Satellite Hackers Charged Under DMCA

RexHavoc writes "'Invoking the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal grand jury has indicted six people on charges of developing software and hardware designed to hack into paid TV satellite transmissions.' My guess is that for those who haven't already plead guilty, they will have a tough time proving that they had good intentions, unlike Dmitry Sklyarov's e-books case."

Comments

Re:Different Opinions

[Telastyn]

But where's the crime?

DirectTV broadcast their signals to everyone. Who are they to demand how their signal is used?

To criminalize the act of decrypting satellite TV is the same as criminalizing the act of translating spanish radio into english. The radio station cannot demand that only people that understand spanish listen to it. It's just taking information that's being broadcast to everyone and translating it into a different form.

Re:Pretty Sad

[Old Uncle Bill]

What "satellite box" are you talking about? There is not "box" that gets hacked in this scenario. There is a card that can get hacked, but this is secondary. Let's take the example of an emulation setup for said devices. In this case, the datastream coming from the satellite provider can be logged on the emulation system without reverse engineering, "hacking", or modifying the conditional access system. One of the things the satellite provider may do is send signals down to your purchased system to alter the contents of its ROM, and change the functionality within your receiver. Any reverse engineering/hacking can be justified if it is to stop this alteration from occurring. To say that nothing legitimate can come from this hacking is obviously coming from someone that knows very little about how these systems work.

Their only viable use is to steal copyrighted presentation of satellite service
Not to be rude, but you don't know what the fuck you are talking about here. That statement is just as true as saying there is no legitimate use for DeCSS outside of making illegal copies of DVDs. The knife analogy stands here, you can reverse engineer anything you like, but as soon as you do something illegal (actually receive and watch these broadcasts, then yes, that should be prosecuted. Until that time, apparently you are guilty until proven innocent. Tell you what, go out to the net and order an ISO 7816 standard smart card programmer. I can almost guarantee you will receive a letter from DirecTV saying that you have done something illegal, and they expect you to pay them $3500 with no proof you have done anything and no due process. This will occur even if you have been using said programmer to code conditional access systems generally available (i.e. Sun's SunRay systems). Thank you for this broad generalization that justifies our current Gestapo regime. Because remember folks, those poor defenseless corporations need to be protected from us evil consumers out to get them.