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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."
Whats more scary is that you can be arrested just for having that information! Did these people actually hack a satelite/feed? What is this, fscking Minority Report?
Can all fish swim?
looks like a legitimate case. the DMCA does enforce some issues that do need to be enforced. I agree that these people were in the wrong...but on the whole I still think the DMCA needs some serious re-writing.
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
Since most of them did plead guilty, I'm assuming that they did actually hack the sat/feed. Of course with the DMCA rules, their lawyers could have just said, "If you are found guilty, you'll go to jail for the rest of your life!!!" (yes I'm exaggerating).
:)
But still, if I show you how to hack the dish and give you the hardware for it, what law have I broken? Ability does not imply intent. All people who have knifes, aren't cooks. Some are serial killers
It can giggle all it wants. The galaxy's not gettin any of our Bourbon.
If you give out some kinds of information that's treason. Other kinds of information may get you in civil court for violation of intellectual property agreements. Giving out false information can be fraud. This is not such a novel concept.
Frankly this is the only application of the DMCA that I've seen to date that I think is reasonable. You've got people creating devices to decrypt copyrighted material that people could legitimately pay for and play in any manner they wanted to. I've got DirecTV, and I can certainly record the shows, and excerpt them for commentary, etc. There's no reason that you need to decrypt these signals, save for not having to pay for them.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
1. Should it be illegal to tell someone how to do something?
NO
2. Should it be illegal to actually do said 'thing'.
Yes, so long as said thing violates what the citizens want to be wrong.
In the end, I don't want to be breaking the law by simply knowing something, and sharing that knowledge. That's the thing the DMCA does that scares me.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
While I don't think it's a terrible thing to create software and hardware to illegally use satellite TV, I do think that it should be against the law to actually use them.
It's a good thing that we don't have a DMCA-style piece of legislation for weapons, or any person who has PVC pipes, potatos and hairspray in their house could be brought up on charges.
If we assume people are criminals because they have the tools to commit a crime, everyone with hands should be locked up to provent potential fist-fights. Every person over 21 should be held for potential public drunkeness. Every eighteen-year-old in the US should be arrested for the possibilty of providing cigarettes to minors. And every car owner should be thrown in jail for possible vehicular manslaughter.
Not that I'm approving of breaking the law. But the DMCA is the same mentality as suing McDonald's for dropping coffee in your lap. It's saying that you aren't capable of not doing these things without intervention; hat anyone would drop coffee in their lap if there was no label; that anyone would steal satellite services if they knew how; that anyone with a gun will surely commit murder.
If we have become so weak as a people to no longer be able to stop ourselves from any activities, then we need more legislation than the DMCA. But, as long as we are capable of rational thought, we should be held accountable for our actions, not our thoughts.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Whether or not the intentions of the authors were good or not makes no difference. It should ALWAYS be up to the end user to exercise good judgment in usage of information. In Kenpo, I was taught how to break bones and even kill people. I have yet to break anyone's bones, other than my own, nor have I killed anyone. Should I be punished for knowing these things? Should my teacher be punished for teaching me? No. If I chose to use my knowledge unfairly, should my teacher be punished for my irresponsibility?
The DMCA is the modern day non-racial equivalent of the Jim Crow laws. If you can keep "them" uneducated you can keep "them" under control.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
So, they send the information to my home, without my permission. It bounces around my dish, causing interference, and then they have the audacity to say that I'm not allowed to apply mathematical operations on this noise!?
If they don't want me to pirate their signal, why did they send it to me?
Over half a million dollars? That's outrageous!. I suppose that DirectTV is just assuming that anybdy that bought modded equipment was going to buy every single channel and every single pay-per-view event/movie they ever offered. I'm sure that phone companies will start calculating damages from cellphne fraud by assuming that every hacked account was calling to a sex-line in Sudan 24/7. Or even better, that the account was calling to every single phone number in the world, at once 24/7.
Now that I think about it, that would be really amusing.
If sat providers don't want me to mess with their signal, they shouls cease to radiate it on my house in backyard!
This is not like I am tapping into their cable.
Having tried a few times to establish the full power of the DMCA by prosecuting people almost at random, they have now realised that they will have to start with a few obvious wrongdoers in order to establish credibility and precedent.
I expect after a few of these they'll try another Sklyarov type case and win.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I think your employer would press charges if you "gave out information" on the combination to the finance office's safe!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Why is it legal for me to have a cable tv descrambler and watch a cable off of a wire (which the cable company can claim ownership of) but not for me to decrypt a satalite signal from the airwaves which the statalite company cannot legimately claim ownership of?
Under current law, it seems that if someone throws a brick through my window and I pick it up, I am guilty of stealing a brick.
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -- Homer Simpson
When someone shares knowlegde that they have legitimately aquired, that also sounds like a good intention to me.
When someone sells hardware built from knowledge they have legitimately aquired, that sounds like a good intention to me. (Or at least good entrepreneurship.)
Frankly, there a lot of people that could stand to use a little more time learning how to build TV's and a little less time watching them. How about we start chasing after violent criminals again or spend some resource to solve problems in our schools? My two cents worth anyway...
-Derek
For *some time now*, DirecTV has been actively pursuing the legal bullying of end users who have done nothing more than purchase *any* smartcard related equipment, regardless of actual use of proof of illegal use.
DirecTV has been engaged in a sort of legalized extortion scheme against people who have purchased smartcard equipment from raided dealers in the USA, undoubtably as part of a plea bargain with such dealers. Yes, these dealers marketed their products towards DSS, but standard ISO smartcard equipment? Come on. The interesting thing about buying products from these dealers was that smartcard programmers, emulators, etc from them was MUCH cheaper than buying from a non-DSS oriented business. To put things in perspective, the average asking price to settle out-of-court with DirecTV is to the tune of $3,000 to $4,000.. again, for the mere purchase/possesion of smartcard equipment.
If you are interested in these cases as well as other satellite related legal issues, please visit http://www.legal-rights.org. There is a wealth of information here.
i swear my userid used to be lower.
My friend got busted for this, because he bought a smart card programmer online. DTV sued the company (Whiteviper) and became owner of all their assets. They then tried to extort money from all the people who had purchased the smart card programmer. Thing is, there are legit reasons to own it. Blank smart cards not compatible with DTV for example. And, my friend never used the programmer to steal satellite. In the end he ignored their extortion efforts and they seem to have let it go. What has happened to fair use? I think that politicians and their campaign funds have as much to do with this than the pirates.
Get punk rock!
Black Monday
I have internet access (dialup from home). Some people only have it at work. I do not have cable access. I must use Satellite TV to get anything. I don't understand why you think that Internet access and cable access always go together. Everyone with a phone can have internet access....
T
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Note that these were not small time players. This guy had $133,000 in DSS related monies flying through his Paypal account. (Also note that Paypal sent the FBI a transaction log, same day service, with no warrant. A sobering reminder that eBay/Paypal does not care about your privacy.)
The DMCA. Like it or not, it's the law.
Ability does not imply intent. All people who have knifes, aren't cooks. Some are serial killers :)
You may remember the extensive 'fair use' discussions that have gone on here and elsewhere around the 'net. The point of fair use says that it is reasonable to use copyrighted material for brief excerpts, private use, and so on.
Let's pretend that we treat knives as a 'fair use' item. Knives can be used for substantial non-infringing/illegal uses, like chopping tomatoes, or opening boxes. When used in a manner that harms someone, they are arrested for murder, and the weapon is taken in as evidence.
Okay, now we'll talk about a hacked satellite dish box. Such boxes do NOT have substantial non-infringing uses. Their only viable use is to steal copyrighted presentation of satellite service. Even without the DMCA, you are guilty of contributory copyright infringement...and the illegal box should be taken in as evidence.
The DMCA causes problems when invoked where 'fair use' may be being used, such as in the Adobe E-Book case, where a piece of software that could be used to steal e-books could also be used to read a purchased book to a blind man, even if the e-book says 'no'.
Although I object to the DMCA, whether the DMCA or standard copyright law is invoked to arrest these people is irrelevant. If they've done what's claimed, they're guilty of standard copyright infringement and should be punished. This court case will not determine anything about the future of the DMCA or its paradoxes. It just happened to be used here.
Next time we get another Skylarov type case and it comes back not guilty, then there's more meat to go on.
But to summarize, a knife analogy is not reasonable here. If you're hacking satellite boxes that can theoretically receive signals you didn't pay for, you're going to have to do a lot of convincing to make 12 jurors believe you did it because you were interested in how the box worked and wanted to (legally) reverse engineer it.
If you disagree with that, then you're asking for a more broad right; that of engineers/geeks/technical people to do whatever they choose with technology for their own purposes. If a jury finds that whatever that technology is is primarily for an illegal act, you're going to get burned, no matter what you say.
It's just a simplification, and a jury that comes to the conclusion that an illegal satellite box has never been used for anything but to steal television will deliver a guilty verdict more often than not.
The way I see it they are selling information that only has illegal application. In which case I think they should be held accountable for any crime created with their information. Such as if I gave someone exact information on how to kill a specific person. If that person suddenly gets killed I am going to have a rough time pleading I only was supplying information. Don't download data on how to steal shit, and you won't get in trouble. How hard is that. Don't break laws and you don't go to jail.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
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.
Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
Did these people actually hack a satelite/feed?
How does one design a device for hacking a satellite feed without actually hacking the satellite feed?
They are stealing, stealing stealing. and you want to make it ok, so you can too.
Actually, I don't have DTV, don't have any descramblers, and don't care to because I don't care to watch anything that's on. What I care about is not flopping over on the ground when big companies purchase legislation that takes my rights away so they can squeeze out more profits.
The satellite TV industry and the Motion Picture Association of America lose millions of dollars from piracy, he noted.
Thank God they stopped these scoundrels. Who can say how many children went hungry because these miscreants gathered radio waves instead of letting them hit the ground.
two problems with that:
1) yes, that is my model of property rights.
2) it relies on people not being assholes about limited resources. Very much like communism, it looks great on paper but lousy in reality, and therefore would require some sort of laws in regard to it.
3) satellite transmissions are not a limited resource. DirecTV would lose nothing save for a subscription i would not have bought anyway should I choose to utilize it.
So to sum it up, limited resources, particularly those of a natural persuasion, do need some sort of rules governing their diversion or dispensation. Signals are a human construct which are presently being exploited under law with no real benefit of prohibiting their use by the citizenry without paying said corporation, especially in areas where the service is not sold.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
"Should the police officer be allowed to arrest these guys, just because it appears as though they are planning on robbing the bank?"
He is allowed to ask them to please stay put because he has some questions. They are allowed to walk away, not answer questions, or wait. Since it appears to a reasonable person that these people might be planning a specific crime, the officer is allowed to insist that they stay put, or, to invite them to his office. Or he can arrest them. At the instant that they are not free to leave, they are also entitled to the rights of the accused. In particular, it becomes the governments' responsibility to prove there was a conspiracy to rob a bank.
When it turns out that they were waiting for a bus to go on a rock climbing trip, they aren't entitled to a refund on their tickets. (I personally feel the government should be required to compensate those who it accuses but turn out to be innocent. I take this to the extreme that, I believe a single case of an execution where the prisoner is later proven innocent, should be serious enough to bankrupt a State in compensation to the victim's family. Every day you're in prison under a false accusation should be worth a few thousand bucks. Governments should face really harsh consequences for fuckups like that -- consequences serious enough that they stand to lose their power to govern.)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.