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Former Anti-Piracy 'Bag Man' Turns On DirecTV
Cowards Anonymous writes "SecurityFocus has this story: 'A one-time enforcer in DirecTV's anti-piracy campaign is suing his ex-employer for wrongful discharge, after he allegedly resigned rather than continue to prosecute the company's controversial war against buyers of hacker-friendly smart card equipment.' John Fisher claims that he was hired by DirecTV as a senior investigator to track down satellite signal pirates. Instead, he claims, he was no better than a 'bag man for the mob'; coercing people into paying money for stealing services when he had no proof whether they had really done so."
>Give the standard programming away, and charge those who want more (this could probably be acconplished by encrypting certain streams, and sending out the free ones as unencrypted or something. I'm not satellite techie, but it seems fairly straight-forward).
This is how it works in Europe.
Unfortunately, in North America, things are generally screwed up so badly between laws and moronic satellite companies that everyone is screwed.
For example, Canadians have been barred for a lifetime from paying a cent for any US based satellite service, and so were forced to pirate it (which, up until two years ago, was completely legal -- stores in my city advertised their latest HU hack offerings), so the idea of a free/premium service breaks down because countries and companies can't agree.
Not to mention that unlike Europe, we have too many completely incompatible systems competing:
- 4DTV - C-Band, 6+ foot dish, DigiCipher II
- VOOM - 18" DigiCipher II 8PSK circular Ku setup
- StarChoice - Dual 30" DigiCipher II linear Ku setup
- ExpressVu/DishNetwork - 18" circular Ku DVB MPEG-2.0 setup (proprietary switching, "pretend" proprietary system in that they won't authorize equipment they don't sell, even though they could)
- DishNetwork HDTV - 8PSK variant of above, also using 30" linear Ku setup (again). MPEG-2.0 DVB Standard.
- ExpressVu HDTV - Non-8PSK, using HDTV supporting receivers
- DirecTV - 18" totally proprietary (including switches) circular Ku non-DVB non-DCII MPEG-1.9 setup
- FTA (Free To Air, generally encompasses what's left) C-Band - Mostly Analog, 6+ foot dish
- Digital FTA (sometimes encrypted) - All DVB MPEG-2.0, mostly using 30" Ku linear dishes. Most similar to european systems, and can use a CI slot for encrypted access.
- VideoCipher based systems - Still available, but almost dead. C-band, 6+ foot dish, special VC II+ board required.
Notable mentions of the now deceased:
- AlphaStar - Canadian DVB MPEG-2 system that lasted 6 months. 30" Ku Linear dish with proprietary receiver.
- PrimeStar - Proprietary system. Used non-standard 36" Ku linear dish (separate Horizontal and Vertical outputs).
Way too much equipment and BS for the average consumer. Too bad nobody could agree here...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Quote: - $65/mo really isn't that much money.
Fucking nitwit... $65/mo will buy my family groceries for a week.
Congratulations on being a mindless, myopic, American consumer.
DirecTV is known to tolerate a "social hack" that allows access to a service you're geographically prohibited from getting. Simply call them and tell them that you want to change your "service address" but not your "billing address"... they don't bother to verify the service address you submit, and then all of your equipment will have access to the programming somebody at that location would have gotten, including major network and regional sports network programs.
It wouldn't be possible for them to verify it. Are they supposed to send someone out to the address of EVERY customer every time someone reports a change of service address?
When I worked for Echostar I used to hint to people to do this without actually saying it.
For example, the rules for network qualification are based upon 50 year old maps. They don't take into consideration things like new buildings that can block signal in urban areas or new powerlines that interfere with broadcast signals.
So someone would call in and want to order network programming and their address wouldn't qualify, I'd apologize to them and tell them that I couldn't do it. Often I'd hear things like "My brother lives 3 blocks away and he can get these." I'd check the brother's address and he in fact did qualify for networks. I'd then tell the customer "Yes sir, that address does qualify for networks. If your service address were in that area, you'd be able to get these too." The smart people would pick up on the inflection in my voice and ask if they could have separate service and billing addresses. The obvious answer is Yes they could. They would then proceed to give me a service address that was the same as the "brother's" address and add an "A" or "1/2" to the house number. Boom, they'd qualify for networks. My company was blameless because we can't be held responsible if someone lies to us about their address. And I got the credit for another upsell.
Echostar has made it harder for people to do this though. They've switched most of their local programming to their "spot beam" satellites. 3 years ago, all of their local networks were broadcast all over the continental US. The only thing that prevented you from getting Pittsburgh's local channels while you were in Las Vegas was the setting on Echostar's computer system. In 2002 they started spotbeaming their locals so for example the Pittsburgh local channels could only be received while IN the Pittsburgh area. If you had a mobile home and you drove from Pittsburgh to Washington DC you can't pick up the signal for Pittsburgh locals anymore. They didn't do this just to comply with SHVIA regulations. They did it so they could pack more channels into the part of the spectrum that they were granted. By restricting the signals in this way, they made it possible to spotbeam the channels for 5 cities in the portion of the spectrum that was originally taken up by 1 city's local channels.
They've done nothing to stop it because they get sales they otherwise wouldn't have gotten, and it's really the content suppliers who are losing out of money they'd otherwise be entitled to.
Local content providers don't lose out on anything. Most of the people who do this are living in the "shadow" of some structure that is preventing them from picking up broadcast signals anyway. If you can't watch a channel, you can't see the commercials. The local channel never had you in the first place, they aren't losing anything when you get the channels from another city. Cable companies lobbied congress HARD to get those rules into place. It was about forcing the hand of consumers, and protecting their business model.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Where you bought your ISO programmer has no bearing on how you are going to use it. Even if a developer bought an ISO programmer from a site that clearly was targetting DTV pirates, the developer may have just found them to have the best price or the fastest service and purchased the programmer there. That definitely doesn't mean they planned on pirating DTV any more than buying a car at a dealership known to sell lots of cars to drug dealers mean you plan on engaging in the drug trade.
not that anyone cares but in New Hampshire, if you dont take "adequate measures" to secure your WLAN
then it legal for anyone to netstumble/kismet on to it, and basically
steal all of your bandwidth
all your bandwidth are belong to us
After the directly commercial applications were persued (most notably, Marconi's radio telegraph), we moved to the period of finding other ways to make a profit off of radio ... such as stock fraud.
... broadcasts were made to sell radios. It's just that it was a short-sighted business plan, and once there was major market penetration, they had to move to something else to continue to make a profit.
We didn't have widespead broadcast radio until after World War One, as the US government has outlawed private use during the war. Radio came back after the war, but it took some time before we had the birth of RCA, and a little while later before other companies figured out how to make a profit off of radio.
So why were they providing free broadcasts? To sell radios to people. You couldn't listen the broadcasts, without buying a radio. Well, you could go to someone else's house, but that'd be admitting you didn't have one. That's why RCA and the other radio manufacturers are the ones who are doing the broadcasts -- they spend money in one area, to make a profit in another.
The concept of 'toll broadcasting' [think of today's infomercials], came from AT&T, and the government came down on them, in a completely ineffective way. [Although, there are indications that there were other paid commercials before that point].
In europe, however, they wnt a different route -- which is why there are television taxes and the like today. The government provided the information broadcast, but they weren't going to do it at a loss, so they had to get some money for doing it.
Yes, there are problems with how the spectrum is sold to corporations. [for one, why is it 'sold', and not 'rented'... that was a major oversight on the Commerce Department]. And there are problems with the cable monopolies, and with the government being pushed by lobbyists who have the corporations, not the public's best interests in mind.
But it's just wrong to say that broadcast radio wasn't commercial
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
... better history lesson and linkages than what I provided, most interesting. the part about the early hardware is very good, and I had once known that but had forgotten it, and it IS a critical part of the discussion.
Not in radio but with television, my dad was a radio and radar tech guy during ww2, then after he got out, and went into mainframes on the hardware side. But on the side at home he always had a shop and was an enthusiast,did repairs and sold fixed junkers and whatnot,and because of his geekiness and skills and interest, we were the first people in our neighborhood to have a television, and it was common for the living room to be jam packed with many neighbors and relatives to watch some shows often on this teeny I *think* it was a 9 inch philco. "Paying" for broadcasting is five ways, government and redistribution of general tax monies, advertising, and like you said the hardware sales, subscription, and outright private subsisdy as some sort of community give away by the broadcaster on his nickle. ME, I like advertising merthod and community give away by volunteers. Hardware it's now into passing laws to restrict it, which I think is in long term error, why we have this discussion on hacking hardware, it's no longer needed to subsidise hardware because the technology is out there now, and cheap, so that shouldbn't bbe required. I think the law is bogus there. that leaves subscription, which weith a hard wired model works better, but with over the air random broadcasting I think is sorta dumb and won't work without highly restrictve laws in place. Advertising has been proven to work well enough for funding, and I don't really want government run broadcasting, because quite frankly I do not trust them to have a monopoly or near monopoly on such a valuable and important media. I also don't support automatic rubber stamping of "granted licenses" because fr4ankly the only ones they deny are newcomers, and the old megacorps are now carved in stone, they can do most anything and still stay on the air. In particular I am most incensed over all the major networks almost complete lack of third party candidates and partys with their "news", because it tends to perpetuate the "two parties we have now" moreso than what it should be based on their merits and deficiencies. Having two monopolies that control 98% of the political "market" is just about as bad as one monopoly, espeically when there is little practical difference in the long run over how the country is run and managed and how the government stays accountable to the people. Always been a news junky, so it's easy for me to see and state that it's obvious a "status quo",to keep the mega rich richer by controlling the info feed, ie, subtle but quite effective brainwashing. There isn't as much a left/right bias with the networks as an "established billionaires point of view" bias. Just for that I think the major networks ought to have all their licenses yanked and give the spectrum to someone else to use, and tough noogies on their investments. That's just me of course and an opinion, but it sure would be nice if it happened....