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Users Conned by Cable Con
RJ Mansfield writes "MSNBC is running a story on users attempting to con their cable companies being connned. The high-cost filter being sold on Ebay and through email Spam to bypass Pay-Per-View (PPV) digital cable systems is a readily available filter that only temporarily blocks the PPV charges. Users are getting shocked when the cable company then bills the cable user for all of the ordered PPV."
Sounds fair to me, but knowing the type of people who do this, their first reaction is going to be one of "What a second! We weren't told about this!! We were busy reaching around your jacket to get your wallet, we didn't know that you were grabbing ours in the process!"
Seriously, are there people here on Slashdot who believe that stealing pay-per-view movies is better than just paying the cable company the $3.25 or whatever for a movie? I'm actually curious if anyone reading this site has tried one of these things, and if so, what the rationale behind using it was.
They that would sacrifice their
Wahhh!! That's so sad!! I need some tissue to dry away the tears!!
Not.
Anyone who is stupid enough to buy one of these devices is getting what they deserve. If you want the premium channels, then pay for them. If you think the cable company charges too much, then complain to them and rent DVDs. But that doesn't give you any right to steal the programming.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I just read the article, and the people are getting charged HUGE bills for watching TV that they didnt pay for, live, while it was being broadcast.
Hey they watched pay per veiw, a service that has been around a while and been accepted as being viable, and they are being told to pay for it. They dont even have ground to complain, it would be like getting robbed by a drug dealer who gave you bad drugs!
"well officer, I was trying to by some cocaine, and i found out that it was 50% sugar!"
I just find it funny some people are complaining about about being "cheated" by the product.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
And two years from now, the RIAA charges everyone that's been using Napster/Kazaa/Morpheus/Gnutella/Etc for all the music they've "bought".
As clearly stated in the Acts of Gord: Think, then steal! Think, then steal! Not the other way around!
Seriously: This type of scam works because subscribers don't understand how the system works. If you advertised a device which will allow you to pay no taxes, everyone would catch on quickly.
I can see it now... "For $10 you don't need to file your taxes anymore! The deal of the century!..."
In reality, from experience these people tend to fall into two camps.... "I don't like digital", and "anything digital is good". And its for the exact same reason: how easy is it to pirate the material and how likely they are to accept change.
The acceptable use norm of material has been founded on the concept of being able to make a copy of whatever and whenever. Old analogue stuff was way too easy for anyone who had a vcr, digital stuff takes some work but once you have it you can ultimately do whatever you like. This is of course not what they owners/licensees want. And unfortunately this philosophy of anything intangible should ultimately be free as it cost them nothing to reproduce goes down deep in modern society.
What is needed is compromise on both parties, companies need to make things affordable instead of gouging consumers and the consumers have to realize that it cost somebody money and time to produce something so they should pay for it. I know this sounds a bit circular and communistic but the reality is that both camps can be happy if they both cooperate.
But this in the end is wishful thinking as the article clearly points out that there's plenty of people out there ready to cheat the system and complain when they get caught.
Seriously: This type of scam works because subscribers don't understand how the system works. If you advertised a device which will allow you to pay no taxes, everyone would catch on quickly.
Sadly, you'd probably sell a bunch of them. People wouldn't catch on until the IRS came by to visit. For every semi-clueful person out there, there's a tax crank who's saying "Yeah - I'm getting one of these! I told you they had no constitutional right to do that!"
What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?
I hate to be a pedant, and I imagine bringing this up will not be a popular action, but can you tell me exactly how the cable companies are 'conning' people here? It looks to me quite clearly that the cable companies are merely charging their users for services that they agreed to pay for when they signed up for service. Is this really a con?
Obviously the real scammers here are the selfish, dishonorable scum who sell these 'filters'.
And no, before one of you "information wants to be free" people chime in, I don't want to hear any bullshit about how the cable companies are 'evil' because they charge you for content.
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
To me, the people who purchase the devices are just as responsible for their actions as those who sell the devices. Both know that their activities are illegal and continue anyway. Everyone is responsible for his or her actions.
If I tell you to commit murder and you do, am I responsible? How about if I stand up on a soapbox and hand out guns to a crowd, telling everyone to commit murder? Those who are accepting the guns and pulling the triggers are still moral agents responsible for their actions.
..Not the seller.
:P)
Ideally, the seller would be at fault. Can you think of anything else to do with equipment to steal cable with, other than stealing cable?
(Rhetorical question - I know some Slashdotters would probably try to put Linux on it.
It'd be great if illegal things were blatantly illegal. It'd be great if we could go after their distributors.
But if we cross that line and say that's the case here, it has repercussions everywhere else. That is, you won't be able to buy a hammer anywhere, either.
It'd be so nice to say, "This is illegal, and it's the only damned purpose of the gear."
We can't do that, though, because lawyers have no common sense and judges haven't the time to read through 30k previous cases like they should be doing.
As the saying goes.
Though I have to say I'm slightly puzzled by the consensus here that it is wrong not to pay for content and the 'victims' deserved all they get, but elsewhere on Slashdot there is outrage when action is taken against filesharers. When is copyright material not copyright material?
I believe that he is refering to peoples posts where others are saying cable companies are conning people or entrapping them, you should try getting a clue yourself before insulting others without all the facts.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
...you clear the memory of your cable box? You block the upstream, it unscrambles the show, the box gets bulletted disabled, you clear the memory and then call to report a problem. They reset the box and everything works fine? Sure it might be a tad inconvenient but if you really really wanted to watch that boxing event...
Or, if you can't clear the memory, box um "dies" and takes the bill with it. Return box to cable company and get replacement.
I'm not saying of course these are legal or ethical but I'm just saying that if someone's stealing PPV what would prevent them from doing either of these? Rule number one when you are stealing a service is you don't call tech support. If your box quits working, then, make sure the box *quits working*.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Since it's known that Ebay gives out information about customers to law enforcement agencies, it's probably possible to get information about the peddlers selling the descrambler. Hope they covered their tracks.
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
... how people here are pointing out the balantly obvious fact that the people who are getting the bills are getting exactly what they deserve, since they have enjoyed a service that they have agreed to pay for, and therefore is only fair if they, well, pay for it...
While a couple of articles back these same people were defending the virtues of file "sharing" networks, where users are comfortably ignoring the fact that they have agreed *not* to redistribute the copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holders.
Really, make up your minds: either file sharing a la KaZaa is ok and the people who bought these devices shouldn't pay for the content they "downloaded" for free or file sharing a la KaZaa is *not* ok and the people who bought these devices should pay for the content they downloaded.
It's very simple: you want content X? You pay for it. Why? Because the content provider says so and we have given them the power to be like that.
>"well officer, I was trying to by some cocaine, and i found out that it was 50% sugar!"
How about I was buying coke and half of it was cut with cyanide and a few friends died? Do we laugh them? If the nanny state says, "No drugs for you" that doesn't mean con artists get a free ride to do whatever they please.
I see no reason why the users of these devices shouldn't sue the retailers and manufacterers for false advertising. Just because something is contra-band doesnt give you the right to do what you please.
Its illegal to make lethal booby traps for criminals and for a good reason too. Not just to protect the police who might stumble on them (or kids or whomever) but because criminals actually have rights! Due process and all. Look it up sometime in the Constitution, its a fading fad thanks to post 9/11 hysteria but its still a good idea.
Is there any possibilty that it is someone from a cable company posting these things on eBay?
Consider....
I think a lot of /.ers suffer from hypocrisy.
it is ok to con the PPV channel.
it is ok to con the music industry
it is ok to con Microsoft by copying all their software (for those of you who use it)
but when someone else (other article some time ago) violates the GPL by not opening their code, you rant and rave about 'theft'.
seriously, it is all the same.
the only difference is POV.
Int.
i did something similar. back in the day of rampant back orifice and netbus infection, i would scan computers for earthlink accounts. earthlink had a little publicized 800 number service, useful if you travelled. but, you got a charge each time you used it. free dial-up for a few months. it was nice.
:) i eventually got a call from the erathlink noc! haha. it was a pimply-faced kid, i could tell, and he asked me if i used earthlink. i was a little freaked out, i said no, then he said i should stop using earthlink service.
how did i get caught? well, i rotated accounts, but there are logs of everything.
well, i didn't do it again.
p.s. in my situation, i knew i was screwing people, but i figured that some earthlink customer service drone would just reverse the charge and forget about it. also, these people were already infected, their whole hard drive (and this most of their lives) were free and open. i'm sure lots of other 'unexplained' things happened to them.
The people buying these filters are clearly :
1) Trying to break the law by stealing cable content
2) Complete morons
Why is anyone spending time and money taking out adverts on Ebay to warn them?
But I think the number is smaller than you think.
There's also some differences. The law is the law, and if you don't like the price of some goods than don't buy them, but also don't consider yourself morally free to steal them, either. That's the law, and there are a lot of hypocritical people out there that only follow laws they agree with.
On the other hand, the difference between all the things you mention and GPLed projects are that GPLed projects are FREE, and people still "steal" the code. Most people who admit to pirating at least make the CLAIM that if prices were lower they'd go the legal route. GPLed code is out there for the good of the community, and when people steal it the community suffers. You can say the same is true of the entertainment and commercial software industry, but we all know they do, in fact, make quite large profits despite thievery. GPL programmers often donate their code (which is time, and time is money) for free.
I've noticed, though, for some people it's not so much about saving money as it is a moral imperitive to rip off a big company. I disagree with this sentiment, but I hear and read a lot from people who steal content, and reading between the lines that's the conclusion I come to fairly often. That is quite hypocritical.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
You don't really believe that, do you?
I can just about see a lack of prior intent if I was to be approached in the street and offered the descrambler there and then for a fee.
Receiving a spam email for that same product doesn't let me off the hook. That would be no different to having been offered a leaflet describing how I could visit a website to purchase one, rather than being offered the product itself. If I have no intent, I dispose of the leaflet. Any other action surely has to not just imply, but pretty much be, convincing evidence of my intent.
If you think about it, what could be a better scam. If you are a cable company, sell faulty descramblers through some sort of made up distributor. Then when people start using the devices (and they start to fail) you get all kinds of new revenue.
Kinda like running a stock research site and giving good or bad reviews on companies you have just bought or shorted.
The idea of cable descrambling is so you can have another box in your house and not pay the cable company rental fees. Of course this box will have to do it's own cable descrambling so you can get the cable channels you pay for. So in a nutshell, yes it is LEGAL to make such a device but all these devices have a disclaimer on them: IT IS ILLEGAL TO STEAL CABLE CHANNELS, PLEASE CONTACT YOU CABLE COMPANY AND TELL THEM SO THEY MAY BILL YOU FOR THE SERVICE
ALSO: to those that think people get these things to get free $3.50 movies, ummmm the last Roy Jones Jr fight I watched was $49.95... Wrestlemania 100000 is coming up and I'm sure that'll be near 50 American as well.
I'm guessing it's supposed to be an RF Notch filter which will block the return channel. But think for a second. How can it selectively pass the request to actually order the PPV channel, while blocking billing from taking place.
It's just plain flawed logic. Digital descramblers (for Motorola systems especially) have been advertised as "Coming Soon" since there is no equivelent to the currently perfected "black box" made for standard analog "scrambling".
That's because digital uses strong crypto (relatively). So first off your not going to make a "black box" that will just work. The head end won't talk to it, and it can't decrypt without data addressed to it from the head end.
So that just leaves some kind of inline filter type approach. But this is also horribly flawed, the reason should be obvious, as I pointed out above. Also, you can't make an external "activator" like they've made for analog boxes since the crypto prevents spoofing of the head end signals, and even if you could, you don't have the codes to send the box in the first place.
It's hopeless. Give up. Pay for your cable you cheap bastards.
Or stick to analog.
My friend has an analog black box and gets every PPV+Premium channel for free. He's a college student, he has no money. I'm well employed and pay $120+/mon for my digital cable and cable internet access. I don't feel ripped off just cause I have to pay for it. I also don't call my friend a theif. If he couldn't get it for free, he wouldn't have cable at all, so I can't see how they claim they are "losing money" because of him. Lame.
Maybe they didn't want the movie to look like it was being played through a bunch of grease-smeared glass blocks?
P2P != copying music
In a cable service, you have channels that are eligible for and ineligible for when you pay a certain rate. This is the agreement that you have with your cable company. Obtaining more channels (or PPV features) without paying for them in illegal.
P2P is simply a concept - technology if you will - that allows machines to share files. No matter how you look at peer-to-peer transfers, I look at it in its basic parts: machines (peers) sending data to other machines (peers). P2P's concept has existed since we were able to transfer a file from one system to another. P2P's preferred modern implementations make it extraordinarily easy to transfer data - OF ANY TYPE - without having to use the old methods (of which I'll name a few):
1) "sneaker-net", in which case one person would place data on a tape, disk, or other medium to be transferred to another machine.
2) a computer (peer) connecting via sounds-signals to another computer (peer) via modem (or other like devices).
3) a computer (peer) connecting to a web server (peer) via TCP/IP.
The third example brings up a unique point since modern P2P clients generally transmit their data based off HTTP transactions - each client that runs such a client are acting as HTTP servers and HTTP clients.
RIAA is targetting the concept of P2P - the concept which they themselves use to hand out press releases and data to their customer base via http://www.riaa.org.
In the cable example, there are no legitimate (legal) reasons for obtaining channels outside the scope of your contract plan. As we have known since HTML was invented and widely deployed, there are plenty of fully LEGAL and GOOD reasons to have P2P - it's the basic function of the Internet. One peer connected to many different peers transmitting data (irregardless of content). Making P2P illegal is stupid. Punishing companies would provide a technologically innovative application to consumers is also just as stupid.
Let's view a parallel example:
Four people use a 1996 Chevy Impala SS as a fast getaway car that cost a bank a tens of thousands of dollars and injured a couple members of society. If it were up to the RIAA, not only would the perpetrators be locked up, but General Motors would have an injunction placed against them by a ruling judge for providing a vehicle to carry out illegal activites (referencing Napster). This abuse of the judicial system is sickening. It's also disappointing that the people we elect are not properly versed in the differentiate between technology and abuse of available technologies.
There is no computer that inherently attempts to commit illegal acts. Just like a 1996 Chevy Impala SS does not in itself attempt to commit an illegal act. I will even go so far as to say that the Napster, Gnutella clients, Kazaa!, and *Donkey P2P applications also themselves do not inherently commit illegal acts. The problem exists between the chair and the keyboard - if people choose to be dishonest and misuse a product in a which for which it was not intended, the liability is upon them. This applies to the people who wish to obtain cable service above and beyond the scope of their contract.
Ayup