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Comcast in Court, AT&T Gets Greedy
raindr writes "The Detroit News has this article on how comcast is going after people with modified Cable TV boxes.These fines (170k) seem a bit much to me." They apparantly send out a "bullet" to deactivate modded boxes. In other coax news,Shynedog writes "Boston.com is running a story about AT&T broadband users in the Northeast who are complaining about the unfair price hike that has been imposed on subscribers who own their own modems.
It the wake of recent customer complaints, AT&T has started offering coupons to offset the monthly increase, but only for the next six months."
1. Steal
2. Get caught
3. Get punished
Yeah sounds about right.
Who run Barter Town?
I wonder, those 10 subscribers they are suing, who didn't respond to calls. Are they dead? Never existed? Cats? see http://www.geocities.com/flutocracy/cablemodem.htm
SSL Certificate
The "magic bullet" is basically malformed code that the descrambling computer chokes on. It can't hurt your VCR, because your VCR doesn't descramble anything.
Society changes. It is influenced by events and technology around it and, in turn, drives technology and events. What was once novel and unique can easily become a common part of life in that society. The trivial can become irreplaceable.
At one point in time, the telephone was often labled a trivial toy of limited use and predicted to fade into obscurity. Now, the telephone is a key tool for everything from business and employment to emergency service to communications with geographically distant friends and family. It is an indispensible part of many modern societies.
One can live without a telephone. But you will find yourself seriously limited by it unless you move to an environment where such technology isn't commonly used. You NEED phone access.
Neal Stephenson makes an interesting observation in his article Mother Earth Mother Board. Bell sent the world on a technological devolved shunt. For a time, the world's telecommunications technology was digital, ableit of limited capacity. There were some theories towards increasing that capacity but they hadn't panned out (although they are actually the basis of technology being used today). And then Bell had us all going to analog. Its taken us centuries to get back to digital.
And now we have the Internet. It has the potential to not only absorb the roles of the telephone, but push the realms of communication and data (if it hasn't already). But much of that relies on broadband.
And because of that, the same concerns which have driven the telecomunications industry through its analog telephone days will continue to drive it well in the the Internet age. What has made telephone service important and ensured that it would be available to all (within some reason) will also eventually drive broadband access.
We subscribe to Roadrunner + TW's basic cable in Bradenton, FL. One day we get our bill and the cable portion has jumped from ~$12 to over $40. I call, they say we're getting premium cable service, they've run a system audit, they're charging us what they should have charged us all along.
I'm like, "Say what?" You suddenly decide to give us and charge us for service we never ordered? Take it off our bill.
TW Rep: "I can't do that. You're enjoying the premium service and must pay for it."
Back and forth, no supervisor around, I call back the next day. TW assumption is that we have climbed the pole and removed a filter. I haven't. Our neighbors are in the their 70s and probably haven't either. I finally get bumped far enough up the TW customer "service" chain to get the charge removed, but not until after I file a (still unanswered) complaint with the FL Dept. of Consumer Affairs does the excess charge actually come off our bill.
The installer who comes out the next day to put on the correct filter says this happens all the time, that the day before he was out at the house of another suspected "cable pirate" who was in his 80s, in a wheelchair, and on a respirator, who sure hadn't been climbing poles, and had been paying the overcharge for months until his son came to visit and noticed his oversized cable bill.
The installer said the filters were often defective, that this was the problem more often than people stealing cable service, but that the company just assumed everyone was a thief and charged them no matter what.
I talked to the system's marketing manager. He told me almost all of the people who got extra service were stealing it on purpose, which contradicted the installer's comments. I don't know who to believe, but I am suspicious.
At least in FL I have a choice of 2 cable Internet service providers and a dozen DSL providers, and it's far enough south that sat TV is clear. In MD (my other residence) my only broadband Internet alternative is Comcast, and they suck so badly I endure a phone modem here, and we're in a tree-lined valley where satellite TV won't work.
Too bad FCC Chairman Powell loves and trusts cable TV companies so much that he doesn't mind them holding defacto monopolies over bradband Internet in much of the country. He ought to go to work for one of them if he loves them so much, and get off the public payroll, since he's not willing to lift a finger to help the citizens who pay his salary keep the cable TV operators from screwing them.
- Robin
This is analog cable they are talking about here. Calling it "code" makes it sound much more complicated than it actually is. Not that it could harm a VCR (or TIVO) anyway...
I remember the last time the "magic bullet" issue came up. This was several years ago, and it was TCI (the company AT&T bought out) doing it, IIRC.
Shortly after news of the coup hit the press, I started hearing about "magic bullet filters." They were sold under various names (both vague and unabashedly direct!), and were a shockingly simple notch filter.
That's it -- just a little circuit and resistor to keep the signal levels in safe limits for your pirate converter box. What I just read sounds very similar to what I remember:
- TCI went to General Instrument (the cable box manufacturer), and said "Okay, if you wanted to pirate cable, how would you do it?"
- General Instrument got hold of some of the "aftermarket" equipment, and reverse-engineered it.
- General Instrument figures out a signal they can inject into the cable system that will not affect 'legal' boxes, but will overdrive sections of the aftermarket chips -- thus doing irreperable damage, and rendering the cable box inoperative.
- TCI injects this signal into their system, and everyone who complains about dead cable receives a rather shocking bill. (If I remember news reports properly, it was $500 - $1000 and a promise to behave. It's been a while.)
Memory is a bit rusty, but that's pretty much how I remember it happening. I can't believe this old trick still works...(We're two R-E steps out, now... first the pirates were figuring out the scrambling and getting into "test mode," the second was General Instrument figuring out what differences there were between the 'official' systems and the aftermarket ones.)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
errr, no.
Cable fraud is a federal criminal offense. You can go to jail for a long time if you commit the offense. Moreover, it is most likely not a breach of contract, since the folks who were stealing the cable likely never signed a contract saying "I will not try to access more programming than the programming for which I am paying." The cable company has no need to make people sign contracts like that precsiely b/c stealing cable access *is* a crime.
I am under a NDA, thus the Anonymous post...
Several points here (and in the original post) are wrong.
1. The complainers in the NE region are not the reason for these coupons. The coupons were part of the deal from the beginning. In fact not all areas are receiving coupons, some are getting automatic credit on their statement. This is not due to complaints, this was setup at the onset and was due to *state* laws that require 6mo's prior notification. They gave the notice, the did the price increase, and they gave credit.
2. People who use "rogue" IPs (intentionally or not) are already being disabled by the NOC. They are found, disabled, and must call up to have their account re-enabled.
Most areas have already been pushed to a 256k upstream cap, some other areas will be moved later.
But what I will not let slip by is the manipulation of language and law to create a crime where none exists
5 3. htm
0 5. htm
47 USC 553 and 605 make cable theft a federal crime.
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/47usc5
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/47usc6
I give your post a 9.5 on style, but I'm afraid you receive a 2.0 on content due to the inappropriate manipulation of language.
> (anonmously)
Not.
You are hitting their web server. If they want, they can trace that back to your ISP and the court can ask that ISP who you are.
99 times out of a hundered, the ISP will know.