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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?'"
If it looks like a binding legal agreement it must be one. *cough* eula *cough*
... why people never stop their illegal activities when they've earned enough money? I mean, $5,000,000 should be enough for anyone for quite a while? It seems that they'll eventually get caugh otherwise and don't have any real use of the money anyways, like in this case...
Dear DirecTV,
Please take note. This is how you deal with people pirating your signals without being viewed as jackbooted thugs. You find people buying and selling equipment designed specifically to do that.
Contrast this to your current methods which involve extorting protection money out of people who do NOT pirate your signals simply because they bought a programmable smart card with a wide range of possible uses, one of which *might* lead to the pirating of your signals.
Only on
I live near glasgow and it's a cottage industry locally; pirate games/dvds/software, cable boxes/sky cards, chipping xboxes/ps2's etc etc.
Thats what happens when you get fairly savvy ex electronics workers sacked by IBM/National Semiconductor/Motorola etc etc...
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?
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.
In Harry Harrison's "Stainless Steel Rat" series, one of the central tenets of the lead character, "Slippery" Jim DeGriz, the most wanted interstellar criminal, was "When a con finally starts going bad, walk away - don't try to cash that last check". Hence he very rarely got caught.
It is the same thing here - the folks who are smart enough to walk away before things go south are never caught - thus we never really hear about them in the news. The only ones we hear about are the stupid ones who cash the last check and get busted.
I once heard a cop say "I've been throwing these punks up against the wall for 20 years, and I've never once found a Mensa card in their pockets."
www.eFax.com are spammers