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Toledo Uncappers Getting Shafted
Jacob writes "Broadband Reports has a well written article detailing the plight of those Ohio cable modem users who found themselves facing gun wielding FBI agents for uncapping their cable modems. Buckeye Cable has clearly crossed a line and the tech community and consumer groups should be all over them like a wet, angry rag. Kudos to Broadband Reports for not letting this thing die." Granted, those who were indicted were violating their service contracts, but having their posessions siezed by FBI agents is overkill.
Just curious, can this be done on DSL too?
...like I did. Only thing you have to worry about here is US$300 for going one GB over the monthly limit. Connection's fast as hell which allows one to reach that limit in minutes.
Since when do armed agents of the law sieze private property without the owner having been convicted of any crime?
What a sad state of affairs.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Computer crimes like this simply astound me...Its not the physical crime that shocks me its the punishment. What did they do that was so dead wrong? They in essence gained access to some extra bandwidth in which they were allowed to use. Consequences should immediate termination of the account end of story. WTF is wrong with society today. I don't know maybe I sound juvenile but punishment for a virtual crime such as this seems like a total overkill...
.[[erax0r]].
I think we can add the Founding Fathers to that as well.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
The only Toledo cable company is owned by a family of lunatic bastards (Block Communications) who also own the only Toledo newspaper. They will never see a dime of my money for broadband! I use a local wireless provider and get about 5Mbit up and down for the same price as Buckeye's broadband. I understand that Time/Warner is coming into the area. Good for them! They will put a stop to the Block monopoly.
Since a similar article like this was posted to /. before and I brought up the same point I'll bring it up again. Where in the article did they state that the FBI agents came in with guns? It's just sensationalism and it does not belong. Now I know someone is going to claim that it's SOP for agents to bust in with guns however it is not. Instead of just rewriting my whole rant here... I'll just add a link to my previous /. comment...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=44074&cid=4590 690
-Cardoe
r u mad??? The freakin' FBI in your house coz you uncapped your modem?? Sheesh! :|
While I can well imagine that being woken up by the FBI knocking down your door can throw your whole day off, I don't really have any sympathy for them. They were breaking the law, probably in more ways than one. From the fact that we know they were stealing bandwidth, we can assume that a) they were all pretty computer-savvy and b) they were transferring large amounts of data. Sounds to me like they were pirates and hackers, trading in illicit files, virii, mp3s, and hacking tools like BackOffice and PacketSniffer. Hopefully they've learned their lesson and this will serve as a warning to other criminals. The Internet is better off without them.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
"Man, I can't believe office [insert local cop name here] stopped by for going 8 over the speed limit"
And I'm sure he called for lots of backup and confiscated your car, too, right? The problem is not that the law was broken; the problem is that the tactics used were those akin to what would be used against a terrorist, when in reality the suspect was nothing more that a petty thief.
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
Were they really? I'd be curious to know if the service contract mentions anything about modifying your system to increase bandwidth. If it doesn't, can they be prosecuted for anything? My first instinct is "they were taking away bandwidth from the rest of the community and should be punished." But is that even accurate? I have Optimum Online cable, and I understand that they don't cap their modems (I've even hit download speeds of 700kbps/sec). If a competitor's standard is not capping, it's gotta be hard for the ISP to prove damages.
Of course, that the FBI got involved at all is an embarassment. No wonder that DC sniper took so long to find: the FBI is too busy holding the dicks of mega-corporations while they pee on the little guy.
c-hack.com |
they are making examples of these folks. Try modding your x-box, downloading mp3s, violating TOS, cable theft,etc. and maybe you will be the next example.
Certain entities don't like it when you break their rules. In one sense you are not paying for their service, in another sense you are not stopping them from selling it to the neighbors. But, I don't think they would have been caught if they weren't causing some problems by using excessive bandwidth.
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
No. But it's arguable that Gore would have been just as bad in a different direction.
Dog is my co-pilot.
It will be very interesting to see how long it is before Bucksnort..er, I mean, Buckeye loses the remaining client base it has. I am sure everyone is in agreement that sending in armed FBI agents over a breach of service contract is overkill. I doubt the intent was to scare away any other customers they have (and potentially could have had, because they overreact. But that's exactly what's going to happen.
What do they do if your bill is two days late? That would be on my mind, even though I tend to pay a hair early just to be on the safe side.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
OK to all the sladhotters stating "They deserve what they got, they are thieves! plain and simple" TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF. I be nearly 90% maybe more of you have "stolen" something regarding computers multiple times. You've downloaded mp3's for sure...for example. How bout when the fbi comes knocking at your door for that mp3 you just downloaded? GET REAL.
.[[erax0r]].
Does anyone else find this just a little strange? I doubt anyone achieved anywhere near 2.5MBps, and even if they had, I don't think $11,000 is the price to pay for it! And really, 16 hours times 2.5 MBps, thats... 144 GB. What's he transferring anyways? No home user can use that much bandwidth.
This guy got screwed by a litigation-happy company. I hope he wins.
These people were stealing a VERY valuable commodity.. bandwidth. For those of you who don't work near the ISP industry, bandwidth is --VERY EXPENSIVE--. $200 per megabit per month is an absolute STEAL (to get that rate, you need to be buying it on the DS3 level). $400 per meg is more realistic on lower levels.
Cable companies simply cannot afford to let people steal this stuff. Quite literally, someone who is uncapping a cable modem and mooching 10 megabits of bandwidth could easily be costing them several thousand dollars a month.
I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy for these people. What they did not only violated their agreement, but it cost someone else a LOT of money. Stealing is stealing, folks. And unlike the arguments that may apply to software piracy, this really does directly affect someone else's pocketbook.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
I think companies are going to take advantage of people until the people wake up. We are due for a revolution but not to break away from the government. We need a "corporate revolution". One where the world, not just America, stands up to Big Business and tell the to go to hell. They might buy government support but if __WE__ are not giving them the money they will not be spending it.
I miss small "Mom and Pop" shops they are disappearing at a alarming rate. I think we need to be more aware of this and support your local "Mom and Pop" shop even though CVS might have a better deal.
I always support the little guy in my town. I will go to the local butcher shop before I go to "corporate grocery" store.
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
Ah well, so much for the right not to be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
Seriously...
I am curious if they had used their own cable modem instead of a leased modem. Then, that would have killed any hacking charge and since this is not CATV service, there is no law against upcapping.
Another thing to think about is that the VCR and other computers and data were taken where they had no involvement in the crime. Generally under the forfeture laws, they may take items that are used in the crime or purchased with the proceeds of the crime.
This is just done to intimidate and scare others.
Fight Spammers!
*cough cough* third party *cough cough*
:)
I hated gore more than bush but that doesn't say much (didn't vote last time). If anything Gore vs Bush proved that America is fucked either way. Worried about throwing away your vote? Hah, jokes on you - either party is going to corn-hole you good, it's just a matter of what position.
Something to consider next election: PLEASE vote for who you think would actually make a good president. If you can't find a good third party candidate, vote for Wile E. Coyote. Voting for a bad candidate because the other guy is worse is NOT helping America. Something to think about.
okay, I'll get of my soapbox now
This is simply a case of corporate greed. These guys uncapped their modems and the company sends in the FBI. The article stated that at least $250,000 in damages have to be incurred before they FBI can be invoked in local affairs. I don't see how a handful of people can possibly cause that much damage in such a little time. The article states that the one man only uncapped his modem to 2.5 mbps. That is a reasonable speed for a cable modem. If someone simply utilizes a service that they are given to a greater potential, I don't see how this is a "crime" worthy of FBI agents arresting you as well as confiscating your computers. As far as damages incurred, that is total BS. The ISP has a certain amount of bandwidth availiable no matter if 100 people share it or one person hogs it. It may be wrong to use it all for youself, but it doesn't cause any monitary damages to the company. If you are using up something that would be accounted for under normal conditions, you shouldn't be arrested by the FBI. Perhaps disconnected, but not arrested. This is a simple case of the ISP showing their greed as well as their corporate muscle to use the political system as they see fit. Corporate control of our government is, IMO, what plauges our political system the most. This is America...we are better than this.
SIGFAULT
Yes.. well...
Dont'forget that, in some cases, this is a matter of
a) No contractual speed limit
b) Speed limit is set by a setting in the modem the person OWNS
c) Nobody said NOT to do it.
So although you might think it's 'obvious" that the cable company wont'like it... that is grounds for terminating service, not having the FBI show up.
Do you live in Florida? (I'm ashamed to admit I do.) And the
bozos in the election dept still don't have a clue. You were worried about the 'greens'. Considering that the green party siphoned off enough votes from Gore to give Bush the election guess you were right.
cable modem users who found themselves facing gun wielding FBI agents
Hate to break it to ya, but FBI agents usually wear their sidearms even when off duty, and having them out when raiding a residence is standard (and smart, too - don't want agents being shot while they scramble for a weapon.
The gun wielding thing was added to the original article for sensationalism - the linked article in the original writeup didn't make a single mention of guns.
Sheesh... the outrage here over SOP (on behalf of people clearly guilty of theft of services). Bandwidth costs $$$ and I hope they get in a nice amount of trouble for what they did.
Exactly. Just like if I stole some twinkies from my local store so the police create a dragnet and shut down 12 city blocks.
Its called Excessive Force.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
You obviously don't care about item one, but if item two doesn't bother you, you suck. You just wait until you commit a crime (er, I mean, are accused of committing a crime) and see if you get my sympathy.
Here is Dallas Attbi.com craps out every time it's windy or raining. The fools have no way of figuring out the cable leg is dead other than schedule a service call then wait for a barage of service calls to alert the local people that something is wrong.
They are stealing my time. Get another supplier? Tough they have a monopoly given them when they testified at the FCC hearing that thy would not increase rates if the requirements for having a second provider got eliminated.
Guess what happened within a year. Did these guys go to jail for perjury, Think not.
Help fight continental drift.
Most DSL ISPs that I'm familiar with cap data rates in their Redback routers rather than in the modem, which puts it safely (for them) beyond the customer's reach.
utter rubbish
Impounding your car for speeding? For the Americans out there, vote libertarian and support the ACLU. I'm afraid for my children.
Fear is the mind killer.
Techinically, it is legal for the FBI to do what it did. It might have made better PR to have called, or had a friendly "chat", instead of going in. Sure, the cops can give you a ticket for jaywalking, but in doing that they could be ignoring the maniac speeding 100 in a 40 zone. The FBI surely has better things to do, doesn't it?
I have a question for any Toledo Buckeye subscribers, do you actually own the modem? If you do, can you get charged for hacking your own equipment?
Sure, stealing bandwidth is theft, so ya, slap the perps with that crime...
And I'd like to know how they figured out $250,000 in "extra" bandwidth used.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
"No officer, I didn't uncap my modem speed, it must have been that virus that has been going around..."
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
Once again, we see an example of people doing something that is relatively harmless and given an unusually strict punishment simply because it is labelled as "cyber crime." The people who create some laws seem to have little understanding of the technologies that we use and their lack of knowledge is leading to some sort of irrational fear of any individual who commits any sort of crime using technology that they don't seem to understand. However, what makes this so disturbing is that modem capping was not said to be illegal in the article. It was referred to as "not legal." So has there been any legislation against this? Anytime? Anywhere?
And of course, even if there were then we should be disturbed. Was this "crime" any reason to confiscate so much of the offender's equpiment? Even a VCR was taken, but strangely, an XBox gaming console was left behind. I'm not sure what exactly it is that's motivating these steps in the wrong direction. Is it some sort of irrational fear that leads to those that commit computer crimes being put in the same category as terrorists (which they have been, BTW) even if their crime is simply that of "stealing" bandwidth? Ignorance may be bliss for those at Buckeye Cablesystems and other corporations and the governments that make laws protecting them, but it certainly isn't for the rest of us.
This is bad news, people. It seems that if you're committing anything that can be labelled "cybercrime" you can be given absurdly strict punishments just because your crime has that label.
I'm glad the FBI puts so much effort into stopping people from uncapping their cable modems, instead of ohh, say preventing aircraft from flying into buildings.
FLR
if they were estimated to have stolen $11k each I think that they should have gotten what they did.
There is no way they could have stollen 11 thousand dollars worth of bandwidth in such a short time. A T1 is around $600-1000 a month so the uncappers would have to uncap for at least a whole year in order to steal that much bandwidth. Wirtz said that he uncapped for about 16 hours, which is wrong in the first place but FAR from 11 thousand dollars.
They deserve punishment but this is too excessive.
So how come I've never heard any stories about
FBI agents busting down the doors of Spammers?
Surely spammers with a 28.8 modem waste more resources than people that tweak a cable modem.
For the record, I have never downloaded a mp3 (or any other music file) off of the internet which the copyright holder did not make available for download.
OK, there is exactly one exception. I once downloaded an mp3 of the extended danse mix of "Say it Again" by The Danse Society; then again, this particular song has never been placed on CD and is long out of print.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Welcome to America, the land where the poor and the weak are punished, the powerful and rich rewarded.
Where is my (-1, Factually Incorrect) option?
Believe it or not we have civil forfeiture laws in this country. Even though in this case the stuff was probably used for evidence, the police can actually come in and take your stuff if they think it was used in a crime and never give it back even if you are found not guilty.
These are routinely used against drug offenders (who haven't been found guilty). I understand they have also been used prosecute suspected drag racers and DUIs in NYC (they take their cars and sell them at auction - guilty or not).
The reason they can do this is that if you are found not guilty in criminal court it doesn't mean you aren't guilty of the civil crime. The problem is that they can sell your stuff without so much as a trial. Its ridiculous.
Uncapping refers to increasing the speed between your network device and your ISP's network device because this is generally the bottleneck. At any given time, your ISP generally has extra internet backbone bandwidth to spare, and unless your computer is _REALLY_ old, it's usually just sitting around waiting for data.
With DSL, there is a direct physical line from the subscriber to the ISP. By capping the maximum speed their network device will exchange data on that line, the ISP can effectively control your net access speed.
With cable, it's different. There is a single wire (a loop actually) that runs through the neighborhood and each user taps into that line. A certain frequency block on that wire is set aside for cable, and the bandwidth provided by that frequency block is shared among all the cable modems connected to it. When you hear DSL ads bashing cable companies for delivering shared net access that slows down when too many people in your neighborhood sign on, this is what they're talking about.
Up until a bit ago, this was very valid criticism. Typically, one node could provide 30Mbps to a neighborhood, and a single cable modem could snatch up a max of 10Mbps of that for its own use. It was a lot like being plugged into a hub. When usage spiked, you were in collision city. However, cable providers have started sending out configuration files to cable modems telling them to only snag a certain amount of bandwidth. This allows them to provide tiered service on a shared medium. What the people mentioned in the article did was send their modems an alternate configuration file saying "Hey! I know I (the cable company) previously told you that you could only use 128kbps of bandwidth, but now you can take as much as you want up to 2.5Mbps!" Since the cable company victims only did this when they "wanted to transfer large amounts of data quickly," they generated usage spikes way beyond normal, especially considering how much bandwidth they allocated to themselves.
So why crack down so hard on someone whose actions didn't cause any real and lasting damage to the company? The simple answer is that broadband ISPs are in the business of charging as much as they can get away with, and trying to get you to use as little as possible. Their business models depend upon subscribers buying "high speed internet access" and not using it. Simply put, if you're really a "power user" and want to do any of the things you see on "lightning fast internet access" commercials such as downloading digital video or transferring large files, broadband ISPs don't want you on their network. You're belong to a class of customers that uses what it pays for, and not the vast majority who just chat online and check their email twice a day. The fact that they could scare others into lower usage levels by bringing in intimidating government forces was just a plus.
The only difference between this and the (RI|MP)AA sueing their fans or the BSA sending out "You have ten days to buy our software or we'll audit you and possibly take legal action," letters is that cable companies are prosecuting based on the contents misguided contracts and the (RI|MP)AA and BSA are prosecuting based on the contents of misguided US law.
if they were estimated to have stolen $11k each I think that they should have gotten what they did.
I estimate your post just cased $250,000 in emotional distress to the people you're talking about. What? Estimates can be wrong?
I very much agree that sending in the FBI (that in itself shocks....local P.D. couldn't have handled this?), weapons drawn, was abuse of authority. There should be some ramifications for the people that authorized this resopnse.
HOWEVER.....I don't want this to be just another situation where someone knowingly breaks the law, steals (it's bandwidth, but it DOES cost money), and then Slashdot readers start screaming "Free them! Fight the Power! Stand up to the man!". These guys knew what they were doing. Their ISP should not only drop them, but they should face legal sanction of SOME kind. Not prison, obviously, but a hefty fine and some community service time at least.
The way they were busted was indeed extreme. Don't go to the other end of the scale and insist there should be no punishement at all. By calling it a "virtual crime", you seem to mock the idea that it was a crime at all. It was, and proper punishement is still deserved. Only the scale of the reaction and the level of punishement should be called into question here.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
here we get 1 Gbit/s for only ~$30,000/year :D
(cwru)
IANAL but...
Could you make a case for entrapment? This sounds very similar to putting a kid in a candy store and telling him to to take any, then leaving, only to go watch the room on a survailance camera with a cop in the next room.
Who the hell came up with the idea to put the bandwidth controls on the users end of the conection, in fact in hardware the user may own? It sounds like asking for trouble to me...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
It isn't just America. Nobel Prize winning novelist Anatole France once wrote about French justice that The Law in all its majesty forbids equally the rich and the poor from sleeping under a bridge. The quote is applicable to most countries.
FreeSpeech.org
So, if one were to manipulate a bank so that they had a million dollars now, since that is "virtual" it shouldn't be illegal?
By that measure, most of what Enron did was "virtual". Insider Trading and stock price manipulation is "virtual".
Pointing a gun at someone when the pointer has no intention of firing is a "virtual" crime. There's no assault or endangerment, it's "virtual".
Okay, these guys 'stole' something. So charge them with some petty crime and send them on their way. It's not like they stole all the extra bandwidth, setup their own free DVD web site and pirated Harry Potter 2 24/7 for months on end.
IMHO, they should have just had their service cut off. It shouldn't take long to figure out some joker is sucking down way more bandwidth than they've been allocated. Oh wait, there I go again expecting people to be competent at what they do.
Capitalism is a system of economics, it shouldn't be a way of life.
so one of them uncapped to 100/100. The bandwith of a T1 is 1.554mbs. The most a cable modem will probably get is 10/10. That's a DS3. That's more than $600/mo.
Nope, 'excessive force' is when they smash your face in the process of arresting you for stealing the twinkies. If the police want to shut down 12 city blocks to apprehend you it might be poor judgement, but it ain't excessive force.
A while back near here (central NC) some poor turkey was pulled over by the local sherr'f depptiy because he was driving a truck with a stolen lawn mower or some such in the back. Said master criminal ran into the woods to get away. Unfortunately for him a van full of SWAT team types on their way to a training class saw the flashing lights & pulled over. Called their buddies in another van and a K9 unit that was also headed to the training class. Borrowed a helicopter from the highway patrol that just happened to be completing repairs at an airport nearby. Finally the couple dozen cops, deputy dawg, and bear in the sky flushed a very scared petty thief out of the woods. If I were him I'd have been peeing in my pants too, wondering if they had mistaken me for an escaped child murderer or CEO or some other completely vile creature to be spending this many resources on hauling my butt out of the woods. Moral of the story - it wasn't excessive force, just excessive zeal on the part of a bunch of cops who decided they'd rather chase a bad guy than go to some ol' training class.
When I did a network install of my gateway last year I used a static IP address since dhcp didn't work for whatever reason. I then forgot to change it afterwards.
...
Living in a share household bills sometimes went unpaid and Optus@Home 'disconnected' our service, meaning they disabled the dhcp account. We continued to get internet access for the next 6 months until someone finally tweaked that we hadn't got any bills for a while and called Optus. Boy were they mad, but at least we only got billed for the 6 months (honesty is not always the best policy kiddies).
All this crap, same with uncapping modems, could easily be prevented by the ISPs. If it's such a huge problem for them, why don't they take steps to prevent it happening? Insurance companies wont pay up if you forget to lock your car and it gets stolen
:wq
... if the IT dept. at Buckeye wasn't a bunch of inept mouthbreathers, it wouldn't have been possible on their service either.
Or if they'd sprung a few bux for a "subscriber management" box. Think "router/firewall with per-user filters, traffic control, and rapid configuration from the terminals in front of the NOC phone operators".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It sounds like this guy is the victim of abuse by a local government official. When that happens, it's a job for the FBI. He's in pain now, but if the FBI investigates and determines that local officials have overstepped their bounds by destroying the guy's business for having commited an offense that should probably result in a small monetary fine, then the local goverment official could actually be prosecuted. Following conviction (or even following acquital, as in the OJ case) there could be civil penalties. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they do grind.
I can't help but be reminded of Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard. In real life, the Dukes could have the FBI take him out.
The same thing has happened in real life with a lot of cases, most noteably civil rights abuses in the South where local governments committed crimes against Blacks.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In case no one here noticed (and it appears no one has), the Lame [Duck] Congress just passed the Homeland Security Act. It was originally 35 pages when it was reviewed by committee. While the Congress was away for the election break, someone added another 453 pages of pure pork.
"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation," the leader of another country once wrote. "We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland."
That was Adoph Hitler, writing about creation of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.
Hey, fuckwit, the FBI is supposed to be dealing with serious crime -- serial killers, serial rapists, rapists, killers, terrorists, child molesters, etc. Not busting some schmuck for uncapping a cable modem. Fucking moron. The state should not waste valuable resources enforcing contracts. That money should be spent stopping real crime. Enforcing contracts should be the last priority. And when we do use the state to enforce them, there's no need for the FBI to get involved. Since when has violating a contract been a criminal offense? Sorry, but if you put a device in my home and I pay for it, I'm going to take the liberty to do whatever the fuck I want with it; if that violates some contract, its hardly a criminal matters. If you don't like it, you can cancel the contract.
Rather than simply cancelling these guys service, this ISP had to make a mountain out of a molehill and waste our taxpayer dollars arresting people for something which isn't even as bad as speeding (when you speed 60mph down a local street, someone can get killed; who exactly can get killed by uncapping a cable modem?).
Copyright, patent, trademark, trade-secret, and defamation laws are just tools for the rich and powerful to use against the poor and powerless; they've been corrupted from their original intent, in which they were to be of sparse scope and duration and used only to promote progress, to some idiotic theory that people have the right to own information. All current IP laws are unconstitutional, as are the retroactive extensions of copyright. These laws should be rewritten to drastically scale back both their scope and duration. 90% of the things which are patented today, for example, shouldn't be because they are trivial non-sense. Organisms shouldn't be patentable, nor should genes, nor anything having to do with life. Business methods or models shouldn't patentable. And many "inventions" simply shouldn't get a patent because they're useless or because they're trivial modifications of existing technology.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
The loses could not be anywhere near what they are claiming.. Here's the way I see it..
.0875kbytes/sec slowdown per violator (assuming they were all using it at the same time and maxxed out their own cable lines). You also have to assume that the CM companys outgoing pipes are already saturated, if they were not, the loss to everyone else is nothing. Again, this is bandwidth the company is already paying for regardless.
The cable provider has a certain amount of bandwidth they provide their customers to the outside world. This is what they pay for. They pay that amount regardless of WHO is using it and when. The only loses the cable company should be able to claim is from the customers who cancelled their services because they were not getting expected rates and it can be proved these rates were lower because of a direct result of what these 11 people were doing. That is a very hard thing to prove. Compare the cancels/month directly related to bandwidth concerns before, during, and after these offenders were uncapping. If they are no different, there is no loses.
Even if they were originally capped at 1.5/128. The most you could really get out of a CM is what? 5mbit/500kbit maybe? The have the potential to get roughly just over 3 times what they were paying for. Divide this extra 3.5mbits among say 5000 subscribers and you get a potential loss of 700bit/sec per customer or roughly
Okay its late for me and my math may be off so please be easy if I made a dumb mistake and fell free reply with a recalc with your estimates if I am grossly underestimating something.
I am not saying what they did was justified, but the damage estimates are WAY off..
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
That seems like a reasonable punishment. He knew what he was doing was wrong, and the punishment made it so he couldn't do it again.
Not really. He could do it with another cable provider easily enough - and the first didn't really give him any reason not to. Sounds like the cable company didn't know about his uncapped modem until it "burned out" (did he put in a service call, resulting in the discovery?).
Merely cancelling his account seems like not enough punishment for the offense, really - he should have to pay for the stolen bandwidth at his normal rate. That would be a fitting punishment - pay for what he took.
This is probably the best AC troll I've seen all year.
Congratulations.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
After articles like this I would think more people would get rid of their hard drive and run off a RAM drive. 2GB RAM is enough for most of my computing needs, and all my personal files could be burnt to CD and stored in a secure location. No forensic evidence other than network traffic... Talk about sticking it to the RIAA.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
Sheesh... the outrage here over SOP (on behalf of people clearly guilty of theft of services). Bandwidth costs $$$ and I hope they get in a nice amount of trouble for what they did.
So how would you feel about FBI agents storming into your house, arresting you, and taking all your clothes for jaywalking across a street? I'd have had no complaints if the users had just been disconnected, or even if the ISP had billed them for damages, but this kind of action is so out of proportion to the offense it's absurd (and frightening).
yeah right...but then they seized your car for going 8 MPH over the limit, and then went to your home and seized your wife's car, and your kid's bikes. "Same old, same old" in your neck of the woods, maybe. Not in mine. And it shouldn't be in yours.
What the *FSCK* does a VCR have to do with broadband theft? Evidence? Evidence of what?
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
So what happens when somebody uses, say, the recent Microsoft IE hole to create a web button that (while also doing something plausable) silently snifs whether the user is on a cable modem and uncaps it if so?
You could easily find the bulk of the subscribers on the cable company's line with uncapped modems through no fault of their own.
Of course the FBI could go after the owner(s) of the sites(s) with the link. (But suppose their sites had it because it had been installed by a nimda variant, so it wasn't THEIR fault, either?)
Or suppose somebody constructs and launches an email virus that, as its payload, uncaps cable modems? (Probably disguised as an add for faster internet access, ha ha.) Similar story, but no web sites to chase. (HOW MANY new viruses per day? HOW MANY authors actually caught?)
Whack-a-mole will only work for a little while.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
yes and no,
Although people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, there is often need to collect the evidence to verify the facts of the case. If you go out and shoot someone, and it gets caught on video tape, they're going to find all your guns, round them up and send them off to some balistics lab for testing. You woun't see me argue with that. It makes sense and part of me sleeps a little better at night knowing that this is the way it is.
A lot of federal laws cover severe things that need elevated levels of attention.
The same would go for someone hacking into a bank. If they catch traffic from your computer hacking into a bank and stealing money, wether or not you're doing it, they need to take your computer. It needs to be analyzed and the people responsibe tried.
The true travisty here is accusing these uncappers of a Federal crime, this is realistically at most a misdemeanor. What the users did was blantantly wrong, I'm sure there's some 'no tamper' clause in one of the service contracts.
I think it would have been far more appropriate to black-list these people from local broadband, maybe the local Cable co work together with the local dsl providers, make it so these people can't get back online. That should be a deterrant enough.
There was absolutely no need to drag the feds in for this, it's little more than publicity stunt and a huge waste of our money.
What laws need more than anything else they can never have, true common sense, if they had that ninety-nine percent of the court systems would be pointless.
Yeah but wasn't JFK president then? I don't think the W is going to be interested in civil rights cases so much as coporate rights cases. Different perspective.
I knew the Block twins in middle school. They would tell their classmates about how they liked to put their pet mice in toy rockets and send them up. Of course, they didn't land too well. So if they had a hand in bring the FBI in on this, it wouldn't be their first sadistic act. There was a funny article a couple years back in the New York Observer about how one of the twins (think it was Paul - who I've heard is in charge of the Internet operation while Alan runs the Tolede Blade newspaper) has spent years commuting back and forth between Toledo and New York because he believes he has a better chance of finding a woman to love him here. The angle of the article was that despite being worth northwards of $100 million, he hadn't found one as of date of publication. If he's as awkward and unlikeable as an adult as he was as a kid, that's no surprise.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
It seems to me there are two important facts in this case:
First, that a powerful family is able to call in favors from the FBI and others in local law enforcement. Particularly stunning are the details of the unequal treatment of offenders (i.e. George Runner).
In a free, democratic society, those in government would have someone to answer to if among tens of thousands of people who committed the same crime, many were given wildly different responses depending on their background (i.e. ethnicity, religion, relationship to wealthy families).
Second, and this is something I hear a lot about lately, that the FBI is apparently empowered to s ieze property practically at random (his Windows CD's?) and hang on to it indefinitely (i.e. Wirtz's possessions "may never be returned"?).
In a free and democratic society, there is oversight regarding what law enforcement officers can take away from you - they have to have a legitimate reason for every article taken, and they absolutely have to return it promptly after their need is concluded.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
So the FBI only gets involved if there's 250k lost. The ISP "estimated" just about exactly that for 23 people. The FBI turns up and finds nothing at 6 of the places, and they don't get indictments of 10 more. So the ISP seems to have actually lost at most 77k, and they fraudulently claimed be a substantial margin to have lost enough to warrant FBI help.
Claiming that you've lost a lot of money when you've in fact failed to be paid a lot of money for services you accidentally provided beyond your contract is inherently somewhat suspect, and you should be in serious danger of legal action against you if you turn out not to have been due as much as you claimed.
I feel for the American public - the next time some terrorist attack happens, won't everyone feel wonderful that instead of working to prevent a real threat to the country, the FBI is hard at work persecuting people who have stolen bandwidth.
I don't blame the FBI, I rather suspect that once an official complaint is filed, their hands are tied and they must investigate no matter how mentally-challenged that complaint is.
It's a wonder the FBI isn't called out every time someone bypasses their power meter or water main too! Maybe it's time to call them if someone is watering their flowers during a drought.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Jeez. I guess I was lucky to get my police scanner back the night I was cuffed and stuffed for egging pedestrians on mischief night.
Intelligent Life on Earth
OptOnline in NY has 10 down/1 up, with no caps. Box set at The Wiz comes with a brand-new cable modem, new 10/100 NIC, 50 feet of cable cable, 20 feet of cat5, and a year's worth of access. Total cost is just over $300.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
That was Adoph Hitler, writing about creation of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.
:)
Your point being?
I'm critical of invoking the Nazis as a metaphor for every excess of government, but in truth the immediate choice of the words "homeland security" made me squirm. It's much like his dad's "New World Order." I don't know if there's any awareness of the echoes of the past. Those who did not study the past are doomed to quote it?
There is nothing wrong with Germans, which is precisely why we need to take seriously their example of nationalism turned ugly. As in the McCarthy experience, we have seen these things get away from us before.
Many of those who voted for or supported the bill have good intentions. Hell is paved with these.
Actually, that analogy is skewed.
It's more like you bought a CD player at Best Buy, it was broken, they wouldn't take it back, they wouldn't refund your money and the only thing you had to do to get it working properly is break a "no user serviceable parts" seal and reseat a connector. Then the thugs burst through your door and charge you with an EULA violation.
In my opinion, not offering a refund after 3 months of completely unuseable service without a fix in sight is theft.
For the record, that part of town is too far from the CO for DSL, and the PS2 won't work with Satellite, dialup is too slow for the game in question and ATTBI is a legal monopoly in the area. As is Bellsouth, as every DSL provider resells their service and is dependent on Bell's infrastructure and engineers to get up off their lazy asses to actually bring a house live within 6 months of an order.
He *is* looking in to cellular broadband right now, however, as that's being beta tested in our area. 500ms ping doesn't look too good for fragging, though.
Of course he could sell his house and move 6 blocks closer to the CO so he's in a DSL-supported area, but that's overkill -- ain't it?
Ineffective? Don't you think most people who hear about this will think twice about tweaking their modems? The provider and, more so, the FBI response is disproportionate, but it is wrongful to steal regardless of whether it is easy or hard to pull off. I don't understand why so many think it's a defense to a crime to blame the victim.
Many, may people think, for example, that if an ATM gives you an extra $20, it's OK to keep it. No, actually it is theft; you're not necessarily obligated to return the money, but you don't get to keep it either (or give it away). You can try to justify stealing, you can criticize the victim, but you can not trivialize away the crime no matter how stupid the victim is. The crook would never get a defense like this in court, regardless of whether it was theft, rape, or murder.
I suggest that what's really going on here is an attempt to rationalize a crime viewed as petty. But don't toss out the criminal law to do it.
I want to know what they found when they tried to search the confiscated modem for evidence. Since the modems are configured by TFTP, I can't imagine that they store the configuration in non-volatile RAM during non-powered situations. As such, the instant they unplugged the modem, they should have lost all the evidence it had to offer. The real meat of the evidence will be in the TFTP server and modem config editor on the PC. Still no reason to confiscate the VCR, except to show just how unprepared the FBI is to handle computer crimes.
Intelligent Life on Earth
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I don't know how it is in your country, but where I live, I can get all the electricity I want as long as I pay for it, and the system can handle it.
I didn't know that electric companies put cap on electricity. "Dude, you can only use 20W/H!"
J.
I called Buckeye (419-724-9800) and they said that the FCC has something to do with it, saying that uncapping cable modems causes signal leaks and could interfere with airplanes and other communication services, should I keep laughing or should I laugh harder?
Thats my 2 cents (enough loss from me to report it to the FBI)
The ISP is probably counting the costs incurred trying to trace the problem. Exmaples.. {not from the real case}
,at 40 hours to find it... thats 10k.
/email techs needed to handle calls related to slowdowns on that segment during that time. 2 at $10/hr for 6-10 months 30-60k
Example: If they had to hire an outside consultant to find the problem. {problem being that there is more bandwidth being used than the number of modems in the area can use if legally configured). If that consultant charges the average going rate of $250/hr
Equipment needed to insure QOS for other customers who were complaining? [example 2 headends at $30-50k a piece]
extra phone support
it can all add up very quickly.
--
Time is on my side
It's a basic principle that contraband seized (illegal drugs, guns, etc.) are never returned. An extension is that the criminal may forfeit otherwise legal property used to facilitate the crime.
One of the more controversial forefeiture cases was a guy whose car was forfeited because he was caught getting a blow job in it from a prostitute. The idea was to make it hard for the johns to repeat their crimes, and to make the punishment hurt. The topic on appeal was actually the defendant's (ex)wife arguing it was unconstitutional to deprive her of her 50% ownership in the car; she had no knowledge of the wrongdoing. She lost.
Another case was a California woman whose house was seized because her son was secretly growing pot in the backyard. She was innocently unaware -- not just looking the other way -- yet she lost the house. Forfeiture has been going like gangbusters for years, and some police departments have made fortunes off of it.
Now, I believe the U.S. gov't is generally quite just by world standards (quite just is not perfect). But all the same we sometimes blow it big time, often out of fear and loathing of "criminals." I wouldn't vote libertarian because they tend to deny the government's affirmative obligation to protect individual rights; they are compatible with the ACLU only insofar as they advocate a gov't "hand off" approach to social values and privacy. Here, "civil libertarian" is closer to the mark.
But whatever your values, forfeiture needs to be reined in. (A related problem is that criminals are assessed income taxes on their illegal income but are not allowed to claim deductions. So if you bought $99 worth of drugs and sold it for $100, you would owe taxes on the $100, besides being a drug dealer with a ridiculous sense of profit margins.)
So you'd be ok with the FBI trashing your house for a little matter of not paying your power bill?
The crime committed here is simple theft of services. Never mind the fancy dancy legal jargon, it's a smoke screen.(IANAL)
Why does it have to be gun totin', badge weilding, cuff-em-and-stuff-em action? Do these people strike you as the dangerous type? Must they be subdued under threat of their life? Why?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
You've obviously never seen a celebrity out on bail for murder and an ordinary citizen denied bail for public intoxication.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
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There's absolutely no excuse for this. If i tapped into the electric lines coming into my house and hooked a bunch of equipment to the line before it went to the meter, i don't think the FBI would show up with search warrants. I'd probably get my service cut off, and the electric company would ask for a lot of money before reconnecting it. Or if you live near power lines and run a loop under them to pick up power- they're not going to do much more than tell you to stop. Same thing if i tapped into the watermain without paying. They're railroading these people.
I'm tempted to order cable internet just so i can let the guy show up, balk at the draconian contract, and tell him to shove it. Luckily i don't have that much time.
IANAL, but
18 USC 1343, makes it a Federal crime or offense for anyone to use interstate wire communications facilities in carrying out a scheme to defraud.
Since bidirectional cable networks are commonly used for transmission of network data in- and interstate pretty it is pretty much guaranteed that it falls under this criterium. From a legal standpoint it doesn't really matter if the fraud actually took place across state lines, just that a facility suitable for this purpose was used.
However, due to the rather global nature of internet it is highly unlikely that anyone using such a scheme would actually not invoke interstate (never mind intercontinental) communications. Thus pretty much making a waterproof case.
That sounds suspiciously like "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." I'm fairly sure the economic system espoused by the individual who made that statement has been thoroughly discredited by now. At the very least, it was rejected by the voters earlier this month (in most places, anyway).
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Sometimes, when someone is under investigation, law enforcement will arrest them for something minor like a traffic violation, tax evasion, or, in this case, "theft of service". Just because the news media doesn't have all the facts doesn't mean it's as simple as it looks.
Fight Spammers!
Yes, I suppose there would be a *serious* conflict of interest in asking the FBI to investigate itself. OTOH, asking the FBI to make an inquiry as to whether or not the local government was justified in requesting their services might have value. Perhaps the Department of Justice is the better venue. As you might have gathered, IANAL. The basic point I was trying to get across is that there is recourse for this guy. Also, I'd like to point out to the "America is coming to an end" crowd that throughout the history of the US, things like this have happened and will continue to happen. Who knows, maybe Runner vs. Ashcroft will be a landmark Supreme Court decision right up there with Brown vs. Board of Education. Or maybe it would be Runner vs. Toledo. The point is, the guy has a long and important fight ahead of him, and may come out OK after all. Stay tuned for the obligatory EFF or ACLU backed legal battle.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Plain and simple I pay a premium price for 1.5 and by god if some fool is not paying and using my pipe then lock his ass up and throw away the key. Ok the FBI might have been a little over kill, but they need to pay dearly for stealing others service.
Got Code?
Sure, it is slanted somewhat... but I have not seen an objective article in a while and, at least here, would rather see it slanted towards law-breakers when cable company.
Not legal? It's called ILLEGAL. Uncapping your modem is ILLEGAL. "Not legal" is trying to cover it up.
Or perhaps just trying to achieve the advertized "lightning fast unlimited speed, 100x of a modem" internet? They mentioned (in the older article) someone who got away by claiming that he was simply trying to get what was advertized.
So the fact that there wasn't enough bandwidth makes this better? Okay? They basically modded it to use as much bandwidth as possible, to the detriment of others.
No it does not make it ok. But it DOES point out that they must have LIED when estimating the costs/damages to get it up to 250K and involve FBI. Seriously... I have not seen 100Mbit on a LAN...
They broke the law and must now fact the music.
Sure. but does the term "cruel and unusual punishment" mean anything to you?? They did not steal even close to 250K worth of bandwidth.
Passive voice. He's just a victim! Its not his fault! All his neighbors say he's a great guy!
Judging by the article, his life was, in fact, screwed over already with more to come. Enron execs must have been executed by the same logic, right?
Friggin' bummer. You gamble long enough and you will lose.
The question is: what do you lose? No one says they should be exempt. but fine and service termination seems more reasonable.
It is EXTREMELY unfair to make an EXAMPLE out of someone. This is exactly how cruel and unusual punishment occurs.
John Weglian, chief of the special units division of the prosecutor's office, offers no apologies for Buckeye's unusually harsh treatment of the uncappers. "Cyber crime is potentially very damaging to society. We are taking a firm position on that type of criminal activity. We hope these cases will have a deterrent value, given the cost factors for the defendants in successful prosecutions."
The cable operators claim a loss of $11,000 for each of the 23 offenders and absurdity at best as the operators had the power to kill service at anytime, if indeed such losses were occuring. The uncpping was detected and the ISP could have terminated the contract with the individuals in question and fined them the cost of the modified equipment.
Now why is this a bother to Orwell and the authors of the US Constitution? Because it is a great step towards the end of free publishing in the US and towards the thought control of 1984. Violating a "service contract" with a monopoly ISP has been equated with serious law breaking. The same service contract includes prohibitions on running "servers" or electronic publications. Prohibiting electronic publications on a monopoly service ammounts to denial of first amendment rights to free speach. The internet is a public place, built largely from public networks on public land and supported by monopoly structures. The implication is that US citizens in the future will be felons if they attempt to express themselves in the electronic commons by runing their own news servers, email, or web servers.
Some people can't stand any competition, but the Founding Fathers knew that that's what a free press is all about. These services are against the wishes of their monopoly ISP wich also happens to be the monopoly telco or carrier of CableTV and all other significant electronic publications in the area. From the publisher's perspective, this is a nice step towards criminalizing competing with them. Not being able to run a free press is something the Founding Fathers would not find funny at all. The first amendment to the constitution puts free speach and press in the same class as religion and free assembly - inviolate. They also debated extensivly on the evils of exclusive franchise that copyright grants and how to balance that with the good that it can do to promote the useful arts - 14 years only, thank you. They could never have imagined a world of only one large press organization, AP, five music publishers, three broadcast networks and the technological steps those entrenched intersts would take to preserve and extend their power.
Orwell precicted such control through technology and it's ultimate results. These "untaper" federal cases combined with Paladium, are a great step towards 1984. Paladium, with its concept of "trusted computing" will assure that personal computers will spy on their owners, who can only use them to recieve official propaganda. Orwell saw it comming.
The stage has been well set by the large publishers and you are discredited. They have issued a long string of kiddie porn arrests and news storries about the demise of music publishers. These storries have convinced the public that the free internet is responsible for the demise of popular music and an increase in child molestation. "Hackers" have been equated with child molesters, warez losers and other "pirates" and parisites. this wired story does a good job of demolishing the connection between child molestation and the internet, but the readership of Wired is nothing compared to MSNBC/Time-Warner/AOL/McDonalds/AP/Conglomoram/GE. Your neighbors may not pitty you when the FBI coyly knocks on your door. "Why esle would anyone want to have all that bandwith or run a server?" a clueless populance will ask. You have been painted as some kind of pervert that treatens the great public circus, home, harth and the whole "entertainment ifrastruture" without which the US economy would obviously colapse.
I invite one and all to see exactly what I want to do with my internet connection. It's simple, I want to share my life with relatives that live in different states and my interests with anyone who cares. There's nothing Earth shattering here, not even bad music.
On December 1st, my modest site will go black when my contract with Cox Cable expires. The nose has tightened slowly, every six months brought some new loss of service and increase in costs, and it is now intollerable. I'm not willing to pay $75/month to simply surf the great corporate billboard nor am I willing to give money to a company with the same contract terms and philosophy as Buckeye.
Don't worry, I'll keep posting here on Slashdot. Now you know who twitter is.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's protectionism, pure and simple. Yes it eliminates your first amendment rights but the constitution never stood in the way of a dishonest buck or thought control. It's not "cybercrime" they are after, it's "thoughtcrime" in the long run. Where do I get off saying that? Just go read my other post.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
With all the publicity this case is getting, I'm sure there will be thousands of people all accross the country droping their cable modems. Most of the "providers" ban servers and charge between 50 and 75 bucks a month for the silly boxes. How many people are really going to pay that kind of money for that? To surf the great corporate billboard faster and better than ever? Nope, the local cable company not only blocks your ports so you can't serve, now they are capping your line so you get DSL speed if you are lucky. Pththth-fit. Can you say content death? How many of you are willing to risk going to jail to run servers?
Don't even thing of running a server, you will be depriving your ISP of valuable "hosting" fees, like $10/month or so. If you run a server and it get's slashdotted, oh my, that 30kbit/second uplink crimp will cost them so much bandwidth you might even hit your five gig cap. Monetary loss of hitting your cap = $0. I'll give the cable company that amount next month. How about you?
The biggest losses are the trust these fools threw away about two years ago. A bad reputation leads directly to bankruptcy.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This article is not well written, its vastly slanted towards law-breakers.
Neither is your comment. It's vastly slanted towards self-righteous reactionism.
Exhibit #1:
For the record, uncapping ( hacking your modem in order to gain access to untapped bandwidth) is not legal.
Not legal? It's called ILLEGAL. Uncapping your modem is ILLEGAL. "Not legal" is trying to cover it up.
No, the proper term for a breach of contract is not legal. There are laws about breaching contracts, true, but the offense is civil. Not criminal.
Exhibit #2:
As such, their control over the political system in the area is considerable
No examples, no proof, just innuendo and slander.
Since when is an observation in a column that's non-inflammatory and obviously editorial in nature slander? Get a dictionary and look up the word, man. It doesn't mean what you wish it did.
Exhibit #3:
a fact that may under-ride the horrifying journey several individuals are taking through the area's legal gauntlet because they uncapped their cable modems.
More speculation and innuendo. "Legal gauntlet" - what they are the victims now? Oppressed? They broke the law and must now fact the music.
Again, this is independent observation in an editorial piece. Even if it were not, observation that slants the facts to fit one's argument isn't merely "speculation." Do you have some sort of agenda against the poster? THAT's speculation. Moreover, excessive use of force can constitute oppression, and I suggest you read the article more closely instead of replying in a fit of anger.
Exhibit #4:
discovered that twenty three of his subscribers were getting more juice from their connections than they paid for.
Getting more juice. What a joke. They were stealing bandwidth from other customers. And not paying for it.
Bandwidth may be a finite resource, but the company in question has failed to demonstrate a consistent record of customer complaints; that other customers were injured is, actually, speculation on your part. Uncapping doesn't necessarily affect people if you do it at 2AM (not that I'm supporting the act, just raising a point.) They have also failed to demonstrate or prove that the uncapped modems were stealing significant amounts of bandwidth--anyone with half a brain can see that their numbers are massively inflated--and thus the author is raising a valid question: Why haven't we seen proof of this "gravely injurious act" that would make this proverbial boulder necessary to crush the ants?
Exhibit #5:
According to an interview in a recent Cable World article, Shyrock noted that one subscriber had "altered his modem to handle 100 megabits per second, up and downstream", though the company could never realistically even obtain such speeds.
So the fact that there wasn't enough bandwidth makes this better? Okay? They basically modded it to use as much bandwidth as possible, to the detriment of others.
Yes, it does. The damages that the company quoted to the FBI cannot have possibly been true. The fact that the company is quoting similarly heavy figures to a journalistic source is not surprising, but it also shows a basic lack of technical understanding. Again, here, you're also speculating that customers were injured, which they haven't shown happened.
Instead of disconnecting service for uncapping (as is the case with nearly every provider in the U.S.)
Its obviously working very well!
Wonderful. I'll refer you to the hundreds of other analogies that other posters have submitted, because they're all very excellent. It's becoming rapidly obvious that you missed the point of the article in your misguided attempt to appear on a moral high ground.
companies before his life was turned upside-down
Passive voice. He's just a victim! Its not his fault! All his neighbors say he's a great guy!
A Slashdot poster who questions the article's use of grammar, yet can't seem to grasp the proper use of commas himself. Grow up.
The worst that could happen to him, he figured, was that his ISP got angry and disconnected his service. He couldn't have been more wrong.
Bummer. It was just a little mistake. No problem!
That's the worst that SHOULD happen to him -- if not a fine and a settlement of some sorts. Calling in the FBI to settle one's outstanding payments on a civil case is nothing short of ludicrous.
This article can be summed as: "No fair! We weren't expecting to get caught!"
No, not really. But the summation of your comment would seem to be a giant mass of logical fallacies and emotional arguments.
Lets be real people. You can't steal bandwidth. If you modify your equipment to take more bandwidth than you are intended to have by your provider, you may end up in trouble. It doesn't look any of these people are going to jail. They got indicted, have to go to an "aversion" program, and pay some fines. The equipment - that which isn't illegal modified or containing illegal materials - will be returned. If they aren't the defendents should get lawyers.
Ah, so you did miss the point of the article. No one questions that what the users did was wrong; they're simply questioning the company's actions, and its motives.
The reprecussions suffered by the criminals is what happens when you break the law and get caught. Bummer. Don't break the law, or if you have a problem with it get it changed. Each defendent consciously knew what they were doing was wrong, and one even admits that he gambled that the consequences would be minor. Friggin' bummer. You gamble long enough and you will lose.
Keep posting long enough, and I'm sure you'll eventually write a coherent argument. What are you trying to do here -- say the same thing three times over?
got standards? --- http://www.w3.org/
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...you have exactly 30 seconds to recap your modem and delete the porn from your hard drive.
stoners have it easy, how long does it take to flush a baggie down the toilet?
whatchoo gonna do when they come for you?
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
The article says that the methods used to identify the perpetrators are "unknown". In fact its very simple. You ask the modem via SNMP what its speed is, and it tells you.
So these people got "over 100Mbits" speed limits on their modems. I'm paying £25/month for 0.5 Mbit. So if that were increased by a factor of 200 then it would cost $5,000/month. Multiply by 23 people and you have a problem worthy of the FBI's time. Particularly since it only required search, seizure and some very minor forensics (like identifying the uncapping software on the seized computers).
So overall I think these people got what they deserved.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Thanks to local construction, Wirtz, who never signed a contract with Buckeye, claims his broadband connection was incapable of achieving speeds higher than 128kbps down. By utilizing a Cisco configuration file, he uncapped his Motorola Surfboard modem to 2.5MBps, for what he estimates was no more than a total of 16 hours, and only when he needed to move large files.
Apparently not everyone even HAD a contract. Though the "16 hours" bit DOES sound disingenuous to me.
The article states that the ISP is claiming that collectively the "suspects" had "stolen" over $250,000 in bandwidth, which in turn lead to the Gesta - ah - the FBI knocking on doors and "seizing" all the coolest hardware, while leaving the only real "culprit" piece in place. The FBI apparently is interested in economic crimes that are not big ticket items. The ISP had to indulge in some very creative accounting in order to demonstrate how really aweful the offenders. I should also think that the FBI neglected to check the complainant's arithmetic to be sure there wasn't a misplaced decimal point or two.
Shryock also confirmed the company wasn't sure how customers were getting the extra speed. "We don't fully understand how they're pulling this off just yet, but we're learning more every day."
In other words the ISP isn't simply dishonest, but incompetent as well, since their cusomers could use a simple configuration on file on their cable modems to reset them. Bandwidth management should have been handled at the server end. Any dial-up modem can be forced to a speed limit. The servers owned by the ISP should be far more sophisticated.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Scottish university, I mean. £50 a year for a Uni lan connection that is wince-inducingly fast (100Mbps burst maximum, I'm often getting four megaBYTES a second through it).
Admittedtly, it is firewalled into submission to prevent "abuse", but it's easy enough to counter by getting people to listen to things on sockets 25, 21 and 80...
Well, next time you get caught speeding on the highway, I ask that you be executed on the spot. After all, it's called ILLEGAL.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
The "criminals" violated the terms of what they thought was a normal TOS.
A normal TOS is a civil contract.
If you get caught breaking the terms of a regular ISP TOS, say, by sending out 1,000,000 spams for Herbal Viagra, you get your account jerked, and you might get a big bill if your TOS that you clicked through says you've agreed to pay financial penalties for certain specific kinds of misuse.
If you refuse to pay your bill, the ISP can sue you for damages and the court can order you to pay, and confiscate your assets or send you to jail if you refuse.
My ISP can NOT send anybody to my place to kick down my door and rip off my equipment to penalize me for violating the TOS.
The cable company bought from the legislature the ability to add criminal penalties to the TOS. to redefine violations as "criminal theft of service". Were the users informed of this? Only in the fine print if they were even told there. Ever seen a cable broadband ad that says "break your user agreement, go to jail?"
Presumably, the "criminals" thought they were breaching a civil contract and would have to pay a few bucks for the actual excess bandwidth consumed.
The lesson? For everyone else, it's don't buy broadband from providers who can send the police to kick down your door. Amazing things can be done with an 802.11(whatever) link and a high-gain directional antenna if a cooperating ISP is at the other end.
You should sign up for cable broadband immediately.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I watched a two-part series about some very disturbing developments in the US police and justice system. They are availible online and although it's a Dutch program almost everything is spoken English so it's worth to watch for non-Dutchies
Realplayer stream part 1:
http://info.vpro.nl/rmstreams.db?7273010
Realplayer stream part 2:
http://info.vpro.nl/rmstreams.db?7273012
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
See
http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/SJG/
Looks like nobody has learnt a thing over the years.
I can't find any reference to this quote on google. Is it real?
What Buckeye Cable had with these folks is a dispute about whether they honored a clause in a contract. One could say that the real principle was the criminal system favored the business against the individual in the case of my relative, and again here. But in that case it really would be a criminal system. If it comes to that, turnabout is fair play, and there is then no ethical limitation on the individual scamming what he or she can from it. It's like stealing from the mob - hazardous to your health but not wrong. This is why it's so important that the system itself operate fairly, and not tilt towards corporations and businesses. Without fairness, the population my be terrorized, but cannot be governed.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
If uncapping your cable modem is a felony because you are denying resources to others then wouldn't the FBI have to step in to look at spammer cases. Using that same logic a spammer denies resources across state and international lines. One step further, wouldn't an ISP that looked the other way with a spammer be AIDING AND ABETTING a known felon! One step futher, cound an ISP suffer the same consequences as the spammers themselves (i.e. the driver in the commission of a crime can be given the same sentence as the perpatrator). Has Buckeye Cable ever looked the other way in similar cases with the use of resources? I think we have some serious ethical issues here that need to be resolved and using analogies while they help understanding don't always frame an issue fairly. We need as society to quit thinking the Internet is just like the Real World and start doing some critical thinking in trying to define the cyber one.
HT
Or are you saying as long as you steal from a broadband company it is OK? A $499 - $5000 dollar value is required for a F5. Shoplifters do time even if they needed the food. Life isn't fair. These idiots need jail time. If you are stealing then you need jail time as well. The company is perfectly within its rights to press charges. I think more companies should. I do not like having to subsidize thief's.
You can disagree, But my opinion is not a troll, it is real.
Get a free ipod.
I understand what you are saying, but there are a few points I want to comment on:
Exhibit #5:
According to an interview in a recent Cable World article, Shyrock noted that one subscriber had "altered his modem to handle 100 megabits per second, up and downstream", though the company could never realistically even obtain such speeds.
So the fact that there wasn't enough bandwidth makes this better? Okay? They basically modded it to use as much bandwidth as possible, to the detriment of others.
This is serious. This means the company lied to the FBI to get them involved. This should have been a police matter, but the company would rather waste tax-payer money and FBI time on an obviously local matter.
If you modify your equipment to take more bandwidth than you are intended to have by your provider, you may end up in trouble.
I am wondering about cable modems that you purchase from the store. What if they allowed for personal cable modems and I prevented the cable company from modifying my equipment? I can see the bandwidth being stolen argument, but I also can see that the cable company has no right to alter my computer equipment.
If you can't do the time, blah blah blah. If you're smart enough to uncap your cable modem then you should have been smart enough to understand that what you are doing involves activities that fall into the jurisdiction of the FBI.
;)
The FBI does not do anything half ass, when they act, they throw their weight around. Excessive, perhaps, but I guess the people who did this should have thought a little bit more about what could happen.
Plus, who knows, maybe the FBI knows something about these guys that we don't and they are terrorists
And I still haven't. Example, please.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The founding fathers themselves recognized that those rights were given to us by God.
Thank goodness they also recognized that not everyone believed in the same God and put in the first amendment, eh?
But, anyway, it is ironic to see someone get busted for doing exactly what he was working on to prevent.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
On another note, I always read that the Iran-Contra affair was about selling *weapons*, not drugs.
It was about selling drugs to get the money to buy the guns to trade to the Iranians for the return of our hostages. It was illegal to give Iran military weapons. Any government department that has any legal money whatsoever gets that money from Congress since that is one of the major roles of Congress. So since they were not authorized to give weapons to those countries, they had to come up with another source of income. So they imported and sold large amounts of cocaine to fund their illegal operation. This, in a nutshell, is what happened.
You've got to be kidding, right? Wealthy/famous people get bail on major crimes all the time. They even get away unconvicted thanks to superior lawyers. Try reading the news.
Consider the fate of OJ vs the fate of a homeless person found drunk in public. A lot of local papers have weekly listings of police and court proceedings. I'm sure you can see the pattern if you read that section for a couple of weeks.
If you think the justice system is remotely just or fair in this country, you aren't paying attention.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Looks like the ACLU supports what they should, equality of religion and the right of even unpopular people to exercise free speech. They probably wouldn't like Nazis any more than we do, but they'd realize that it's better than idiots get the right to speak than that people need government approval first. Most of the rest (drugs, prostitution, etc) is about letting adults decide how to live their own lives and removing "victimless crimes" from the books.
Rights, granted by god... Uh huh, and your presents are really from Santa. Do you believe in the Easter Bunny as well?
The ACLU may be widely supported by communists and socialists, but you might want to consider that the only agency really committed to supporting constitutional rights is supported by these people. I don't see anyone else doing it... Capitalists want to prevent comminists from speaking, communists are evidently comfortable with everyone being able to state their opinion.
We got along just fine as a nation without most of those for over 100 years (sales tax is a state/local issue). I don't see how the government's involvement has done anything other than drive down quality and create a dependency among some on an ever-expanding government that robs the rest of us of our freedoms. (This is especially true of education. Which do you suppose is worse for society: no education or a sh*tty education in which kids are indoctrinated with the "values" of the nanny state and not taught to think for themselves? They can't add two and two and they can't construct a grammatically-correct sentence with properly-spelled words, but they sure do feel good about themselves, don't they? Besides, we already have historical proof that a lack of public education does not imply a population of drooling ignoramuses.)
Like the Social Security tax, which is only on the first $90k or so of your income? (Never mind that if you or I tried to start something like Social Security, we'd be shut down for operating an illegal pyramid scheme. You'd do just as well for yourself if you responded to the make-money-fast spams in your inbox.)
You neglected to mention that the flat-tax proposals that have been floated so far usually include a fairly sizable exemption for the first $15k or so of income...they're not truly flat. Your hypothetical $15k earner would pay $0 under most proposals, while your $15M earner would pay a little bit less than $3M.
It's worth mentioning that a dollar circulating in the private economy is more productive than a dollar in the government's grubby fingers. In the private sector, it bounces around between employers and employees. It can also be invested in the growth of a business. The government also engages in some of this activity, but it tends to be less efficient in its use of money.
Sounds like the typical debating style of a left-winger...since you have no ideas of your own, you instead attempt to silence those who do. Where's this "tolerance" for diverse opinions I keep hearing about?
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
[Brandon Wirtz] was on the verge of releasing a Smartcard based DRM solution for Windows Media Player to several different companies before his life was turned upside-down.
Wow, talk about ironic.
I don't think I'll shed to many tears for this guy, personaly.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Since most insurance companies do not profit from insuring people, but rather from investments.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Am I the only one who found it funny the guy they profiled was working on DRM technology? In other words, he was trying to bring about the very thing you're complaining about.
Not that this helps the other 16...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
As you can read in other comments, its very simple for cable providers to 'recap' people at their end.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I don't believe this is stealing, and here's why:
They didn't FORCE the cable company to give them more bandwidth. They opened up THEIR modem caps to make use of all AVAILABLE bandwidth.
Consider:
The power company provides power to my house. Sure, they have expectations of how much power I'll use, but they don't LIMIT it. I could replace my breakers and fuses (on MY property) and run mile-long strings of christmas lights from every outlet in the house. If the power company is PROVIDING me this power, WITHOUT LIMIT, then it's mine to use (and go blind from).
Same thing with the modem. The cable company didn't LIMIT the bandwidth available to them, on the COMPANYS end... the 'hackers' changed THEIR PROPERTY to use WHAT THE COMPANY MADE AVAILABLE. Now, if they'd hacked the router, or used a techs password to change settings, then they'd be hackers (poor ones, at that), and I say bust their ass. But they didn't.
Example 2: The water company provides me water via a 3 1/2" pipe. Most peoples houses immediately drop that to 1". But it's 3 1/2" when it gets to my property. So if I leave it at 3 1/2" and use it to form beautiful, 100-foot high waterfalls for the entire summer, yes, I'm not using it as intended, but I'm using WHAT THEY PROVIDED.
Now, before dozens of AC's jump on me and say "but you pay for water and power!", I point out that these boys did, indeed, pay for cable internet access. And while I cannot make claim to having read their contract, I have yet to see a highspeed contract that spells out exactly what you'll get, IE: We, will provide you with 5GB up/downstream at no more than 768kbps, and any attempt to go over will constitute breach of contract. Instead, companies package speed and up/down together, but they have never said "You may ONLY have x bandwidth", but instead "We will provide you with x bandwidth". In fact, come to think of it, it's only DSL that does that... all cable modems i've seen DO NOT specify max bandwidth. Instead, DSL sells up/down and bandwidth as a package, but cable seems to sell access to their network. So if the cable company doesn't specifically tell you that you can only have X amount of bandwidth, they make huge amounts of bandwidth available, and you're paying for the access (not the bandwidth.. the ACCESS to the network), then what's the problem? If they went over their up/down limit because of bandwidth, then charge them for the excess, but don't complain because you put a giant stack of money on the table, but only wanted people to take what they could carry in one hand.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
I think you are wrong on this one. The crime was LOCAL. The ISP is within the state and so was the alleged uncapper.
True, but by using this facility it is possible to communicate interstate, correct? And in carrying out your fraud you are most likely engaging in interstate communications anyway (don't tell me these people were just downloading their neighbours webpages). I suppose it is for somewhat historical reasons and also practical considerations that wire frauds are generally considered federal crimes.
The cell call gets routed through some US based cellular provider for part of the trip. The call discusses some matter that is legal in Canada but illegal in the United States. Extending your example, I am now a wanted person in the US.
Shouldn't really be applicable. First off phone companies are common carriers and are not liable for whatever information is being conveyed. Secondly this could only be used against you if you were already under surveillance and a recording of your communication was made legally.
However, if you were to use a mobile phone with illegal modifications that somehow essentially result in you carrying out a fraud (faking your number, etc.) then you would definetly be wanted by the US federal government!
According to the article, the person who got busted for uncapping his modem used a Cisco configuration file to do so. This, apparently, he fed to the modem from a PC in his living room.
Not knowing the mechanism by which this works, I'm worried that while tinkering with my system, I might accidentally clobber my cablemodem settings and land myself in some trouble. So, I would like to ask the following specific question:
Did the people who uncapped their modems buy their own modem, and use an included interface to adjust its settings? If this is the case, I can relax, because I'm using the "stock" modem from my ISP and as far as I can see there are no interfaces of any kind connected to it (so presumably, it only works within their limits, period).
On the other hand, did the people who uncapped their modems alter the modem right over the ethernet cable plugged into it via some undocumented mechanism? If so, well, that really sucks, and makes me nervous.
I know this question makes me look like a total knob, but I'm asking, seriously. This isn't something you can do by accident, without specialized equipment and software, is it?
Thanks,
Phil
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
It is funny that you should pick a mail fraud as a counterexample since that is in fact the oldest form of federal offence! And it doesn't even matter if it happens instate or not.
.
Mail Fraud is the oldest form of fraud statutorily regulated and prosecuted by our federal government. Like other forms of white collar fraud, the objective of mail fraud is to accomplish a desired result by deception, trickery, concealment, and/or dishonesty, albeit through the use of the United States Mail Service or other private/commercial interstate carriers. Statutorily regulated since 1872, the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the authority of Congress to pass the statute.
I think we can pretty much call the issue closed. Just the fact that FBI came knocking on these peoples' doors more than confirms that their offense was of federal kind - that at least is logic that even you can't disagree with.
If you want a little reading on the subject try this
One small excerpt:
If you have been arrested or questioned by the police at the city, county, parish or state level, this usually indicates that you are suspected of a state crime.
Federal law enforcement agencies frequently encountered by defendants are:
1. Federal Bureau of Investigation
2. Criminal Division of the IRS (CID)
3. United States Secret Service
etc...
I'd wager that, conversely, 80% of the readers read 20% of the articles, or it's at least a skewed weighting in that area.
I should technically know statistics by now, but I'd wager that my grades would argue otherwise. :-)
Nope. But if, say, you smuggled some more equipment out of Walmart without paying for it that let you convert the tv to a tivo.. that would be stealing. In the case you mention, you're only depriving Walmart of potential revenues. In the latter case, you're depriving them of actual revenues. (It's a crappy analogy, I know, but the original analogy wasn't accurate either). Bandwidth is not free, it is not even cheap. A 1.5Mbps connection costs less money for the ISP than a 10Mbps connection does. If the ISP could provide more bandwidth to everyone at no cost to themselves.. then yes, you could make the point that there should be nothing wrong (or at least illegal) with uncapping your modem. But that's not the case, and that's what differentiates this situation from, say, overclocking your Celeron or copyright infringement. Now I'm not convinced that the FBI needed to be involved, and I do think they were overzealous in confiscating equipment. But there is actual monetary loss here, and this isn't the madeup BS that the record companies put out either. There's no difference between this case and, say, filling up your car's tank with gas and driving off without paying for it.