone under) so why is nobody selling a normal digital decoder box to watch them? It seems to me the only people with access to these channels are people who paid for ITV/ondigital boxes. Or is it just because I don't live in London or Manchester that we can't buy them.
It's also annoying how my friends in Holland get to watch bbc news 24 for free whereas I pay for it (tv license fees) and can't see it except in a 2" square at 2fps via their website (and I have to pay British Telecom for this pleasure).
Is digital TV going to help define ripoff Britain? I really hope not.
Freedom in America is dying. You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict the future of freedom in America. The hand writing is on the wall: America faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for it because freedom in America is dying. Things are looking very bad for liberty. As many of us are already aware, the DMCA threatens our liberty. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
yeah haw!! The Republic of Texas supports CLIT.
There were mutterings regarding the BBC trying to take on the licenses for digital broadcasting that onDigital/ITV Digital once held. I'm guessing this has something to do with limited throughput on a single multiplex.
All of this appears to have been delayed however, whilst the Broadcasting Commission wait to see if anyone else is interested in purchasing those licences.
This doesn't, however, get around the fact that we still have to pay TV licence fees.
> and can't see it except in a 2" square at 2fps via their website
On the subject of BBC News 24 - I still have my onDigital box. After cancellation ITV Digital said they'd come and collect it, but failed to turn up. The BBC channels are still coming through fine - including News 24. If you have an onDigital box anywhere and want to use it, it's still available for you.
"All of this appears to have been delayed however, whilst the Broadcasting Commission wait to see if anyone else is interested in purchasing those licences."
;)
ahh, waiting for ****echelon auto-munge**** to cough up the backhander eh
On the subject of BBC News 24 - I still have my onDigital box.
yeah this is what I was getting at. The channels are being broadcast but unless you brought an ondigital box you can't actually see them. I was under the impression that the all the UK TV transmission was moving onto digital to free up bandwidth for mobile phone companies. So why can't I find a digital decoder anywhere except with a monthly subscription fee?
I may just be ranting pointlessly, I do live in the South-West so it may be that digital decoders are on sale but not here yet. Any other UK'ers seen a non-ITV/onDigial box on sale?
I kinda suspect that we're gonna end up having to pay the BBC's license fee's and a subscription fee to some digital provider just to get any TV.
Isn't Fox one of the major proponents of Digital Copy protection and CBDTPA?
http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/
Things that make you go hmmm....
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
To wit, who should I despise more? Rupert Murdoch? Or the French?
You can now pick up decoder units for around £100 from places like Currys and Comet. There appear to be 2 separate manufacturers making these; Pace and someone else. These only went on sale during the past month or so.
Additionally there are new televisions available with in-built DV3 digital decoders that will also pick up all free-to-air channels.
When will we learn that the biggest threat to our liberty is not governments or corporations, but *CORRUPTION* of our legal framework and institutions.
Capitalism works very well with a solid legal framework and institutions that make running a business accessible. Without these key ingredients you have a recipe for a third-world country like many South American economies.
Today, Corporations have a lot of access and influence on our legal framework and institutions, so it's not surprising they use their influence to legislate and create bureaucracy advantageous to their interests.
Stop Beating up on Corporations, They employ us...
As much as corporation hating has become popular so has defending corporations. Taking one side or the other does nothing to address the real problem, let alone solve it, insofar as those problems root in the institutions and legal framework.
Arguing does nothing to address Rampant Corruption
This starts with every one of us. We need spread the word that corporation hating does nothing but start a backlash with people who have the same objectives we do, while corporation loving doing nothing to address the problem of rampant corruption. All of us want to preserve what made our economy great, and attack that which threatens the economy and our opportunities.
STRICT Anti-Corruption Measures may save Capitalism
I know campaign finance reform is one tiny start, maybe some of you can clue me on some other great ideas.
(Feel free to copy/rewrite/steal my ideas and call them your own, just try to improve on them)
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
So, which really corrupts -- money, or power?
3
Kuro5hin had an interest article on this...
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/5/28/192548/03
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
this pdf is testimony from an NDS employee who is accused of actually posting the ZIP to DR7.com.
From the article, this is being heard in Federal court in San Francisco. NDS is a UK company, Canal+ is French, and Nagra is Swiss. So, why is this in a US Federal court? Granted, DirecTV and Echostar are US companies, but they are not involved in the suit... yet.
If they use a crackable device, they cant scream blody murder when somebody manages to crack it.
There is a reason why we have PKI and PGP.
Use the crypto Luke!
bruj0
http://securityportal.com.ar
thanks man :)