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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?'"
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?
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.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
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.
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. ;)