Slashdot Mirror
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."
We had free PPV for awhile, and we couldn't figure out why. We thought that they were charging us the whole time, so we called and asked, they hadn't known a thing. Ah well, all that free porn...
It seems fair to me that someone trying to cheat on PPV charges would get burned.
A more interresting question is who did more wrong... Is it worse to try and circumvent PPV charges, or are the people selling these devices the real bad guys?
Opinions?
.: Max Romantschuk
that these devices are legal?
Sky in the UK have cottoned on this sort of thing as well. With SKY if you order PPV the box dials up sky to get authorisation. People realised this, unplugged the phone and found that they sky box would then grant them access as it gave them the benefit of doubt.
:) Fantastic
What they didn't realise that they box has a £50 credit limit so if you hit this then it stops. So people then plugged the box back in, it dial sky and they get a bill for £50
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
That's hilarious - it's just a coax connector. If you read the copy, it never says anything about giving you free PPV, or even descramblig anything. It's a "Digital Cable Descrambler Filter for PPV", which means it's a filter for the descrambler. It happens to be a filter that passes everything. You're just left to assume that it gives you free porn. Cute. I wonder if that would work in court.
What's really funny is that somone's already bid $7.00 for it. It's a shame he only has one of them - he could make a lot of money. Or is he just bidding against himself?
What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?
A couple of years ago, when i was addicted to quake, lived at home and only had access to dialup i got hold of some strolen accounts. These were not ordinary "free" dialup accounts that looks like just another phonenumber on your phonebill, but a toll-free number that billed the owner of the account.
:)
:)
Yeah, i know, it was a really low thing to do on my part.. but i knew i was not the only one using the account, and the real person that owned the account would never end up having to pay the bill. So i felt i only screwed over a "big company".
I was young and dumb
Anyways, a couple of months later, my ordinary phonebill dropped down in the mailbox. It was a *little* bit bigger than usual. There were no additional notes on the bill and there was no warning about legal actions from the company, so i payed the bill and kept my mouth shut.
I got what i deserved and i learned my lesson
I'm not sure what the difference is between the large boxes and the coax filter, but I do know that it takes more than a simple coax filter to do descrambling. (There has to be filter tuning, which involves user control, which makes it so you can't just do "Plug-n-Play" of descramblers)
It's my guess that you need a -real- cable descrambler (as in, one from the official cable company) to use the coax filter, and that cable box needs to send data to the cable company to work, so the coax filter blocks one half of the transaction or something. This puzzles me, though, because I think getting the legitimate descrambler box would cost more than it would to get a "pirate" cable box anyways.
Anybody know more than I do about this?
(P.S. NO I DON'T STEAL CABLE. Why would I anyways, all they ever do is play shitty movies that involve naked women and exploding cars and crap.)
"I deal with it by not ordering PPV movies"
Which is exactly why it costs so much.
It does cost the company money, but this is a set free for the right to broadcast the movie, so the more people that watch it the cheaper it becomes per person.
If they dropped the prices so that it wasn't so overpriced then I'm sure more people would start watching them.
They would at least keep the same profit. In fact they would probably make more money as it's likely that they'd get new viewers at a faster rate than they'd lose money through the price drop.
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?
-P2P has noninfringing uses as has been pointed out. "Steal cable for free" filters do not (unless they are simply off-the-shelf coax parts being sold as such).
-Slashdot does not speak with one voice. Many people post here. The individuals who express outrage over P2P crackdowns in other threads are not necessarily the ones giggling at this story.
-P2P crackdowns are just depressing; they're yet another example of corporate dominance and control. This cable filter story, on the other hand, introduces the concepts of greed and gullibility. A little schadenfreude shouldn't be surprising.
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!"
Honestly, people dumb enought to getting ripped off while they are trying to rip off someone else deserves what they get.. people beliving spam even more so. After all, a fool and his money is easily parted.
I am however puzzled over one simple fact; can it really be legal in the USofA (where I presume this is happening) to sell such a device? Over here (Norway for those who don't get the clue from my nick) it would be quite illegal to sell something which is intended to allow the (l)user to break the law.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
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 (sic) doesnt (sic) give you the right to do what you please.
Please sue. Then you can testify in court how you attempted theft and were robbed in the process. Then, after you win your civil case and receive your settlement the District Attorney can arrest you for the crime you committed. It will be an open-and-shut case since you have already given sworn testimony admitting to the crime. The DA can give it to his freshest assistant and chose to prosecute to set an example.
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.
While it is illegal to make lethal booby traps--the 'nanny state' at work; you are making a false comparison. Sting operations are conducted all the time, and are only called entrapment when the police fail to follow procedure or give due process. What we have here is more equivalent to a police sting operation, which is really a legal confidence game. The case here is criminaly-run, private enterprise sting operation. The victims are brought into this game with intent to commit a crime. Unfortunately, they are caught because of the ploy and consequently have to pay. The fact that the cable company does not press charges is what should be amazing here.
Due process and all. Look it up sometime in the Constitution, its (sic) a fading fad thanks to post 9/11 hysteria but its (sic) still a good idea.
Sorry, recent changes in the law do not mean that due process has been hurled out of the court system. We still have the same judges. We still have the same defense attorneys who thrive on lack of due process. We still have the American Civil Liberties Union to take egregious violations of the Constitution, and laws that support said violations, to the Supreme Court.
However, I am glad that you are incensed when the Constitution is abused by such laws. Perhaps you should be equally incensed when judges chose to legislate from the bench, which belongs to the legislative branch or to loosely interpret the Constitution to suit their needs.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
>Then, after you win your civil case and receive your settlement the District Attorney can arrest you for the crime you committed.
So be it. That money could pay off the fines or at least help. No where did I advocate letting them go scott free. In fact, I wonder how many people can even afford to pay them off without sueing the retailer? Hey, that means our cable rates go up if they don't to pay off their default.
>While it is illegal to make lethal booby traps--the 'nanny state' at work; you are making a false comparison.
Not at all. Both analogies have to do with DAMAGES while doing something illegal. A person still has rights even while doing illegal acts. All the schedenfraude in the world won't change that. You say 'just desserts' I say 'its a lot more complex than that.'
>The case here is criminaly-run, private enterprise sting operation.
Its only a sting if it has a warrant. This is fraud.
>Sorry, recent changes in the law do not mean that due process has been hurled out of the court system.
I suggest you do a google search for Jose Padilla.
Actually I'm not. Both have to do with damages while commiting an illegal act.
People here always argue that copying music isn't stealing because nothing is in reality stolen. Everyone seems to agree with that. How is it then that cable piracy is now being called stealing, and everyone agrees with that too. I'm not saying it is or it isn't, but come on, pick a side and stick to it.
Satellite TV in Spain (cable didn't catch on) relied on a smart card that contains all the information about what the subscriber has paid for. This meant that if you reprogrammed the card to contain the most recent user codes, you could access all the PPV channels for free. If you have a legit card, it recieves the new codes from the satellite signal itself.
There was a huge underground industry around - it got to the point were people where actually selling cards with PICs on them which would reprogram themselves automatically, getting the info from the satellite signal.
Obviously the satellite company knew about it, as did everybody else. I cannot think of anyone that didn't have one of these cards (if they had satellite obviously). The TV company didn't do anything about it for a couple of years. Why? Market share. The more people that signed up for their service and got a box, at a higher price than it would be with the compentition, the better in the long run for the company. People were signing up left right and center with the expectation of being able to unlock all the channels.
And then all of a sudden - clamp down! The company started verifying the user info in a different way an bingo - millions of subscribers that are addicted to 24/7 PPV.
The fact that the cable company does not press charges is what should be amazing here.
:)
Why should that be amazing? For all we know, the bloody cable company MADE the friggin' boxes and sold them under guise of criminals, with the intent of getting increased revenue. Think about it. If you think you're getting a free ride you're going to order more PPV. More PPV means more PPV charges, even if they don't come in til 2-3 weeks later, who cares right?
My journal has hot
NEWSFLASH - Record companies discover a way to determine who has pirated music over the past 5 years. Millions are billed, sometimes the bills are in the thousands of dollars. Various people whine and bitch about it, but they were stupid enough to download the stuff, so they are getting what they deserve.
Smeghead every day of the week.
If this is the same sort of device I remember using in college for this purpose then it is simply an inline hi-pass filter that you can buy at radio shack for a couple of bucks. I always worried we would eventually get a GIGANTIC bill, but luckily that never happened. The worst that ever happend was during a boxing match the screen blanked out and a message came on saying 'We know you are stealing this broadcast' or something to that effect. Scared the shit out of us, but nothing ever came of it. We later speculated that maybe the cable company figured out a way to send the message to people with the filters (which were pretty rampant at the time) but couldn't necessarily tell who was using them.
When you purchase music, you are buying something that you are (hopefully) going to be listening to many many times. Therefore it is more of an investment decision. Finding out what the music is like is very important to some (like me) because there is more of an implied value with music cd's because they are physical things.
You order a PPV feature and don't like it, all you are left with is a small bill at the end of the month. After that, there is nothing to remind you of it unless you remind yourself. No physical evidence is left from the transaction therefore there is very little to keep you feeling ripped off by what you saw.
But then buy a cd only to find out you don't like it at all. Sure, time-wise you probably wasted less on it than the PPV feature (unless that feature was a 2 round knockout boxing match), but money-wise you probably paid more and you are also left with the added insult of having something physical to remind you of it.
To me there is a greater risk involved in buying a CD than renting a movie or watching one on PPV. Listening to a CD is not usually a one time experience, but something you will go back to time and time again with the good ones. Sampling a CD before I pay for it is gernally a no brainer to me because of this, and since most of what I like isn't played on the radio or MTV type channels I am left with very little options for finding new music to like.
Hell, if it wasn't for Kazaalite I wouldn't be going out to find some Kraftwerk CD's later today. But I digress.
I don't see how this is substantially different from the RIAA or others going on the offensive against users downloading music illegally. Yet Slashdoters jeer these poor jerks who are stealing cable (in the third person), but cheer the freedom-loving Americans who download copyrighted music (should be in the first person).
Don't get me wrong -- I think the RIAA is paddling the wrong way on a roaring river, but the fact is copying music is pretty much the same crime as stealing PPV.
The device has a valid use in cable systems, or at least it used to in earlier days when the signal amplifiers weren't as clean. It's called a high-pass filter, it lets frequencies above 50MHz pass through, and anything below 50 is blocked. This used to be useful to correct certain reception problems. The return path on digital cable boxes (and cable modems) is down in that sub-band area, so neither unit works properly when there's a high-pass in the line.
But technically, the sale of this wouldn't be illegal since its designed purpose is legitimate.
You made a device that not only filters the outbound datastream, but knows how to respond to the cable company polling?
It would be interesting to know if the cable company was bright enough to make the polling/response sequence an encrypted one.
I can also imagine someone figuring out how to blank the local viewing records on the decoder - use the filter, watch your show, blank the record, remove the filter.
>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.
Stealing? You mean if I use one of these filters I will cause a DoS attack on every single other user's cable boxes?
COOL! Seems to me like a reason to use it! Just for the anarchistic fun of the matter! (Sure it's childish, but if there was a big red button on your desk that said "turn off all electricity in this building" don't you think you'd be tempted to push it? Just once?)
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I have NEVER signed anything with regards to my cable service.
In my last apartment I had a simple arangement with the cable company, they send me bills, I tell them I never signed up for cable and don't want it, they don't bother to turn it off and don't send me bills.
Things are different in my current location (I do want cable and am paying), but I still never signed up for anything and the bills neither contain nor referance a contract...
Realities just a bunch of bits.
You can do it legally but is that really what they're pushing?
Some broadband providers bank on the fact that you won't use a whole lot of bandwidth. Since the legal music downloads make up a small percentage of all of the bandwidth usage, it's a pretty safe bet that the providers actually DO hope that's how you're going to do things, since if you do things that way, you won't be doing nearly as much.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.