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$180 Million for Piracy Conspiracy
theCoder writes "According to an AP story printed in the Orlando Sentinel, Steven R. Frazier has been ordered to pay $180 million restitution for attempting to sell a device that would decrypt the satellite signals sent into everyone's homes. In addition to spending the next 5 years in Federal prison, Frazier will have to pay $500 a month for the next 30,000 years, though no one really expects him to live long enough to make all the payments. That value is based on estimated loses DirectTV and Echostar may have incurred had Frazier been able to sell his devices. Being ordered to pay restitution for actual damages is one thing, but paying for some made up number of future damages? Maybe if I catch someone trying to break into my car, I can sue him for the damage he would have caused if he succeeded..."
That value is based on estimated loses DirectTV and Echostar may have incurred had Frazier been able to sell his devices.
they don't put people to death for attempted murder, do they? that seems a little harsh to me.
...if there was a beowulf cluster of $180 million dollar payments... ...sorry, was going down a different road.
Though no one really expects him to live long enough to make all the payments.
If he has to make payments back on some damages he hasn't actually caused, then he'd better get the $180million given to him from DirecTV etc. That stinks
It's like paying extra on blank CDs in case you pirate using them.
That payment I make on CDs gives me the moral right to pirate all I can, and I do so. Frazier's payment gives him the moral right to claim $180million (or a good percentage of) from DirecTV, I say.
There is something severely wrong about financially crippling somebody for life.. it is just totally out of proportion. Someone needs to pass round the smelling salts to the judges.
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
If he'll be in jail for years how can he pay that much money per month?
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
When I was a kid you actually had to commit a crime before arrest, trial and conviction.
IMHO having to pay that money indefinately is essentially slavery, and any sane person would flee to another country to regain thier freedom.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Where the law is just and the judiciary isn't beholden to corporate interests!
Long live American values of IP justice!
May no Microsoft go not-unpunished again!
May engineers spend years in prison!
May search engine designers pay their life savings!
Sounds to me like something right of Minority Report. When the movie came out, I took it as something that probably wouldn't happen anywhere in the near future, but now it seems that you can punished for crimes that you may have committed just as harshly as if you'd committed them. The limits to the lunacity of our court system seems to have no limit....
what was the exact definition of "hacking gear" again?
it was a laptop and quartz crystals last I looked, but they might have changed it...
In this case the key element was information. Had this information got free the satallite providers could have lost a *lot* of money. There would be no way to stop the spread of the information.
Murder or robbery is a bad example. Everyone knows how to do it, there isn't much special knowledge involved.
It's very, very apples to oranges.
It says that "The companies estimate they could have lost $900 million" (Firstly this number is overinflated.)
Many of the people that were part of this scheme dont have the money to pay for satellite legally. They chose the illegal option because it was what they can afford. Thus it is not lost revenue to the companies since these people would never have paid full price.
The same goes with things like.... ohh.. say mp3's. I would not go out and buy a cd. I have a perfecty good radio and am happy to listen to that.
Just my $0.02
See the forbiden post Here
And why should we feel sorry for Mr. Frazier? The man probably tried to sell his findings for a profit. I say good riddance. I would feel more sympathetic towards him have he GPL'ed the decryption method.
Welcome to the new age of slavery!
Step right up and take your ticket.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
If we're going to allow potential damages in a case like this, I think we better apply it to everything....especially our delicate ecosystem.
Everyone who does that awful, awful thing needs to pay for their crimes. Every toilet should be setup with the latest technology (high end DSPs, embedded Linux, the works). It should detect the size and number of plops that are flushed, send that info to a satellite (128-bit encrypted stream of course; lest some advertising agency get the poo data) and the government can bill each person at the end of the month. Eventually, advancements in technology will even determine the actual poop density.
It's either this or the 'Poop Tax', but you just know those evil right-wingers will try to give the rich (who eat WAY too much) an unfair break.
Pay now or pay later!
the_squid
Hey, at least it's not 1.9 billion or trillion or whatever the RIAA tried to get out of those collage students.
Anyway, This still seems ridiculous. I'm guessing that the $180 million figure was what would have happened if every single person who has DSS right now switched to the illegal free system. That's like Eli Lilly suing a company that made Ecstasy, based on the argument that everyone taking Prozac might switch to Ecstasy. The only way that they would have lost all of that money is if the DMCA had been repealed (although, I think decrypting satellite data may have been illegal before the DMCA, not sure though) and the devices were made legal.
Even then, they could have simply switched to a new encryption standard. Just mail out new access cards and that would be it.
(btw, I wonder how these systems work. I have a friend who's been getting free DSS TV for a couple years now, the feild is intresting)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
After I figure up the value of my mental anguish, lost work/productivity from crashes and premature aging from 24 hour reinstall marathons, they will owe me millions!
All we have to do is tally up the greatest possible value of alternative actions we could have taken instead of working through problems created by their junk. Alternatively, I don't have that much spare time to waste on 20 years worth of calculations.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
This is rediculous. I really hope a lawyer will pick this up and appeal it. He didn't actually sell these devices and therefore should not be punished for it. At least he only has to pay $500 a month. It could have been much worse. At least this way when he gets out of mail, he _may_ have a chance of getting a decent life back if he can get a job where $500/month isn't that bad.
This is like me making a knife and then the tire companies suing me for tons of money because, had I sold these knives, they could've been used to destroy their tires.
-Shippy
This is insane. But then again there is so much more of this going on around the US and Canada right now that is not discussed. Actually not sure if the people of slashdot are aware but awhile back there was an article on a website called Pirate's Den where he was being forced to close down and opened another site to make people aware called Freedom Fight.ca. Well he was gagged the other morning and is now unable to operate his FREE SPEECH website anymore cause DTV has slapped a lawsuit on him and to boot a gag order. So this Frazier guy is only an example of what goes on each and everyday in the US and Canada. Judges seem to be on the side of big business and big brother these days. Its sad.
Another site with information regarding this issue is www.live103.com
What if this guy wanted to, like many people from third world countries do to the US and Europe, go to some third world country like Brazil and claim asylum based on his persecution under immoral US laws?
future crime? Get the precogs out!
--
Imagine What he'd of got if would have acually sold the device.
See what I don't get is why people don't question satelite tv in the first place.
I mean with Cable at least you have to *physically* hookup to their drop boxes [re: their property]. That at least counts as theft of services.
But with satelite they beam the RF to your house regardless. I mean I'm bathing in 30 different versions of friends right now [stupid time shifting].
It seems that if the satelite companies don't want non-customers to receive service they shouldn't beam to non-customers. Otherwise by a similar exageration of the law can I sue them for tresspassing? I never gave them perission to make the RF energy appear in my house.
I hereby order StarTV to construct an RF shield dome for my house!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Now I can sue all those tailgaters for the damage that they would have caused if I were to brake suddenly. Legal precedent isa powerful thing.
He should have his kids to continue paying his bills for next 29,900 years! Before his kids dies, his kids' kids will continue to pay his kids' kids' bill for next 29,800 years!! Oh yeah, this is great idea.
That is going to leave a mark. Not just on him, but it's chilling when you consider that this could set a precedent for future cases.
Imagine if I was create a new file sharing program, and then I was to be forced to pay restitution of $1000 a month for enternity because it could be used to illegaly distribute material (movies, software etc)
Will I create this software? Hell no. With the imaginary axe of potential damage looming over the heads of would be programers and developers, its going to become a gamble for any individual to try and develop any type of new software.
What if you build a new OS, MS or someone claims that you stole part of their code, or claims that it poses a massive security threat or whatever, use your imagination, and proactively sues you for a few billion in damages that might be caused by your software. Now your company is gone, and the big kids keep ruling the block. Where the hell is due process?
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
" An estimated 3 million people illegally watch satellite television using devices that unscramble satellite TV signals. The industry estimates it loses $4 billion a year in revenue."
Is that right? Satellite TV costs well over $1000 a year? No wonder people don't want to pay for it.
They can't possibly be worried about lost ad revenue, because those people are all watching the ads.
Weasel maths, I'm guessing.
how do they run around making estimates of hgow much money they're losing when nothing's being stolen from them? Most pirates cant afford and sure as hell wouldnt pay for their shitty service. I would think maybe some of them may start liking it and eventually subsbscribe giving up the inconvenience of trying foind mod chips.;
What I'm saying is piracy grows their market/audience.
OK... what happened here? The title makes it sound like he got charged $180m for leading a *privacy conspiracy*, however I think he really was only selling devices to bypass satellite encryption (pirating the channels, basically).
In case 1 - GOOD. If he was doing some very anti-privacy stuff, then I am glad they made an example of him and fined him so much.
In case 2 - DAMN. I have attempted to pirate satellite signals before too... among other things. If he got fined $180m for damages that "might" have happened had he succeeded... this is bad.
no comment
The RIAA already managed to get a tax put on blank CDs because some were being used to copy music. This is just an extension of the same thing - because you could at some point in the future comit a crime, we will make you pay for it now.
Beep beep.
Talk about the punishment not fitting the crime? How long will it be before we are all Winston Smith, hiding our thoughts? They really need to appeal this ruling be and win before this gets more out of control than it already is.
Strong words... Strong words from a strange man ~ Kent Brockman
is anyone else thinking minority report?
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
What happens when the RIAA hears that they can sue people for contemplating the theft of music? Now they can sue everyone for inordinate ammounts of money, and just make up the figure. Anyone else see a problem with establishing a precedent of this manner?
In a US Federal Criminal court they use a Preponderance standard instead of reasonable doubt.
The US government can add YEARS to a sentence and MILLIONS of dollars based on nothing more than perceived damages.
In a Federal Court you are GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN innocent.
Yes, it is very much like something out of the Minority Report. I only wish that more people in this country knew just how much freedom we really don't have.
Pray that you never end up on the radar screen of the Feds.
Read the short story by P.K. Dick. It is MUCH better.
So since they were only possible damages, can he sell the device and do up to $180 million in damages before they can charge him again because of double jeopardy? i mean, that sounds like a $180 million credit to do damages.
"attempting to sell a device that would decrypt the satellite signals sent into everyone's homes."
I never gave them permission to send those signals into my home. Once they're here I should be allowed to do whatever I damn please with them.
More reason to cut taxes, privatize and de-regulate. That way businesses run the courts! If anyone can do it, it's Bush. Oh, and of course we cant forget to throw in a tax cut to all these businesses so they can create more jobs ie: more Lawyers to sue the crap out of the public. Even though a lot of these businesses dont pay a dime in taxes because they have a P.O. Box in bermuda which excludes them from taxes.
No long do businesses have to actually produce products or sell services in order to make money. All you have to do is find a scapegoat to blame for your business model not making money, and have the courts order him to pay you an outlandish sum for the rest of their life.
Wow... this is so cool. This means I can publish a book and sue xerox for producing a product that can copy my book without my permission! Tallent is the thing of the past, I don't even need to produce a good book.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Wow - the thought police are here now. Get ready to be jailed for ideas. Satellite TV - possibly losing business? He gets jailed for something he did not yet do, and find 180 Million? His attorneys are either stupid or this is just pure hogwash. Why did the EFF not hear about this case?
Can somebody verify the claims of this article? Is this one of those "secret government" articles? Why would someone accused of such not be defended better against a crime that never happened? How do they know he "came within a hair's breadth of doing something, and why would any sane jury allow such nonsense to occur?
Someone please verify if this is a phony article. Just because AP puts it out, doesn't mean it is true...
We have to start questioning the mainstream. There are so many things wrong with this article on so many levels that I wonder about its validity.
All Ad hominem replies happily ignored as the sender shall be deemed to lack the faculties to comprehend the equation.
yet more evidence that the american justice system is not at all about justice but greed and revenge.... nowonder USA is so FU*KED UP..greed and power and comitting genocide is all anyone ever thinks about over there.. suing people for ridicilous amounts over estimates less substansial than fog.. or too hot coffe.. or the fat in a burger.. having absolutely NO privacy whatsoever and completely failing to arrange a fair truly democratic election.. USA has gone from admireable to downright disgusting in the last 5 years.. its a bloody shock!
Triggerhappy fu*ked up buch of idiots with a Hitler 2.0 as your president.. you should just float off to hell and leave the rest of us PEACE LOVING people alone to create a LIVEABLE environment..
ELSX
they didn't have mass media companies to raise situations like this.
The government did a much better job of ruining people's lives.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Maybe he should have used the "satanic cult" theory...
Since he was already convicted of a crime he didn't do yet couldn't he now release the device schematics? They may have taken all the schematics from him but surely he can remember most of it or recreate it. In fact he could black mail DTV that he will release the schematic if they don't drop the charges. Then again black mailing is also a crime.
If someone has 200 copied PlayStation CDs at home, would the game industry have lost 200 * $50 = $10 000 on that person?
Of course not, because if the person would have to pay $10 000, he wouldn't buy the CDs.
To top that, he didn't actually commit the crime, but gets the same punishment anyway. A lot of people have moral objections to this, but it's not something entirely new.
In Belgium, for example, you get the same punishment if you know that someone will be murdered, but you don't do anything to stop it, than you would get if you actually murdered someone.
Oh, his rights! Too harsh! Communists! Innocent until proven guilty! Judges suck!
Come on. You all will have a knee-jerk reaction to anything. With just a few paragraphs of fluff from an AP report to base your statements on, you freely second guess our legal system and judges.
This guy pleaded guilty. Obviously he and his lawyer thought there was a pretty solid case against him. Have any of you criticizing this case seen any of the evidence? If you have more knowledge of this case that the rest of us, how about posting a like along with your breathless comments.
Myself, I'm glad what happened to this guy. I think everyone these days knows well that what he was doing is illegal. This guy deserved to be make an example of.
What would have been so bad about using his obvious skills to get a real job and earn an honest income? How about not being to damn greedy and selfish?
...I can go ahead and start shooting people based on the fact that it would be self defense if they had carried through with their attempted plans of attacking me... ...just like the voices tell me....
...consider please that it might not be true. or it might be almost true, or it might be "accurate" but not true.
what scares me most is the fact that people still believe to newspapers (ONE source of information) and to news like that. I want to see the trial first, or the sentence - THEN I'd say it's time to leave the US before they come to arrest you because you might decide to learn how to program in C and reverse-engineer some driver.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
If only people would listen to their Oompa Loompa, the world would be a much better place. In this situation...
"Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-do
I have another puzzle for you
Oompa Loompa doom-pa-da-dee
If you are wise you'll listen to me
What do you get from a glut of TV?
A pain in the neck and an IQ of three
Why don't you try simply reading a book?
Or can you just not bear to look?
You'll get no... you'll get no... you'll get no commercials
Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-da
If you're not greedy, you will go far
You will live in happiness too
Like the Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-do"
--- Oompa Loompa Song,
Mike Teevee, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the movie
Three million people, twelve months in a year. That makes for thirty-six million monthly payments. Roughly $100 per month per person descrambling. That's about right considering it's about $40-50 per month flat and if you add in premium channels, pay-per-view, etc. it could reach/exceed that $100/month figure (after all, are you just going to unscramble basic service or the whole damn thing while you're at it?).
Obviously Frazier has been given a sentence which is outrageously out of proportion to his crimes. But let's think about things from a different point of view...
I live in an area which has its share of crime. Not crime like Frazier's, ordinary crime like vandalism, graffiti, burglaries and so on. The police are always hugely overstretched in trying to respond to these things. Now house burglaries cause far more distress than anything that Frazier did. Vandalism and the like take far more out of a neighbourhood than anything Frazier did.
Yet, Frazier is worthy of some massive surveillance operation. We are entitled to ask why limited police resources were used in this way.
But do you really need to punish someone for something they didnt even do?
This is ridiculous.
The television companies estimate they could have lost $900 million in business
Of course, that $900 million loss was if the company existed for the next 30,000 years.
Honestly, their quarterly profits are ~$1.4 billion dollars. I just don't see it...
I remember DirecTV DSL going out of Business earlier this year. Wonder if this has anything to do with their massive loss of profit.
With the crap you get on TV (terrestrial, cable, satellite, whatever ...), is it worth risking that much money and jail time ?
...
I could set up an illegal repository of OCRed books, a la Gutemberg project, but with recent releases, and probably only risk a nasty slap on the hand in court compared to this guy, despite the fact that I would provide content that often requires a lot more work and talent to make, and would give people a lot more culture than, say, Jerry Springer. Funny
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The television companies estimate they could have lost $900 million in business.
Oh pooh!! The satelite TV industry is not exactly one that is risk-free...no industry is. If they wanna be in the satellite industry, they gotta realize that there are gonna be losses. If I open up a gas station in the corner, I can't expect everybody that passes by to stop and fuel up. In addition, I shouln't be surprised if another gas station opens up in front of mine! As the topic states, "Maybe if I catch someone trying to break into my car, I can sue him for the damage he would have caused if he succeeded..."...Sue him for all the days I would have missed work, all the job offers I could have gotten (because I got fired for the other one since I didn't have a car to get there on time every day), etc.
So how exactly did they come up with that figure? X potential customers * X descrabling units * X service calls to set up the satelite * Y for call-backs * Z tech's hourly wage....etc.??? As far as I can tell, they aren't loosing anything. The box would have just decrypted signals and would have not deprived these companies in any way....Well, yes could have been deprived in customers, but not in the other stuff.
And Kenneth Lay, who stole $10 billion from Californians, is walking free with 16 mansions. Once you get away with it, and make some donations to high-profile politicians, you are home-free.
For the P2P programmers, ' your software COULD be used for piracy, so you goto jail and here's what we THINK it might cost us, so get out your checkbook and bend over, you scum'..
Man this is scary in general.. Seems the entire legal system has gone nuts over the last couple of years..
But then again, its being driven by lawyers ( remember judges were lawyers too ) and they are the only ones that truly profit from a society like we are fast becoming.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
if they brought that guy to NORAD and get them to play Tic-Tac-Toe against the WOPR to save the world, would that redeem him ?
...
No wait, the cold war is over. Sucks for him
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
which is still a joke
Just because the laws that he broke dealt with copyright infringement, does not mean that slashdot has to support him in any way. The guy is a criminal. It needlessly wastes efforts when one tries to make him into a martyr and it takes down the image of RIAA-sued college students when one compares his plight to theirs. This is not to say that they were completely in the right, but a lesser punishment should be given to one who has no plans to profit off of copyright infringement than to a person who has goals of selling a device meant solely for breaking copyrights. His punishment in this aspect seems fair except maybe for the life long sentence to poverty.
-hoch
2*31*37*263
Getting punished for monetary damages that have not occurred yet is insane. Just think of the other directions these type of suits could be taking. Yes, think of the RIAA. The engineers behind KaZaa, Morpheas, Grokster, etc better get their lawyers ready.
According to my wife (WIAL (Who Is A Laywer)) the outcome of the suit, at least the monetary damages part, is not in accordence with the law and should be overthrown by the appeal.
I have come around to believing this bumper-sticker philosophy
The fact that such ridiculous court decisions are being made, with nary a chance of ever being realized (like 30,000 years, or in Jordan'case billions of dollars) means that there is a disconnect between the laws of copyright and the reality of digital distribution. Crazy models and interpretations that generally came out of the academic confines of class rooms, are now coming from the real world of the courts.
I fully respect someone's ideas, and completely am against plagarism. But I am starting to differ about how much they should be allowed to profit from them, and am starting to see how the role of piracy is underappreciated in the wide dissemination of ideas.
The decision whether piracy is good or bad must be made based on two factors:
We are in a new world, unimaginable even 10 years ago. We can make infinite and perfect copies of a product, something which we could never could earlier.
And here we are being trapped into artificial market segmentations by middlemen who, thanks to the FCC and Powell, are becoming bigger and bigger and bigger ... This is just pathetic .... (maybe I am a little harsh, but after hearing about the RIAA decision to sue thousands of file-sharers I am not in a very generous mood).
The providers of content that can be digitized, just have to forge a stronger relationship with the audience ... they have to use their static and digitized content as a "marketing and business card" towards the development of a dynamic relationship between the audience and the engines of creation.
I will reverse myself in any court of law, but right now I say Kill Plagiarism Support Piracy ...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Here is some interesting statistics from 1992.
Look at the box on page one.
Now compare those figures with the sentence time this guy got.
I bet those women / men who were raped / kidnapped / got $180 Million too...
And this guy pleaded guilty.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Happy gay day, fucking American faggots.
I have no sympathy for this guy. It is one thing to casually trade music. It's another to be selling pirated music to people. He wasn't simply giving away the decryption devices to people - he was trying to make money off a crime.
True, he hasn't actually caused all this damage yet, but the article says that he already had 5000 orders for these decryption devices and he was trying to crack the latest DTV cards. Furthermore, this isn't the first time he's been arrested. The article says that he had been arrested in 2000 for the same crime and was let go.
This is not a guy who was just doing this casually. He was trying to make money and already had a warning. Maybe $180 million is too much, but it's not like they expect him to pay it. It's more to make a statement to other pirates who are doing this for profit. Remember that DirecTV is a company that needs to make money. There aren't even moral arguments here like with the RIAA and artists.
Well, that means I can get away with sueing Micrsoft because I predict their buggy Windows 2003 Server crashes, and I estimate my damages to be 20 billion dollars.
Why is it that intellectual property rules are most jealously enforced by people that have no intellect?
This is my sig.
Note: I'm not taking any sides here, just bringing up a fact.
RTFA. He entered a guilty plea. That is, he admitted he's a criminal.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Loss of freedom is the usual penalty for a crime.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
For some perspective, Biljana Plavsic, ex-President of the Republika Srpska was convicted of Crimes against humanity (that is, allowing/ordering ethnic cleansing/killing of thousands of persons) and will serve at most eleven years in prison.
I haven't heard anything about any monetary damages in her case, but if I had to choose between 7-11 years of jail or economic ruin for the rest of my life, I think I'd just might take the time.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I immediately don't trust any website that throws that many popups at me.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
Frazier will have to pay $500 a month for the next 30,000 years, though no one really expects him to live long enough to make all the payments.
I'd just keep charging it to my Visa till I died..."Don't worry, I'll pay it next month, honest!"
The government spent MY money/taxes investigating, finding, arresting, prosecuting, and now imprisoning this guy. And as soon as he gets out of prison he has to start paying Direct TV from something he might have gotten away with if the government didn't use MY money to bust him?
At least thats how the article reads. It doesn't sound like this was a private thing where Direct TV just took him to court. Sounds to me like this was a government action perhaps prompted by Direct TV (and that other company)
So what it comes down to, is that every american citizen is getting boned in this thing, except Direct TV stock holders. Thats right people, what essentially happened in this case, was that the government took YOUR MONEY and used it to make more money for Direct TV.
Time to write your congress[wo]man. Tell them what you think about this and why it makes no sense! Write them even though they're likely getting a pretty nice kickback from Direct TV
"An estimated 3 million people illegally watch satellite television using devices that unscramble satellite TV signals. The industry estimates it loses $4 billion a year in revenue."
Monopolistic distribution, intellectual roperty companies have been using this argument for a long time. When is someone going to do something to make it common knowledge that just because someone subverts barriers to GAIN, that it does not imply the company would have LOST money. Do any economists know a simple term for this principle? How do we make this public knowledge?
...will he get cable in his cell? And will he have to pay for it?
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
$4 billion a year?
Assuming a theft of service of $50 monthly, that would be 8,000,000 people getting their service illegaly.
291,363,272 is the present population if the USA according to www.census.gov. So based on my $50 monthly figure, that's about 3% of america pirating dish services.
[$50 montly based on advertsied price. $39.99 is a special I see advertsied, where I pay $70.00 for cable services presently]
Question... do 3 out of 100 people actually even own the equipment to recieve these services?
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
[Cynicism]
I don't think this law applies to individuals (at least individuals without a huge bank account), only collectiv.. err... corporations; I suppose.
[/Cynicism]
Note: I understood that the parent's comment was a joke, just couldn't control the cynic inside.
Thank you.
GrimReality
2003-06-28 21:48:51 UTC (2003-06-28 17:48:51 EDT)
The fact this case looks like the principle behind Minority Report - arrest people BEFORE they commit crimes - is undeniable, however, there's something a bit more frightening. I didn't see nor read Minority Report, but correct me if I'm wrong, in that movie/novel, people are imprisoned because the Law is sure you're going to do some bad out there - and for the majority of cases they're right because that's what would have happened. (then there's the problem about a minority...)
u sed-for-massive-copyright-infringement ?
But here, we aren't talking about predicted crimes. We're talking about POTENTIAL breakings of the law.
Should the corporates have caught the guy actually selling the thing, they would effectively had reasons to sue him like hell, but as it seems, he hadn't even begun to do so.
I know, the same guy had already been having quite a lot of problems with that the previous years, but, hey, it seems to me you are free to do whatever pleases you as long as it doesn't breaks the law, right ? Here, the DoJ's anticipation got a bit too far. What's the problem with carrying around some-electronics-stuff-that-could-potentially-be-
There's a context, a record behind the man. But it once stood somewhere into the brains of at least SOME policemen/inspectors/lawyers/judges that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. Where's the guilt here ? They could have permanently glued someone on his tail, tapped into any communication line the POTENTIAL "criminal" used, and caught him the moment he was "officially" - that means, to the eye of the public, and to the eye of the law - causing "financial harm" to the companies.
That's not what they did, it seems. Judging he was going to get dangerous again, they ensured he'd be punished before he could do any real harm.
In some ways it resembles what happened to people who looked "suspect" to the authorities, a few days and weeks after some madman decided to scare the hell out of any proud American out there - and achieved his goal the best way possible. Remember 9/11, right ? Since then, as it seems, you can be arrested for the seemingly arbitrary reason of suspected terrorism.
In the case I'm talking about, it's (heavily) suspected copyright/rights infringement. In the first case, at best you save lives. Here, at best, you save money. Quite a proof that in the mind of way too much people out there, human lives and money have become quite the same in terms of value...
Simply put : the rights of those who've got the money, therefore the power, are enforced, and this, now is possible even before said rights are violated.
That's widening the subject to a wider debate, but I do not call that justice, knowing that your rights won't be as efficiently defended should you not have enough zeros on your accounts. I do not call that Justice.
Anyway, what's the most scary is that the US calls that vision of things justice. And are pretending it is fair. Come on...
Besides, you just can't demand $180M from a physical person. This is even beyond our good ol' friend Gates' reach. Not to mention the fact this amount was "evaluated". How ?
- Hadriven
Since he will being doing 5 years in jail and paying $500/month for the rest of his life for something he had been planning on doing but never did, does that mean that after he gets out of jail is he allowed to go ahead with his plan? Instead of of a sentence, this sounds more like a bizarre licensing agreement similiar to the tax on CD's in case you intend to use them to pirate music or software.
My next Slashdot post will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
In America if you start a business, and you almost succeed, you don't get anything. But if you try to break the law, and don't succeed, you get punished?
Stuff like attempted murder or attempted armed robbery is reasonable to punish. By doing these crimes, you terrorize people and waste their time. From the sound of this case, the only time wasted was his own. He didn't hurt anyone, yet he still gets punished? The conspiracy charge might be warranted, but the fine is ridiculous. Maybe someday McDonald's can sue me because i conspired to go to Wendy's instead.
Also, I'm tired of all these businesses talking about hypothetical losses. "The industry estimates it loses $4 billion a year in revenue." I'm sorry, but you can't tell if you're losing something you never had in the first place. The majority of these 3 million people probably wouldn't pay for the service if they couldn't descramble it, so that's revenue The Industry would never have to lose. Granted, they are losing some money, but there's no way it's even close to $4billion.
In other news, mcp33p4n75 is losing 10 trillion dollars a year in revenue from freeloaders who won't pay for the air they breathe...
Where do you work? Oh. Let me guess. For a corporation.
If you want to keep our way of life like it is, then you better get with the program. If 3.2 SUVs per family is any way of measuring quality of life, then USA is the best country in the world. If this is what it takes to keep the status quo, then so be it.
He chose to break the law, and now he must face the consequences. In our glorious country, he should be grafteful that he's allowed to keep his life.
Kinda reminds me of the Tom Cruise movie where you get arrested because a bunch of people look into the future, or something, and can see you will eventually, one day, committ a crime... so they get you ahead of time for it. Just hope SCO doesn't get a hold of this... it might open more law suits for them.
Doens't make me sick, but your reasoning comes close.
People who can't afford to pay for legal satellite should just do without. We're not talking about food or medicine here. Anyone whose moral code can justify stealing a blatant luxury like satellite TV has the moral code of a thief.
Whether or not theft of satellite TV represents lost revenue to the companies selling it is irrelevant. It has no bearing on the morality of the theft. It isn't much of a defense to argue that there's no crime because you stole something that you'd otherwise not buy.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
This is not piracy. It did not take place on the open seas, there was no violence, and no physical property was stolen.
You have a pretty much guaranteed job as an English teacher, and China DOES NOT have an extradition treaty with the US. Once you know Chinese, you'll have numerous job opportunities and your children will enjoy a much better public schooling system too.
I'm a gnu world man.
I was on a jury once that had to decide whether to award damages to a worker injured on the job. Part of the deliberation was to estimate his lost future earnings. The award was not for the full amount of those lost future earnings, but for a portion of them, based on the relative distribution of fault for the accident. The company was decided to be 75% at fault, while the worker was found to be 25% at fault. So the notion of deciding a fine based on the injured party's lost future earnings is a regular part of such court cases.
Move to Mexico. Finish the device there. Sell it to the black market satellite world for a huge amount, as originally planned. Move to some latin american country with no extradition treaty. (Brazil?)
Since no one expects him to live for 30,000 years, the actual damage award is more on the order of $500 * 12 * 60, or $360,000.
The cake is a pie
In another example of the fair United States justice system, it is yet again proven that whoever pays more for their lawyer wins. Even when a crime has not been committed. The U.S. may be the land of the free, but it sure does chafe a lot.
Later,
Phil
Frazier was arrested in October 2002, when Customs agents tracking his operations found computer chips and hacking gear in his luggage on a flight from Canada.
Computer chips are illegal? And "hacking gear"? What would that be, a keyboard? A soldering iron? An oscilloscope?
There's the old gem of a story of the man who was sentenced to death but tried to kill himself while waiting on death row. He was declared legally dead as doctors battled to save him (pretty ironic: 'let's save him from death so that we can kill him!') but through some miracle was revived and declared to have served his sentence and was released.
What a great line for chicks at parties:
You know, I just got out of prison....
Really? What was your sentence?
*Pause for effect, then grin* Death....
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
We are NOT talking 180 Million dollars here. We are talking approximately 300 THOUSAND dollars, which at a reasonable CD interest rate will net, after taxes, 500 dollars per month of sustainable income. This is really a slap on the wrist people. You all need a little perspective.
That idjot used to brag about that crap all the time. I told him he would get caught.
Oh well... at least I don't owe $180 Million..
BTW.. he used to work for Chipzilla and then left there to work for PacBell... guess this is what happens when tech jobs don't pay enough???
"You know, this TV thing is really catching on, people are hooked... I know, we could launch these things into space, and force our content into every americans home and get them to pay us money to watch it!"
"But, gee Bob, decrypting signals is not all that difficult, how will we stop competitors from selling the front-end service we provide at a lower cost?"
"That's the beauty of it Jim! If any company tries to sell devices that decrypt the signal we beam into peoples homes we can have them arrested and make them pay damages that in a million years they could never repay!"
"Those poor saps will eat it up!"
"Hooray! I love making an honest living!"
"Hooray!"
if those dick-heads at DirecTV can beam their signals through my head without so much as a by-your-leave, then I can rightfully decrypt those same bloody signals if I want to. If they don't want 'em decrypted, they can keep their signals off my property. Oh, and I think it's no longer "legal" (but still morally right, and therefore OK) to get free satellite stuff here in Canada. Where went common sense, prithee tell?
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
I Point north and have no way of recieving satellite signals, so I haven't been following this closely. But under what law is this man being charged under ? I read the article and it was remarkably devoid of details.
Funny thing I've been reading about these posts are people comparing this kind of crime (if you call it that) to murder, stealing your car, etc. The difference is one is intellectual property and one is not, and thus treated differently under the law.
On a different note, conspiracy to commit murder or being an accessory to a murder even if you didn't commit the crime still makes you a criminal under the law.
And what's this about "if it's on my property I have a right to see it" stupidity? There was a police helicoper flying over my house yesterday. Does that mean I can shoot it down for violating my personal airspace? I don't think so. Yes, you have a right to pick up that signal. Nobody is stopping you from doing that. The question is do you have the rights to view its contents?
In the case of DBS, no, you do not have the right. You haven't been granted that right by the controlling body of that signal. Don't like it? Too bad; start your own DBS company and do things the way you want to do them.
Why does everyone think the world owes them everything and everything should be free? Sorry guys, we don't live in that world yet.
this is my sig
Is that some kind of an extremely clever pun? Because if it isn't, then I just don't know what is.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Child molesters have gotten away with less time than 5 years. Some schmuck got only 6 years for beating another to death over a hockey game. Yet, even think about violating some corporation's bullshit tradesecret/patent rights, and you get 5 years.
McDonald's only had to pay several million dollars to that woman who got 3rd degree burns on her private area because they made the coffee scalding hot so as to save money on coffee-beans.
This guy having to pay money to these crooks for something that he didn't even do is absurd. They lost no money, so him paying damages is completely unjust.
The only reasonable outcome of this would have been an injunction against him releasing that device. Anything else is completely out of proportion.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
What do you get if you guzzle down sweets,
eating as much as an elephant eats?
What are you at, getting terribly fat,
What do you think will come of that?
(I don't like the look of this!)
Get your own free personal location tracker
More likely is that they have sold 15 million recievers, and only 12 million are current subscribers. The other 3 million are obviously violating copyrights.
OK, let's forget about the $500/month payment and just focus on the FIVE YEARS in prison for a crime he never actually committed. To top it all off, this wasn't even a serious crime; it was IP infringement, which is already a sketchy area to begin with.
Every time something like this happens, I always see a few people that say "good, they broke the law, they got their punishment", well I have a little something called "empathy".
Put yourself in their shoes, would you like it if you were sent to federal prison for five years just because you might have cut into the profits of an already greedy and overpaid corporation? You need to put this in perspective, people charged with assault and other various violent crimes get off easier than this. This is complete and total bullshit and you people are just going to sit there and not only take it, but praise the government for brining another "dangerous criminal" to justice. Let me make it absolutely clear that the he didn't actually do anything, he was charged with conspiracy to do something.
Doesn't the amount of power that corporations are demonstrating they have SCARE YOU at all? Or are you just to completely oblivious to the world around you?
Actual damages: $180,000,000 / 5,000 = $36,000 per 'customer"
Potential damages: $900,000,000 / 5,000 = $180,000 per "customer"
That is a lot of satellite television. That's like 30 years at $100 a month. How long could one of those devices actually be useful for? Forget about the "potential damages" math, it hurts the head...
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
First I'm not defending this guy, we all know stealing is bad, but I have a major beef with DirecTV/Echostar on this one...
The $180M penalty is bullshit, its just a fear tactic. Regardless of whether or not he'll pay it all back or not. D*, E* and their estimates are no where near accurate. $180 million / 5000 custotmers = $36,000 per customer. How on earth did they calculate that???? They just want a headline to scare people. Screw the facts, protecting their product by fear is more important to them.
D* and E* have only been around since the early 1990s. Can you think of any way to spend $36,000 in D* or E* programming in 10 years? $3600 a year?
Even future damages... if someone spent an average $100/mo with D or E, thats $1200 a year, which would take someone 30 years to get to $36,000. You think this hacking system would have lasted 30 years? Even 10 years at 3x damages? No way.
D/E do this damage inflation in the same way the RIAA/MPAA sued those 4 college kids for $98 Billion dollars. Its complete BS. They want a headline. This guy is 28, say he lives to be 78. $500/mo is a total payback of 300,000. An good amount no doubt, but not $180M.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
...but I'm not.
/. fall into the third catagory of intelligent peoples where you can still thive in such a predatory environment AND still do some good. Sorry...I'm done rambling. If you wish to mod me down I understand, I just felt it needed said.
I do a lot of traveling as I provide independant (as in completely independant, even independant of the mid-sized IT company that I own and operate) security (IT mostly) and business-intel services. I provide these services all over the place (though mostly in the US, Caribbean, central and south america) and the independance that I spoke of is critical for this to work. It common amongst all in this industry to strike a precarious balance between an "every man for himself" and a disparate brotherhood. I don't know if this makes sense or not...sorry. Anyway, it is this complete independance where you build trust amongst your peers and then benefit one another while maintaining this line of demarcation between yourself and, well, everyone and everything else that maintains your value/job/livelyhood/etc. It is necessary because you're crossing borders, cultures and ideologies and you cannot afford to become entangeled. One of the things that has always been comforting is that while at home in the states things are much more relaxed. Relationships much simpler. The "road rules" less important. This article (as with so many others in recent history) indicates the utter breakdown of that ideology here in the US as has happened so many other places. To force this sort of craziness on the people of this county will simply polarize it. Those who are of nominal to lower than average intelligence will simply bow to the pressure. Those of higher intelligence will either exploit the situation for personal gain, learn to play the system and maintain a peripheral presence or will remove themselves from the system and as such said required independance will become the norm here as it is in countries that we used to critisize for the rights (be they human, privacy, etc.) violations. I hope that those here on
If he was smart enough, he would have moved to some small island, or any other country where the US has less influence, before starting up again...
I am going to patent the cyan, yellow, and magenta part of the spectrum. Anyone who attempts to make or use a device that produces white light now owes me money.
Anyone who has been using it owes me damages. I think I am rich, but I am not. Who can I sue for perceived damages? God forbid I take some LSD and really alter my perception, then you are all screwed, and the courts will help me!!!
Welcome to AmeriKKKa, where mob rule can legally run you into the ground.
..he had actually succeeded in selling this device. He'd be in jail for life and facing a $180 billion dollar fine.
What do we need those cheap foreign workers for when we can issue couple these penalties (for nothing - ofcourse) and have an unlimited resource of cheap labour for the next 30,000 years!
It must have been floating in the ether...
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
The information is already free. It's just in encrypted form. This is not something like stealing cable, where you buy a connection - agreeing to pay for it - and then reneg. These satellite fuckers are beaming this shit everywhere, without our permission. One has to wear a tinfoil hat to keep these (harmless, but that's not the point) signals from going through our brains.
A device like this should be completely legal. Apples to apples? It's like me reciting my own copyrighted poetry in France and then suing any bilingual Frenchman for not paying for my official translator.
c-hack.com |
The PDA version of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.
Know the time before you do the crime!
Sentencing Guidelines
The poor bloke who decided to revolutionize satellite television could have easily seen with the 2003 updates (not yet available on PDA) that he was threatening the "economic security" of the nation and that he'd be in for some serious smackdown if he kept working on his project.
As the average citizen is beholden to well over 2,000,000 (that's right, two million) laws, the PDA of the future will need massive storage and Google for Legal Documents (too bad "law" is not yet supported as a foreign language).
With all sorts of levels and modifiers, it will become a new game just to figure out what kind of penalty you may be facing for a particular crime.
Future versions of the guidelines will be far more interactive, allowing you to choose the modifiers you want. In the current guidelines, "body armor" moves you way up in the points total.
And at long last, there will be a neutral arbitrator for gangs who are trying to determine the magnitude of a particular crime so that the pecking order in the gang can be set right. The new gold and ice "bling bling" version of the PocketPC (Microsoft is more compatible with gang violence than Palm) will be heavily marketed to gang leaders -- no more intra-gang fights... have the information to be the boss... keep your crew healthy and strong... the real fight is outside, not inside.
Finally, for all people, there it will be, in the palm of your hand, in black and white and living color, the word of The Man.
Nothing's fair. It's about the Golden Rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules.
attempting to sell a device that would decrypt the satellite signals sent into everyone's homes.
Actually he attemted to sell a device that would trick an DirecTV or E* decoder into decrypting the satellite systems. The encryption itself wansn't cracked, the DirecTV tuner gets tricked into thinking a customer has the authorization to have certain channels decrypted.
Anyway, I love my DirecTV, and I'm happy to pay for it, and not give money to Comcast Cable!
Best Buy can have you arrested
You could buy a lot of Krispy Kreme donuts for $180 million. He gets to spend five years in a Federal Pound-me-in-the-ass prison. So who gets the money if these are supposed to unrealized profits?
You don't convict someone of capital murder no murder even took place. Thats why we charge them with conspiracy to commit murder or attempted murder. This guy didn't do the crime, therefore he shouldn't do the time. At worst they should be able to convict him of conspiracy to sell hacked devices. I hope his attorney is appealing.
Help me with these numbers
An estimated 3 million people illegally watch satellite television using devices that unscramble satellite TV signals. The industry estimates it loses $4 billion a year in revenue.
So do they really expect that those 3 million people, each would pay $1333.33 a year to them if they didnt steal the signal?
What the hell?
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
While this is big news, something even bigger is happening in Canada. The long-running Pirate's Den website and its message forums have been taken offline due to legal recourse by DirecTV. You can get every single detail here. DTV wants to basically outlaw free speech over the internet.
Make sure to visit the forums for up to date information on anything regarding DirecTV and the law.
Read this explanation from a political science professor, for instance, and try not to be confused. The author, in attempting to reconcile the absurd acts of modern legislatures with actual legal theory, has even managed to confuse himself:
What? He admits that a crime of omission cannot exist because it is an oxymoron. This conclusion is dependent upon the basic definition of crime that has existed since time immemorial: crime requires injury. An injury is an act committed against someone that results in harm to them.
Not doing something is not a crime; it isn't even an act. Yet, implicit also in the acceptance of "prescribed" rules of conduct being punishable as "crimes" is the acceptance of "crimes of omission," which he himself states is an oxymoron.
Thinking about doing something isn't an act, either. It would be more properly termed a thought crime, regardless of what Mr. Gates says.
It should be obvious that even the intellectual charlatans who affix themselves to the coattails of oppressive governments and attempt to explain logically it's actions cannot, in the process, help but become confused themselves.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Remember Kevin Mitnick? Remember the 5 years in prison without even a bail hearing? Or how about all those "enemy combatants" being held captive without a hearing? Or that kid with the search engine who settled with the RIAA, even though they later said he didn't do anything wrong? Face it, unless you're rich and can offord great lawyers, a large corporation or the DOJ can screw you over but good. When you're in that position, its tempting to cut a deal.
Is that 180 Million Canadian? If so, that's like $50US.
Quit yer bitchin n pay!
-B
U.S. District Judge James Moody ordered the restitution Wednesday, based on a formula of how much Frazier's intended victims, Direct TV and Echostar, would have lost if his scheme had succeeded. The television companies estimate they could have lost $900 million in business.
Would have lost? [emphasis mine]
This is horseshit. Horseshit, horseshit, horseshit. And for those of you who don't know what that means, it's the shit that comes from a horse!
Hypothetical situation: I had an awesome scheme to rob 20 banks, but got busted before my first robbery. Does that mean I'd have to repay all the money I could have stolen?
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
What else is there to say? Really.
``L'imagination au povoir.''
Put money where our mouths are. We'll show the morons trying to hold back the future how the public really feels.
What do you call sales taxes, payroll taxes, and property taxes then? Tofu?
That amount is patently ridiculous. My friend's brother designed and sold his own descramblers, too. Recently he was raided by US Marshals on DirecTV's behalf... he settled with them for $50,000 and no jail.
Incidentally, his latest project is modifying a Toyota MR2 to put snow skis on front, and snowmobile tracks on back. I kid you not.
on.
Cable companies (include Direct TV, and EchoStar here) have been paying off elected officials (municipal, state and federales) for years to gain government protected monopolies with no pricing restrictions.
Could we sue them for the current and future losses do to the perversion of democracy? What would that be -- a few hundred billion? Maybe a trillion?
DirecTV should do themselves a favor and just hire the guy as an engineer and pay him minimum wage.
-
aphex
I Steal Music!
So under this assumption shouldn't they be making judgements against gun owners for the robberies and murders they can possibly commit?
The sentence should hold up under appeal, but the financial ruling is ridiculous.
Libertarians won sodomy laws, they'll win this.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
If you assume that it will take the satellite company a couple years to come up with a fix for the security break, and a frooglepoopillion people get satellite for free, it will easily surpass their damage estimate.
Also, its not going to be just $500/month. Since he is gonna have to take their payment plan, they will probably tackle interest on top of it.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
...how these devices are illegal? Other than the DMCA, I mean. They decrypt signals. And...that's it. Just another tool. Boo on the content providers for expecting to be able to use broadcast distribution and limit who receieves it.
Anyone with a few braincells that likes to have a real goverment and a real justice system should move to europe.
It now appears that knowing something, and using that knowledge to build things is illegal if a corporation could be hurt finacially by that knowledge. What's next, thought control, to make sure no one has any "illegal" knowledge?
This is so wrong...
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
My first reaction was "that sucks!" because I'm always thinking about how many different EM signals are bombarding my head every second of every day, and I think it's cool that some people have tried to take advantage of it in different ways. Intending to sell the devices is probably where this guy went wrong.
Is there a legal way to reverse-engineer a form of communication and then either publish the results or plans for making a homemade device to decode the communication?
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Everyone is commenting on the damages and how absurd they are, which I won't argue against. However, what I would like to know is how can I "steal" something that is already in my house? Direct TV, or anyone else for that matter, can broadcast signals into my home, and yet I'm not allowed to manipulate those signals. What a load of crap. Imagine if I had to buy a separate brand of radio for each radio station, or a different TV for each television network. Now imagine going to jail and being fined for building you own radio. Why should Direct TV broadcasts be any different than radio or television signals? If you broadcast something over the public airways, then it should be just that: public. So much for living in a free country.
Well allot of car theives/muggers/violent people either get away scot-free or are given _far_ less serious punishments. Hell, even more serious offenders get off more lightly. It seems very unbalanced that someone can get 5 years surrounded by thugs and murderers for a non-violent crime plus a hefty fine!
The police should concentrate on serious crimes first - eat your dinner before you get disert, or atlest eat most of your dinner and then multitask it with disert, prioritising the dinner cycles.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I just took a quick look at echostar's financial stats and they are operating with a profit margin of -15.5%, which I guess means they are losing money with every subscriber. It seems to me that by preventing people from subscribing, he is actually saving them from said loss and echostar should be paying him $500/month for a while.
I don't know why people consider decrypting signals broadcast into their homes theft.
In any case, this supposed crime has been unusually punished. Confiscations, judicial extortion, banishments, these are the hallmarks of tyrany.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This doesn't contradict the original poster, really. The law in Canada says you can't sell non-Canadian broadcasting. There's still nothing wrong with owning the equipment if, for example, you found a dish growing in your apple tree.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
This is just one more in a long line of extortion suits DirecTV has been filing over the past few months. They have sent out lawsuit threats to over 100,000 end users who in many cases have done nothing more than purchase an ISO Standard Smart Card reader.
Basically they offer a settlement for $4000 or they take you to federal court. So far almost 7000 people have had federal civil cases filed.
The whole process is self perpetuating. Most people can't afford to defend a federal case so they can use the settlement cash to take the rest to court.
Criminalizing normal behavior is slavery for all of us, stupid. Decrypting radio signals passing through your house is only crime because we live under immoral laws that restrict your freedom. Telling you what you can listen to is the sister of telling you what you can say. The DMCA needs to be repealed for violating both free speech and reception.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sure you can make $500 bucks.. thats below poverty level.
Howver these days having $500 left over is getting harder to do... After you pay the bills..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If he's lucky, family members will sell everything he owns and put it into interest bearing accounts. If he's got average luck, his parents are dead and his wife will divorce him. Hopefully, he gives her everything he owns and flees the country. This punishment is both unusual and cruel.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Kind of makes the RIAA fines cheap by comparison.
By the way, the RIAA lost in court when it went after file-sharing software. Seems to me file-sharing software potentially enables one to "attempt" to gain digitally-encoded music illegally. Why this double-standard?
Well that's 100% punishment. No rehabilitation in that sentence at all. In fact I'd say they set that dude up. He'll probably be a criminal the rest of his life.
First thing i'd do when I got out of jail would be leave the country. $500 a month for life is very excessive.
Now I've seen Everything
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What worse can they do to you?
You will be in federal prison for 5 years.
You will be severely financially crippled for the remainder of your life.
FIGHT THE HELL BACK.
If this device becomes ubiquitous they CAN NOT arrest us all.
We will make them available in town squares.
We will distribute them door to door.
FIGHT!
There would be a certain satisfying irony in the counter-silliness of it.
I wonder how much in damages he could get based on the potential for getting his turds dented every time the soap fell?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
From the article:
;-P
"Frazier was arrested in October 2002, when Customs agents tracking his operations found computer chips and hacking gear in his luggage on a flight from Canada."
What exactly is "hacking gear?" I Searched Amazon and didn't find anything until I looked up swords, knives, and axes. That's what the article meant -- right? Maybe I'm missing something...
Considering he already had "sold" these devices, either he had clearly intended to profit off the sale of something illegal, or he had defrauded everyone that had placed an order.
Am I missing something?
Uh, OK, your point being...?
"Let's go get sushi and not pay."
--Repo Man
If you needed any further proof that the USA is in the grip of copyright hysteria, then this case does nicely. You can kill somebody and get out in 4 years with your duty "paid" to society. But if you copy the latest Britney Spears song or unscramble cable television then you're in gaol for 5 years and then financially crippled for life.
To somebody on the outside, looking in, the USA is insane. Land of Hope and Glory? Only if you're rich. I suggest you all emigrate.
No wonder the commies were so popular.
I've seen some very detailed explanations of why something should be or should not be in this thread and many other threads. There are some very inspirational people about. Many of you even hold very similar opinions. But...
All you people do is talk. You say how ridiculous or crazy this penalty is, but what are you doing about it? Nothing.
You people sit there trying to figure out how to properly word your comments and post rather insightful points of view, but it gets us, collectively, as a society or many societies, nowhere. For those of you in the US, it's great that you have free speech and are choosing to exercise it, but there are other freedoms you are not exercising. You people don't seem to really care about what's happening, because if you did, you would do something about it other than run your fingers on your keyboard.
"Corporations are getting out of hand!"
"Judges need to get a clue!"
"Such a penalty is ridiculous!"
Great, and these things will continue to get worse until you get off your asses and do something about it. Why do you think things are the way they are? Why do you think humanity has progressed as slowly as it has throughout the past few hundred years? Yeah, we've done some neat things, but we could have done a lot more. Why? Because we're lazy and self-indulgent. Especially Americans. So many people sit around waiting for life to happen to them instead of making life happen. They sit around and piss and moan about something being a certain way but they do NOTHING! Maybe a select few of you actually put a little action behind your words, but most of you contribute to the massive blob of social routine.
Great words are spoken all the time, and for the moment that most of us read those great words we become inspired and think about all the things we want to change. A few hours later we've forgotten; we've returned to what we were before we read those words. Most of you will probably take note of what I've said and just forget it in a few hours. Hell, maybe you'll forget it in a few minutes as you move on to another story.
Try to be more than just another routine. It's okay to be part of something. It's okay to be somewhat dependent and function in a group. That's how things get done. This idea that complete independence and uniqueness is the way to be is bogus. You can be unique, but don't be it alone. That changes nothing.
You want to be special? Get up and change something!
Aside from the prison term, which is arguable though harsh, the immense fine based on posited future damages had an explicit act actually have taken place is purely totalitarian and Orwellian. Modern copyright law is a way of enforcing a new, digital feudalism, where all rights flow from the mighty lords of the corporate suite and now happiness is possible without paying tribute.
The Shire of Kalamunda (satellite city in Perth, Western Australia) has (or had) a bizarre law on its books that specified a fine for operating a two or four stroke motor between midnight and midnight on Sundays. Why so specific? Why only Sundays?
It turns out that this particular law is due to a single councilor who lived in sunny Bickley, in Kalamunda's East Ward. Said Councillor was in the habit of going out and "raging" (nightclubbing, partying etc) every Saturday night, coming home at silly- o'clock on Saturday morning (or sometimes holding the party at his house and keeping his neighbours up to silly o'clock), and expecting to sleep in until the sun was over the crow's-nest.
The sand in this particular vaseline was his many Seventh-day Adventist neighbours, who after enjoying a refreshingly restful Sabbath day between sunset Friday and sunset Saturday would get up early on Sunday morning, full of beans, vim vigour and vitality, and start doing stuff. Like mowing their lawns not before 07:00 as per the excessive noise laws.
Three or more neighbours running two-stroke mowers was not exactly what Mr I-went-to-bed-at-04:23 wanted to hear at 07:00, so he acted. He went out and talked to his neighbours about it - not. Instead, he talked the Shire into enacting a "Blue Law" prohibiting the operation of two-stroke motors throughout the Shire between midnight and midnight on Sundays.
Not to be outdone in the lets-resolve-this stakes, and of course turning their collective backs on 1Thessalonians5:14-15, the dawn chorus in Bickley the following Sunday included a four-stroke-mowers section from all of his neighbours. Taking care not to abuse his position as Councillor, Mr I-went-to-bed-at-04:23 then had the law amended to include four-stroke motors.
The consequences included that as he was driving his car home at 04:07 on Sunday morning, he broke his own law. Any propellor-driven aircraft flying over the Shire were in violation, and so on. I don't think he realised how lucky he was that turbine-driven mowers are still hard to buy. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
According to the article, 3 million people are illegally receiving satellite tv, costing the industry $4 billion/year. That's about $1,333 a year per person, or about $111/month. Such a grand claim assumes that all 3 million people would spend $111/month for the highest-end entertainment package available if they couldn't get it for free. To me this is a patently ridiculous assumption, but in courtroom logic maybe it makes sense.
Highly convincing proof of DirecTV's damage claim might be available if we look back a couple years, to when DirecTV pulled off a successful and ingenious anti-hacker operation . In essence, they tricked people into installing software into their control cards that would permanently disable the cards. At the time, DirecTV estimated that the ruse destroyed more than 100,000 illicit cards in one fell swoop. So, a pat on the back goes to the DirecTV programmers for being smarter than the hackers. But what was the result?
The people using spoofed cards were already DirecTV customers with basic service, which they were merely throttling up to the max. According to DirecTV's rules of human behavior, the anti-hack should have resulted in 100,000 customers suddenly switching from basic to maximum service, and coincidentally requesting replacement cards because of mysterious, unknown problems.
Did such a result occur? If it had, no doubt DirecTV would have made it as public as the anti-hack itself. Having read many articles about this episode I haven't been able to find any mention of such a change in subscribership. So I don't believe it happened, and if I were on the Frazier jury I would seriously question the validity of DirecTV's damage claims. My uneducated guess is that most of those 100,000 people either went out and found some other way around the security, signed up for lesser service, got cable rather than DirecTV, or went back to rabbit ears. That would mean that the anti-hack had no immediate financial payoff.
The real payoff would be that a successful, highly publicized enforcement effort would help prevent the card-hacking phenomenon from growing to a point where it actually did have an impact. The payoff in the Frazier case is probably exactly the same. But it is kind of a pity that in our system somebody can be punished by a lifetime of indentured service in order to set an example.
There's a decent chance that in 50 years or so, medicine will have advanced to the point that current causes of death can all be fixed, making humans virtually immortal. What happens to his $500/month for life, then? Huh? Did you think of that? $500 times infinity is...
Some little kid gets caught by the owner lifting a chocolate bar in a small store, while out with his dad. When his father confronts him about it, he says "but dad, you steal satellite signals". What nonsense - if "dad" smashed his illegal satellite receiver into junk, the provider wouldn't be out a since. If the young boy was instead Harry Potter who could wave his magic wand and produce an identical copy of the chocolate bar for his own consumption while leaving the original in the store, most people would not consider this to be theft. Yet this is a much better analogy.
Sorry, but decoding an encrypted RF signal beamed into my house is not theft, and nobody is going to convince me otherwise. Nobody is going to convince the public at large of this either.
My rights don't need management.
I guess this establishes precedence to sue/charge anyone who builds a hammer, sells it to a car thief who uses it to break my windshield and steal my car. Is this the same line of logic, or not? Am I missing something? I saw a reply to this post calling for "us" to get off our buts and do something instead of just talking about it. So, I'll "vote" with my money and not use satellite services. I've already decided not to buy an music CDs...
jg
This is ridiculous. How could they have possibly calculated how many people would have bought the device, or what channels they would have decrypted (remember: Different service levels, different channels)? Real damages is one thing, but imaginary damages? The next time someone runs a red light where I have the right-of-way, I just might try to sue them!
At our school, we don't earn a degree when we graduate—we earn pi/180 radians
in 82 years he'll be 110.
and $500 will still be $500. I know inflation has increased prices in my lifetime, but $500 is still a pretty decent chunk of money, and probably will still be in 54 years (when the guy is 82).
and yeah, it will totally suck for him to have to be choosing between his prescriptions and paying $500 to some company that doesn't deserve it.
blog
Why exactly is conspiracy a crime? Conspiracy isn't killing people, it's talking about killing people. It only hurts someone when you kill people, and that's not conspiracy. To me it sounds like psuedo-prior restraint. They don't physically stop you from talking and assembling, but you're threatened not to talk or assemble or else you'll go to jail. Can someone with legal knowledge explain why conspiracy is a crime?
There's no need to accept the label, "piracy". Your message of anti-corporatism can be promoted with conceeding this important point.
:->
Use the following bumper stickers. If I had the need for a car, these would be on it.
They don't really fit on a bicycle, but it would almost be worth it to attach a little holder to display it, just to see red-in-the-face, middle-aged, balding, Libertarian and Neo-Conservative men shaking their fist at me in a little fit
Without further ado:
"Hey, MONSANTO just PISSED on your FACE"
"Che was RIGHT"
"Hey, your REPRESENTATIVE needs a new YACHT - Support Sony Inc"
"Eradicate Artificial Scarcity. Don't tell the LIE that what is free is not"
"Feed starving MOTHERS, or feed Sony Inc.? It is your RIGHT to decide. You DO matter. FIGHT for it"
"Information IS free. Multi-National Corporations LIE"
"Your government says it is ILLEGAL to decode electromagnetic signals sent through your house without your CONSENT. WHOSE government is THAT?"
"Whose POCKET is 'your' President in? It has a lot more MONEY in it than yours"
"Whose POCKET is 'your' Senator in? It has a lot more MONEY in it than yours"
"Whose POCKET is 'your' Congressperson in? It has a lot more MONEY in it than yours"
"When Sony Inc. buys legislation from 'your' government, WHOSE government is THAT? It's NOT yours"
Thanks for the DMCA, President Clinton.
Put this in ~/.mozilla/[profile-name]/*.slt/chrome/userContent .css
t h= "468"][height="60"] { display: none !important; }d th= "728"][height="90"] { display: none !important; }d th= "130"][height="180"] { display: none !important; }d th= "120"][height="600"] { display: none !important; }d th= "125"][height="125"] { display: none !important; }
I'm sure someone has a more optimal one, but, [shrugs] "eh".
embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash"][wid
embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash"][wi
embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash"][wi
embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash"][wi
embed[type="application/x-shockwave-flash"][wi
img[src*="springstreetnetworks"] {display: none ! important; }
img[src*="ads"] {display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="ad."] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="ads."] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*=".ads"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="ads/"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="/ad"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="/A="] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="/click"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="?click"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="?banner"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="=click"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="/ar.atwo"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="spinbox."] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="transfer.go"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="adfarm"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="bluestreak"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="doubleclick"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="valueclick"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="adlog"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="sportsbybrooks"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="*springstreetnetworks*"] IMG { display: none ! important; }
A:link[HREF*="ads"] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="ad."] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="ads."] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="/ad"] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="/A="] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="/click"] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="?click"] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="?banner"] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="=click"] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="/ar.atwo"] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="spinbox."] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="transfer.go"] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="adfarm"] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="bluestreak"] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="doubleclick"] { display: none ! important; }
IFRAME[src*="valueclick"] { display: none ! important; }
It was unfit for human consumption. It was too hot to drink as it was sold.
with Iraq. Come now people - around 67% of the US population supported Bush's preemptive strike against Iraq because of what might happen... if they actually had the weapons.
If our oracle-like leader of the so-called free world can make these decisions then what's wrong with this type of punishment? The people are for it.
Us here at /. should put together a fund for him. 500 people sign up, and commit to $1 a month. A dollar a month, that's really nothing when you think about it. Mabey $1.10 each a month to cover overhead & credit card processing ability.
eh.. just an idea
-bk
"Frazier was arrested in October 2002, when Customs agents tracking his operations found computer chips and hacking gear in his luggage on a flight from Canada." So Customs agents are trained to know what 'hacking gear' is? would it not be like a flash card reader/writer and some blanks, perhaps a laptop? Looks like every business person in the air can be charged with possesing 'hacking gear'. What about terrorists? I'm sure some terrorist out there used a laptop before, so now everyone with a laptop is a potential terrorist! Can I sue Microsoft becuase my computer crashed, and I was on the verge of the 'next big thing' and have potentially lost $500 million? I'm not saying the guy wasn't a idiot for doing the same thing he just got out of hot water for, that's a given, but this ruling is completely and utterly stupid. This crap also makes me have less and less faith in my government and judicial system, showing more and more every day that the government is run by private companies, not 'the people'. Justice isn't just blind, it's retarded.
Corporations: All of your dollars are belong to us...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Asshat. The books in a library don't get created out of thin air. They've been paid for, libraries also have exceptions to copyright that allow them to loan out books, since it's in the interest of society.
Theft of Services, is not the same, because the signal you're viewing has not been paid for.
As for the jerkoffs who keep crying "if it get's beamed through my skull without permission, I get to do what I want with it." It is being beamed with permission.
The people, through Government agencies like the FCC/FTC licence radio frequencies to service providers for their use. The people (through the Government) recieve's money for the use of those airwaves via licencing fees.
That's true. In the inevitable death-bringing m2 of my modship, I gave you an insightful. Because it is. Seriously, this guy is a repeat offender, he took his chances, and he got caught. Boo hoo. And he'll probably end up committing suicide. That's too bad, but maybe he shouldn't have tried to make money from the blood, sweat and tears from another company. REPEATEDLY.
Looks like I can't make anonymous comments anymore. WTF's going on with slashdot, anyway? I used to be able to do anonymous comments after modding. Meh. And two minutes to post! I have "excellent" Karma! Can't I be trusted just a little bit more, as long as you're going to take away my mod points and link me to my anonymous comments? Sheesh...
So what's he going to do? Perhaps one of the following...
1. Leave the country
2. Commit suicide
3. Go after the judge, lawyers, business execs, and attempt to kill them
4. Get a really high paying job and pay the $500 every month... yeah, right...
I really hope he gets a reduced sentence on appeal, otherwise this will end badly.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
How does one explain how a bunch of executives at Enron walk away without a day of jail time for wiping out millions upon millions of dollars from the life savings of thousands of people and yet this man, who didn't actually cause any damages, is getting his life ruined?
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
live long enough to make all the payments? Who cares? Credit Card Companies (Print-Your-Own_Money-Inc.) Don't give a Damn if you don't live long enough, why should anyone else?
If I recall, there was a movie last year called: "Minority Report" that involved this very same thing. The premise was that people could be jailed for what they MIGHT do.
I guess the judge here must have seen that movie while on LSD and confused fantasy with reality!
"The information is already free. It's just in encrypted form. "
Is this an example of what passes for logic in our public schools? Two things I want you to do. Look up free in the dictionary, and ask yourself what role "encryption" plays in that definition.
"These satellite fuckers are beaming this shit everywhere, without our permission. "
Assuming your actually old enough to vote. You voted that "permission" into office. Two unless you're a walking candidate for "your mamma" jokes? You're not an "our".
"One has to wear a tinfoil hat to keep these (harmless, but that's not the point) signals from going through our brains. "
I suspect your problem lies elsewere.
"A device like this should be completely legal. Apples to apples? It's like me reciting my own copyrighted poetry in France and then suing any bilingual Frenchman for not paying for my official translator."
Any client who represents themself, has a fool for a lawyer.
Something I have certainly learned about lawsuits, it is that they are usually used not in conjunction with technical fixes, but instead of them. Odds are likely these DirectTV holes will not be fixed. If anyone has copies of these guys work please post.
-Virgil
Is this an example of what passes for logic in our public schools? Two things I want you to do. Look up free in the dictionary, and ask yourself what role "encryption" plays in that definition.
No wonder you've posted anonomously - there's nothing worse than a smug bastard who's wrong. Free: (one of the many definitions) not confined to a particular position or place. As in "satellite signals are broadcast freely throughout the atmosphere."
Assuming your actually old enough to vote. You voted that "permission" into office.
Um, no. "Satellite-specific signal decryption" isn't a platform any politian cares to make a stance on, and it's one of the last issues I'd concern myself with when voting anyway.
Any client who represents themself, has a fool for a lawyer.
Um, try to keep on topic here.
c-hack.com |
I have to say that since George W. Bush took over the most unbelievably, stupidiest things have occurred, and I cannot believe there is not relation between them. There is no government anymore, because companies can buy any so called representative of the people in Capitol Hill.
This is completely INSANE. While damages by actions from companies have now been limited, the actions against common citizens have increased.
How can anyone believe this is just? Where is the justice in this? You cannot blame someone for a possible future outcome. This sounds like the movie 'Minority Reportl,' where people were charged with crimes that might ocurr in the future. Nothing less than INSANE!
I hope this moves to the court of appeals. And if it does not get resolved there, it keeps moving forward to the Supreme Court. This is not a precedent you want to keep in the books for long.
You lame-brain. It's been that way for a LOOOOONG time.
In other news, Microsoft sued Linus Torvalds and all companies distributing Linux and they were forced to pay for all the licenses to Microsoft software that would have been bought if Linux had not been released for free. Then again, isn't this pretty much what SCO is doing?
I don't know if anyone has already suggested this, but I think this guy should get back at DirectTV by releasing the design on the Net, or since he'll be in jail, having someone do this for him.
That would probably hit DirecTV very hard.
I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
Is McDonalds coffee fit for human consumption at any temperature?
If everyone that is subscribed to this service was to cancel their subscription and let these scrotum sweat licking corporation operate on the $500 a month they will be receiving then this would be quite just.
YES it was wrong and illegal of this gentleman to be selling these devices. But it is morally corrupt to sue a man for all he is worth many lifetimes over! FFS - I guess this is what you have when big corporation now own you and everything you do in this lifetime and the next....
I wonder if I can sue them for sendng their signal into my home without consent.
It being satellite and all. Setting up additional dishes all across your roof is not going to have any effect on anyone else's reception. No backfeeding of signal, no leaking signal, etc. This may be true of cable, but not satellite.
I don't know, but I always figured that the US and EU had extradition treaties...
value proposition and its relationship to the judgement at hand.
These companies are making their programming appear to be worth far more than it really is.
I used to subscribe to one of these services. Got the dish, wired my home, basically did the whole bit. Picture was nice, but there was a problem
150 channels plus premium and STILL NOT A FSCKING THING ON! At $60 - $80 per month US, this was not ok. Every time the value of the bundle drops, they either add more channels, split those they have and add more commercials, or manupulate the bundles in ways that drive more revenue (read require more of our money for the same content) their way.
Went to Radio Shack and got a nice antenna. Funny thing about antennas. They cost about the same as they did years ago and still come in the same boxes. How many different cable / sat devices have to needed to own over the years. Is that cost worth what you received?
Now, I purchase DVD media with the money I used to spend on subscription TV. They must all compete on content value or they don't get my dollars. I don't think most people get as much out of the system as they think. It is packaged and promoted in a way that looks like a good value but really isn't.
I purchase a very small percentage of what is produced each year. I just might buy more if they worked harder to provide it. I might even double what I spend now if what I want is easy to get, but its not. To me, this means that most of what we are getting via subscription programming is almost worthless.
If it were really that good, I would pay, but it's not.
These companies see *everyone* as a customer, yet do not have to compete on almost any basis for their wares. Subscription programming used to be a big deal when it was started. Many folks could not get any decent broadcast content; others wanted the premium content and were willing to pay. Early systems required infrastructure, equipment and other things that justify the price.
Congress is wanting to basically kill broadcast TV so they can hand even more money to these companies via the spectrum; at our expense no less.
So, where is the competition? It's not like we have a lot of satellite providers. Kind of hard to put up that many units. Cable is granted a monopoly. Lets say you manage to sell me on competition; that it exists, not the concept. How can we evaluate the worth of the programming?
They do not sell per channel, or per use (other than insane PPV.) What if I want to purchase some programming from them. Maybe Sci-fi, Food Network, HBO, Showtime and a couple of others I see value in. Can I pay 29.95? No. Why not?
Do we know how much we have paid for infrastructure? What are the costs there? Is it being built out or maintained? How long do they get to keep what is in the public interests?
The whole thing looks to be nothing more than a shell game. At least when I purchase media, I have some understanding of its true cost and some understanding of its relative worth.
I can know this worth because there are many suppliers, I know because I can resell the content to others and see what they are willing to pay. Try taking a lame DVD to a swap shop. They will almost make you pay to get them to take it off your hands.
I can produce these things myself and understand the costs from that angle if I want. (Though they *really* don't want that to happen --and for good reason.)
In short, any number these guys propose is simply an indication of their wants, not their needs and that is a problem in the judgement of this case.
I can clearly understand the crime of selling decryption devices for paid programming services. I have problems with the nature of the services, but the crime is clear. I don't understand the result of the information crime however. I just cannot assess the value of the damage to the public and the sat companies. Any court that takes their numbers on their merits is wrong on moral
Blogging because I can...
I am suspicious of one system/device being able to
decode both Direct TV and Dish. The encryption systems
are quit different as for as I know.
Did he develope a seperate device to crack each one?
From what I have read , Direct TV is the easer of the two to crack. And they have some reason to be worried.
I doubt this sentence will make it past appeal #1. Let alone the conviction.
-- $G
Don't count on that. Do a yahoo search for the Mikobu III (the thing he developed) it's being sold for $100 or less. Oh well.
Every ubsurd law or ruling causes the United States to die a little bit. And this was a whopper. The latest in a long series that's spanned half a century.
our government is slowly going mad. Corruption is eating away at it like worms in the brain.
It shakes me to the bones to hear Condoleeza Rice say with a straight face that she wants to take on North Korea. They've gone mad.
No shit. Fresh coffee is always unfit for human consumption. You have to let it cool first.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
5w33t! I've never scored a first post be4. w00t!!!!!!!!!1
Based on my one class on law in college it was said that crimes that are difficult to detect are deterred through increased punishment. Take littering as an example. You can get a fine for $1000 dollars for littering. That is a steep fine for a modest crime. That said there are limits and a fine for $0.18 billion dollars is well beyond reason.
He can just declare bankruptcy and that'll be that. In 3 to 5 years, the debt will be discharged and he'll be free from liabilities.
At what point did sending somebody to jail become "Only the beginning" of rehabilitation? Remember, the justice system is supposed to be about rehabilitating the criminal, not never-ending revenge for the victim.
This guy shouldn't have to pay them a dime... A $180 million fine for a non-billionaire individual who has caused no actual damages to anyone falls under the "unusual" part of "Cruel and unusual punishment..." Especially considering the fact that he has been sentenced to five years of anal rape and broadcast television in our gloriously ineffective, overcrowded prison system.
Who did what now?
How much more rediculous do these trials need to become before there is any actual public outrage rather that just some rambling on slashdot? This guy hadn't even finished creating the device (for DirectTV at least) which was somehow going to net him this incredible lump of money. I realize that it is standard practice for corporations to up the damages to the maximum possible, but there should at least be a point where common sense steps in and takes over...
It isn't even that they just claimed an insane amount of damages, they were awarded it! There original figure of $900 million is ludicrous, the final awarded damages is still just as bad from the perspective of someone without a wallet equivilent to that of Bill Gates. Five-hundred dollars a month, for 30,000 years ($180 million total in restitution). Now what could one man create, in a limited market (how many sattelite pirates could there possibly be?), that would cost a company $180 million assuming he was even able to finish it. Let's say that a DirectTV subscription will cost you $100 per month, now that's $1,200 dollars per household per year. So in order to reach that $180 million dollar figure, 150,000 people would have to buy this device and deprive DirectTV of $100 dollars every month, not to mention that it would be nearly impossible for this guy to produce that many devices, or even to have that many customers, or even 1/5th that many customers. Also, if the company was losing money due to these devices, how long do you think it would take them to change the protocol?
From the article: "An estimated 3 million people illegally watch satellite television using devices that unscramble satellite TV signals. The industry estimates it loses $4 billion a year in revenue."
THREE MILLION PEOPLE? How do they come up with this figure? Do they assume every person that cancels a subscription has turned to using a descrambler? I'd really love to know how they came up with those figures.
This case seems more like a sad reminder of the corporate presence in our legal system rather than a shining example of American justice. When we can be prosecuted for crimes that haven't happened using devices that haven't been built yet, we're in trouble...and it looks like that time is now.
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
If hes paying $500 / month is he getting all the channels on both networks?
I know Stephen Frazier. Worked with him at Intel in Folsom..way back in 2000/2001.
/. readers wouldn't go and post sales ads in Popular Science or field sales calls over your cell phone or from their personal residence. Stephen did... and more than a few people told him that he should be more careful... but the guy was fearless and thought he could outwit the Feds. Pretty hard to beat the boys if you wave a flag in front of their noses :)
The articles I've read about this case have been killing me! The Feds made the remark that he's "well known" in the "World Hacker" community. LOL! Stephen is an excellent salesman and an excellent con-man..a hacker he isn't. Too funny... the Feds will exagerate anything if they can spread some fear or make themselves look good.
Nice guy.. just not too bright in the "discretion" department. He would LOVE to see that he's made it to Slashdot!
Speaking of Slashdot... I bet at least half of all Slashdot readers could reverse engineer the H cards like Stephen did. It's pretty simple... Of course, I bet 99% of that half of
But I guess you knew that.
If I got charged with such an insane life long financial disability, I think I will just go in with guns blazing and taking out the a.holes who put this onto me.
At least, I think it would have been worth it then, and they will think twice before doing it to someone else.
If you amortize the penalty, I'm pretty sure the actual cost of $500/month forever is around $120,000. So it's more like just a fine equal to the cost of a house. Bad, but not horrible. He could probably declare bankruptcy if he was extremely poor, but I expect he can afford $120,000.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
There is an entire menagerie of bullshit 'crimes' defined by democratic legislatures these days.
What does "democratic" have to do with it? Do you think monarchies or police states have fewer "bullshit crimes"?
Not doing something is not a crime
You can call it what you want, but society has a compelling interest in regulating behavior. That may include things like mandating you to get a vaccination, under penalty of law.
Of course, I think it is outrageous to criminalize the possible development of a descrambling chip. But your response of playing word games over what is or isn't a crime is even more idiotic.
There are some technologies where governments have a compelling interest to restrict their development. For example, if you came into the country with a bunch of vials of smallpox DNA (not the complete virus), I think the government would be well justified in arresting you even if you hadn't made the virus yet. So, this type of law is justifiable in principle it's just that the balance needs to be struck erring on the side of personal freedoms, and satellite descramblers just don't rise to the level of threat as, say, smallpox DNA.
And if you want to know the deeper reason for all this, it isn't "democracy" per se, it's ties between big business and politics. If we got the money out of our democracy, people wouldn't get thrown in jail for distributing or using cable descramblers.
In Pre-Crime you get busted for things you WOULD have done - with 100% certainty, if police hadn't nabbed you before...
Looks like they overlooked that part, unless the government is actually keeping three peeps half immerged somewhere below.. which would explain DMCA, the Iraqi war and god knows what else =)
relevant link
the *only* way he an afford to pay tis fine is by...
selling the descrambler!
Ooops!
I hope he appeals and gets it sorted out.
If it fails, maybe the international court of human rights could get on to it.
So he's already paying damages for potential losses? Sounds like free license to DO the damages. You can't realisticly be sued twice for the same *potential* damages, now can you?
Your Honor, my client, SatCorp, alleges that Mr Scapegoat is planning to cause another 180 million dollars in damages. I think we should be compensated again for the damages he might be causing my client.
Comments? Explanations from any legal brains out there?
I'll admit, I have trouble feeling sorry for any of those companies when I'm paying $50/month for "basic" cable that sucks and they are cleaning up on my addiction to Iron Chef....
WBGG
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
Jr.> Mom,Mom: LOOK! A BIRD!
Mom> *SMACK*
Jr.> Sorry to surprise you honey, i forgot to punish you for almost destroying my computer when you almost spilled water on it trying to 'clean' it for mommy. Just be sure not to do it or not do it again!
-Digital Extremist
Instead of selling the devices, he should have published the schematics to the public. Greed is bad.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
why the hell anyone would want to buy coffee that was so friggin' hot they couldn't drink it for twenty minutes. "Oh, our coffee is so good and hot!" Bullshit. McD's isn't the only one, either.
Evil is the money of root.
I never asked them to irradiate my head, or my property. I say they should be sued for potential future brain cancer caused by unwanted em waves they are involunarily exposing dtv's non-customers with.
I thought someone was OFFERING $180 million for a piracy conspiracy and I was ready to step up...
Oh, well, back to temping...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
since he'll be working in Unicore, Federal Prison Industries. He'll be making at most $180/month, and they'll take half of that as mandatory for his restitution. And it'll take him six months or more to get to that point. He'll start at around $36/month for a couple months, then $54/month (IIRC) for a couple months, then $108/month and so on until he gets to $180. He might get more if he gets to work overtime or has what they call a "Premium" job...
And they won't let him touch a computer if he has any background at all with them...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
When Mitnick was tracked down by the FBI, the big famous when-kevin-was-arrested-and-held-for-years-without -a-hearing.............
In 1987, his lawyer knocked a felony charge down to a misdimeanour.. penalty, 3 years probation. (For breaking into something at SCO).
In 1988, a colleague ratted him out for breaking into DEC. He got a year in prison. They were so paranoid about him, he spent most of his time in solitary confinement.
In 1989, the FBI was starting to try to pin something on him again, and he knew he'd get no fair trial this time.. so he ran.
THIS is where all the normal stuff you hear about Kevin Mitnick starts... when they caught him later... he ran while still on parole. (If I'm not mistaken).. which lands you back in jail immediately.
Furthermore, he had no bail hearing because he was a huge flight risk (considering they barely caught him, and he evaded them easily for years, despite a huge effort to catch him).
Don't get me wrong.. Mitnick got royally fucked over, he deserved a slap on the wrist, or maybe a punch in the face... not spending years in prison treated like you have the plague. He never did anyhting that harmful to society.
Actually... I'll be surprised if Stephen serves a year in the Pen. I have a very strong feeling that Stephen is going to be working for the Feds and the Sat companies (EchoStar, DirectTV, etc...) and providing information on how the modification and distribution of the cards takes place.
Trust me on this... Stephen kind of looks like Leonardo Di Caprio and he's going to do everything he can not to have to take any showers with the fun loving boys of Cell Block 4.
Here's something to consider.. the excessiveness of the fine is a farce. I'd say that S's attornies agreed to the massive amount and the liberal payback schedule as a condition of leniency. The 180 million dollar fine serves as a Public Awareness Statement. A lot of pirates and crackers had their eyes bugging out yesterday and that's just what the feds wanted.
Addendum. Yes, he has some background with computers. In fact, he used to provide support as well as he was a moderator for Intel (when Intel still had their own newsgroups) on their Pentium 2 and 3 processors.
He's "safe" around a computer... he isn't a cracker... not even a script kiddie for that matter!
I think you are confused about the state of the law in Canada. IT's very much illegal for you to decrypt satellite signals.. the reason you can get away with pirating DirecTV is becuase DirecTV has no broadcast license in Canada, and therefore, no *right* to broadcast in Canada.. so it follows that:
a) They can't sue anyone for theft of service, because they can't offer that service in the first place. Court would toss it.
b) They can't sell to Canada *anyway* so even the fat execs can see that no market is being lost.. it was not available to them in the first place.
Also, it's never been completely legal.. it's just a grey area, and one we aren't into enforcing.
However, in the US, it is VERY illegal, and everyone knows you can get in deep shit.
"The industry estimates it loses $4 billion a year in revenue."
Just like the RIAA is losing $Infinity billion due to mp3s.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
for making cars that can go faster than the speed limit.
... has been killin people for years. Everybody here knows that right?
It is the people living in that neighborood's fault if they don;t move out of the influence are of that gang. They knew it has been like that and what they were getting into.
Talk about flawed logic....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Lets incarcerate people that own guns. All of them.
They all could kill somebody tomorrow.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... don't ask to see the balance sheets of these companies?
If it is not recorded there then there is no loss to repay.
I would also question if hacking airwaves, descrabling a code and making a device that can do as the original should be punished.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Just sell me one of those boxes for $500.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government...
The time draws near. It won't be pretty. God help us all...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-