Cable Box Piracy Ring Busted

WC as Kato writes "The U.S. Attorney's Office said it has busted a huge cable piracy ring. They made over $10 million in 5 years by advertising on the Internet and in magazines. Their only cover to the illegality of their actions was a disclaimer that the boxes were not illegal to own. Police say customers who purchased them are now at risk of being arrested. Did any customer actually fall for their 'legal disclaimer?'"

Comments

Were not illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely that should read.. "_were_ illegal to own"?

4 when it's /.ed

[fmlug.org]

Here it is find the story here-->
http://fox40.trb.com/news/ktxl-121703ille galcable, 0,4418393.story?coll=ktxl-news-1

Two Men Accused In Illegal Cable Piracy Scam

Police Say Suspects Offered Free Television For The One-time Price Of A 200 Dollar Chip

Mike Bond

December 17, 2003

SACRAMENTO -- It was installation day for residents at a new apartment complex in North Natomas.

But for every legitimate cable customer who signs up, Comcast officials say there are plenty of people ripping off programming with illegal descramblers called black boxes.

Assistant US Attorney Robert Tice- Raskin says, "The disclaimer were really nothing more than a wink and a nod by these conspirators to members of the public."

At a news conference this afternoon, federal prosecutors announced they'd arrested two people who are accused of selling descramblers throughout the state and the country.

Over the past five and a half years, they're accused of masterminding a money laundering scheme that's earned them more than 10-million dollars.

US Attorney McGregor Scott says, "The dollar amounts that are involved really make this stand out -- it really is a unique and distinct set of circumstances."

Officials say the descramblers were advertised on the internet and in magazines with a disclaimer that the boxes were not against the law to own.

Nevertheless, police say customers who purchased them are now at risk of being arrested.

Sacramento County Sheriff Lou Blanas says, "Common sense dictates if you have a black box, you're violating the law, disclaimer or no disclaimer. I mean if that was the case, everybody would have access to these movies!"

Cable Customer Gwenice Garnett says, "I'm not going to squeal on 'em, but I do know people who have them."

Gwenice Garnett was happy to hear about the bust as she stopped by Comcast this evening to upgrade to digital cable.

She's paying 70-bucks a month.

Garnette says, "I pay a substantial amount of money for my cable and if I have to pay, they should have to pay!"

Bloated Prices

[Saint Mitchell]

I was going to get Comcast at my new house. Then when I called to find out what it would cost me for "basic" digital cable + internet. $120+ a month. I about fell out of my chair.

Since I had made up my mind I wasn't going to swallow that pill, I decided to mess with the guy. I asked im if he knew why they couldn't say fuck on basic cable. "I don't know". Well, it's because technically it's a FREE service. We pay for the access to the cable, the programming is FREE. This is how HBO gets away with things like Real Sex, you PAY for the service. So, my question is why are you jacking up the price when you pay nothing for it? "Well, sir, that is our price. I have no control over what we charge. Can I set up an install date for you?" Maybe, can you tell me if there is an equipment rental charge in there somewhere. "Yes sir." Can I guy buy a cable box so I don't have to rent one from you. "No sir, that is illegal. Can I take your order for service, sir" No, no you can't.

Oh how I miss Time Warner. I never thought the day would come when I would say that. It is indeeed a sad day. I've even ordered DSL from the evil phone company. Did I move to bizzaro world and didn't know it?

It was a scam anyway (surprise!)

[Powercntrl]

A quick search on Google reveals that Digital Cable services have not been hacked. Indeed the only cable descramblers that are/were sold can be broken down into 4 catagories:

1. Analog filters
These removed a signal that was placed on a nearby frequency to that of the channel the cable company wanted to "scramble". I'm not even sure if this old form of protection is even used anymore. The end-user benefit of this protection was you did not need a cable box.

2. Chips/jumpers
Usually the channel is scrambled by missing a sync signal and you're provided by the cable company with a decoder box that can selectively re-create it. Adding a chip or jumpers tricks the box into decoding channels you didn't pay for. This method of analog protection is also quite old.

3. Digital cable filters
Blocks your digital cable decoder from communicating with the mother ship. Briefly get PPV movies for free, then you can't order any more until you remove the filter (at which point it phones home and you get billed anyway). Similar in effect to unplugging the phone line from a DirecTV box.

4. Cable TV "decoder" boxes
Found online and in your typical junk magazines... These are basically just an external tuner and remodulator to make a non-cable-ready TV (the old kind that just get VHF and UHF only) analog cable ready.

If this business was really hacking digital cable, that would sure be some big news... Most likely they were selling old analog crap or snake oil products.

This story sucks.

[Matrix2110]

I happen to work for a TV station in the area and we reported it a week or so ago. I also happened to get a look at one of these cards and I can safely say they are very fragile in every since of the word. A very thin card, one chip. a couple of resistors, plus a one page of small print. No tech support.

I know what I am doing and I had a hard time with this thing.

And no, it never worked.

Move along, nothing to see here.

These rip-off artists milked a bunch of greedy people that got burned but did not dare turn them in.

Until, somebody got ticked off enough to turn everybody in.

I will leave it to Slashdot to calculate the odds of the squeal factor.

Re:I don't understand ...

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say that, you stupid shit.

Re:'I'm guessing you took the five dollar law clas

[Afty0r]

'These discs are only provided as backups and you must own the original game.' - which raises the question, why isn't the person backing up the game themselves?

Because the person lives in a contry run by a government which has enacted laws that, while giving them the *right* to make a backup, has made it illegal to sell, give or talk about the equipment required to make the backups. Thus, while the person has the right to carry out the activity, they are prevented by law from doing so.

Re:$70 a month to watch advertisements??

[Roofus]

If anyone out there has digital tv, they are monitoring you

You are so full of it. Might it happen in the future? Maybe. Is it happening now? No.

Once the digital cable box has been provisioned and 'hit', it does not talk back to the headend when you change a channel, since it already has the access list in memory. Do you have any idea how much memory one of those boxes has? Not enough to be recording your viewing habits.

The above statement doesn't apply to services like VOD and PPV, since when you order one of the those the box does talk back to the headend. But of course, if that really bothers you that much, do you boycott Blockbuster and all movie rental stores as well? Because they know what you watch! Ooh!

When I worked for a major set top mfr

[cblguy]

We had a guy who worked across the hall from me. He was the 'cable cop'. He even had a little silver badge pasted on to his employee access badge. His job was to purchase pirate devices, and then get with engineering on how the company could defeat them. :)

It was pretty interesting, getting to play with the chipped boxes, seeing what happened. Of course, that was a few years ago when analog still ruled the roost and digital was working but not prevalent.

Engineering had to come up with different scrambling algorithms to try and keep one step ahead. Those head end scramblers were pretty cool pieces of equipment. We'd throw the latest scrambler firmware at the pirate boxes and see what happened. And then there were the attempts at total picture obliteration (no "nude parts" in a picture). Those were interesting to test. =8)

I bailed out of that industry, but I must admit, the trade shows were pretty darn good. ;)

Re:Dear DirecTV

[Freedom Bug]

True, but on the other hand if you bought your smartcard programmer from a site called www.hackdss.com I think there is a plausable argument that you might have purchaced said equipment to hack dss.

How about if that was because it was the only way to get one at a reasonable price? Most of the legitimate places that sell things like that are not set up to sell single units to consumers. You can pretend to be a real engineer actually designing products for sale and get yourself a free evaluation unit, or you can buy significant quantities. The middle ground is very difficult to find for stuff like that.

Bryan

Here you go:

[geekoid]

" In Section 629 of the Communications Act, as added by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress directed the FCC to create rules that would allow consumers to obtain "navigation devices" -- meaning set top boxes, remote control units and other equipment -- from commercial sources other than their multichannel programming service provider."

http://ftp.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/News_Releases/1 99 9/nrcb9009.html

"Service providers are prohibited from taking actions that would prevent navigation devices
that do not perform conditional access functions from being made available from retailers,
manufacturers, or other unaffiliated vendors."

http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/News_Releases/1 99 8/nrcb8013.txt

Here is what is going on, in a nut shell:

In 1996* the FCC ruled that consumer can by set top boxes and use them to access cable TV sa long as trhe consumer is paying for the service. Basicaly giving the consumer an option to renting the devices.

The the Cable/Satalite companies started adding 'security' devices intergrated into the set top box, and has said consuymer can't create something that 'circumnavigates' those device.

So now the commision as saifd that the security devices need to be seperated from the reciever.

Cable companies have tried to fight this, but the FCC has rulled against them.

Re:DMCA,,,?

[zakezuke]

I'm curious about this situation where I might be able to see where there *is* a legal, non-infringing use. Suppose I already am a subscriber, but I purchase my own equipment, ie, one of these black boxes, to use instead of my cable provider's in order to save the extra charges they tack on to the bill for each box? Fair use? Or illegal?

The problem is actually talking to the cable company and getting them to hookup third party equipment. In theory you can do this no problem, though I've had NO luck picking up boxes at the local thrift store as their responce was "It looks stolen the stickers are missing". I assumed that it was probally cable owned, but some poor sap didn't return it and got charged an arm and a leg for it, and as a direct result it was actually legaly purchaced rather then being stolen. But alas, they won't even look into it, they'll just snag the box, put it under their desk, give you $20.00 and send you on your way.