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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."
The DirecTV "accused pirate lawsuits" story has been going on for quite a while.
The point of the problem is this: They're having something in the area of a 90-95% success rate in accusing people who were actually watching DirecTV's programming without paying for it. Or, to state it in a less pretty way, they were harassing completely innocent techies with to 5-10% of their efforts.
What's worse, is that the hackers have realized that so long as they don't confess, DirecTV doesn't have enough evidence to win most of the lawsuits they're filing. In fact, successful defenses have been mounted by making no defense at all. Usually trivial motions like the standard motion a defense lawyer always makes to dismiss the case after the plantiff's case claiming they didn't meet the minimum standards of proof, or motions for summary judgement against a defendant who no-shows are not going DirecTV's way. The only people to lose cases have been ones who either confessed or said something stupid to DirecTV that gets used against them.
Yet, despite these devistating blows in court, DirecTV is continuing to operate this SCOish collectors and lawyers devision. Despite having cases of zero chance of suceeding legally, they have been able to get people to hand over settlement money such that this operation is profitable.
What we need in this country is a higher penality for filing a lawsuit that is eventually lost. Basically, people are signing admissions of guilt and sending in checks in order to get the harassing phone calls to stop, when in reality they should be calling DirecTV's bluff and letting them file the lawsuit.
From the article: ... advocacy groups and lawyers have received enough consumer complaints to prompt the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Stanford Center for Internet and Society to launch an informational website apprising crackdown targets of their legal rights. EFF says innocent people are settling with DirecTV for no other purpose than to avoid costly litigation.
/. and elsewhere.
It seems the coercian involves people preferring to settle than rather than pay the costs for defending themselves. From an article linked to from the above:
At that point, the settlement price tag jumps to $10,000 -- still less than the typical cost of paying a lawyer to go to trial against a corporate powerhouse in federal court.
Is it now actually the case that in the US the law is too expensive for people to use? This is how it appears from the stories I read on
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Directv just shut down the P3 Stream, this is going to send alot of people to Dishnetwork because the P4 card has not been fully "explored" yet.
The canadian sattelite company Expressvue, used to go to peoples houses and offer them money for their "grey dishes" they then would overcharge them for their inferior service..
Expressvue ended up selling all of the "Liberated" units to dealers in Toronto. Damn hyprocrits.
Some of the actions taken by these sattelite companies to curtail pirating is worse than pirating itself.
DirecTV's lawsuits are aimed at people who bought ISO 7816 Smart Card equipment from vendors who also distributed DirecTV's access control software, or otherwise published information about how to get around it.
See, this is the slippery slope. In court, it's okay to present evidence that somebody purchased something as proof that the person used that item. However the ISO 7816 Smart Card Standard is more or less "dual-use" equipment. It's an ISO standard, afterall, so it's used in other applications like credit cards, security systems, and ID systems.
That's DirecTV's mistake. They can't quite get courts to accept their claim that the only use of Smart Card equipment is to emulate their cards. There are other uses, so you can't presume that without another piece of proof. Since DirecTV doesn't have that other piece, the lawsuit is over and they lose.
Sure, a majority of people who suddenly got interested in ISO 7816 were people who wanted to hack DirecTV... but how is a court to know whether it has a member of that majority, or the minority who had legit other uses in front of it? Without additional proof, the presumption that it was a legit use goes uncontested, and the court rules for the defense...
If you quit because you were doing something illegal in your job, you typically (but not always; it's state legislation) have whistleblower status. Sounds like he may have been racketeering.
Mind you, it isn't illegal to accuse people of doing something illegal or trespassing if you have suspicion that they indeed were. I'm really curious as to where the limits to the "use" of the law meet the "availability" of it.
When Big Business can win by costing too much to litigate against, you are deprived of the fundamental rule of law, by being unable to meet legal remedy.
Failure does not necessitate innocence.
Actually, in this case it does. There's no crime in attempting to discramble DirecTV's signal, just in actually doing so... but nevermind, that's the business of the local Prosecutor's Office anyway to file that case.
DirecTV's filing a civil suit. And in order for there to be a civil liablity, the definitely has to be a service obtained without paying for it... no evidence that supports that having happened is the fatal flaw in these cases.
Playing the devil's advocate, when it comes to satellite signals, theres no way to prove a damned thing. Its just like radio, its not like the local rock station knows what you do with the signal they put out on the airwaves, and neither does direct when you hack them. What they do know is that there are people with 6 receivers being billed at their address (im canadian so i dont know direct's details, bell did the same thing). Basically they give you the same programming on another receiver dirt cheap, and people it ends up being 6 houses with 1 receiver paying 10 bucks for all the programming.
Again, in all fairness to Directv, i dont think they have any real goals in eliminating legitimate techie uses of smart card stuff, but they couldn't care less about eliminating it if did get rid of all piracy. But they'll never get rid of it.
"Piratability" of the satellite is its main selling point. At Future Shop (where i believe the teenagers there make a commission) sold my father on Bell over Starchoice on the grounds that Bell gives you everything minus PPV for 6 months, and then you just find a friend at work or something who does satellite cards and get it all free. A girl my father didn't even know, a representative for the store sold stuff based on piracy.
I don't think star choice would be dying in canada like it is now if it could be pirated as easily as bell. Its completely unhackable, or let me say not even worth the trouble when bell is so easy.
Directv has interests in money. There is no money in eliminating piracy - its suicide - all new subscribers and even most directv folks will go to dish for the free wrestling. Directv has an interest in money, and extorting it from anyone is probably the most profitable way of going about it. If this guy didn't realize it, he's a moron. And if he honestly believes directv won't keep this held up in court as long as possible, he is also a moron.
*anonymous coward steps down from podium*
Sadly, I do not think this guy blowing a whistle is going to do much to impact DirecTV's image or future actions in court.
Anyone and everyone who has had contact with DirecTV regarding smartcard programmers has come away with a bad taste in their mouth. Considering the public got a royal spanking in court, compounded with the fact that it has turned out to be profitable, I doubt we've seen the last of their goons.
I know two people who have settled with them. Even when they went shopping for an attorney, they were faced with most of them suggesting settling due to DTV's previous victories. Luckily, one was filed in a Georgia court, which does not take so kindly to 1 plantiff vs 30 defendants whom had no prior knowledge or contact with each other. In this case, he was able to get away with court costs + lawyer fees which worked out to around $3,000. The same if he had just settled, but now he has to worry that they will re-file a civil case against him properly or have criminal charges pressed against him.
The US has become a real shit hole when it comes to big business vs the little man. You simply can't win when the people who enforce the law have been bought. An individual should encouraged to represent himself and not be at an automatic disadvantage for going in solo saying "someone show some proof any of this happened."
I guess that's the end game of capitalism. Every dollar finds a way to be spent in an ongoing flow of money directed to big businesses and overseas. Who loses first? The lower and middle classes.
>There are DirecTV Thieves.
Yes, they work at the DirecTV NOC. They steal once quiet airwaves and fill them with unwanted trash and beam them at my once quiet home without my permission.
There's theives all over if you choose to define the word incorrectly.
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
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.
They know this is going on. 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.
I have something of a problem calling people "thieves" who make use of something that is lobbed into their property by someone else. DirecTV is sending its signal into your yard, after all. It would seem that those who make use of the signal given to them are less "thieves" than granky ol Mrs. McGurdy who kept the football you accidentally kicked onto her porch.
It's just words. Words to represent concepts.
If I were someone who bought into the notion that language shouldn't evolve with time, like the Culture Ministry of France, I would accept your quibble.
But really, words only have meaning in the context of an understood system, and even then in the context of other words.
In this case the context is clear. Though it could be argued that the DirecTV Thief appelation is not descriptive enough. DirecTV Signal Thief would add a distinction.
As far as mischaracterization goes, talk to U.S. House and Senate and Executive Branch about it before you complain to me. They put it in the laws, journalists use it, regular people now use it. It may rub you the wrong way or seem out of place but words can have all sorts of bizarre etymologies that have little or nothing to do with their current meanings. If I call someone a Warez Kiddie I don't care if they are really 35 no matter how Kiddie is otherwise defined. If I call someone a barbarian it does not mean I am a confused Etruscan.
If only this analogy applied. It surely doesn't when these "tools" are being used in one's own home! To make than theft/tools analogy more apt: it is like as if the banks kept dropping safes onto your front lawn. They don't have to this, but they do, without your permission. One day, you decide to open one of them.
However, the vast majority of these people WERE buying the stuff to steal DirecTV
None of them were, as no theft was involved. They were making use of signals given to them by DirecTV when they lobbed to signals into their property.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
While I don't agree with DirecTv's business practices they are completely within their legal rights. DirecTv piracy tools were cheap, easy to setup, and accessible before the release of the HU card.
Here's my story: I was curious about trying HU emulation, bought some equipment, but never invested the time or money into getting a working system. When the feds raided the company I purchased from I received a letter from DirecTv asking for $3500. I retained a lawyer but the reality of the situation is that settling would be cheaper than going to court. Just owning the equipment is a crime due to our DCMA laws, legally it doesn't matter if you pirated it or not. The same week my local newspaper reported on the front page that about a dozen individuals were being sued by DirecTv for piracy -- it even listed their names. Needless to say, I settled. Most of the people who bought normal ISO readers/writers from the same places selling enumerator boards and the like should not be surprised. Few of these people have a legitimate reason for owning the equipment. The big difference between criminal and civil suits (like the ones DirecTv is perusing) is that the burden of proof rests on YOUR shoulders.
What's worse, is that the hackers have realized that so long as they don't confess, DirecTV doesn't have enough evidence to win most of the lawsuits they're filing.
Where do you check your facts?? DirecTv has won many of the cases they brought to court. While some sites (www.legal-rights.org) tend to emphasize only the favorable rulings, other (more objective) sites show DirecTv is winning most cases brought to court. Trust me, I did hours of research due to my own legal situation.
Broadcast towers require maintenance, just like satellites.
Actually satellites are not designed to be maintained. It is only the rare satellite that receives servicing, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. This is for two reasons: servicing missions are absurdly expensive, and most TV satellites are in a geosynchronous orbit, which is unreachable by the Shuttle.
In fact this is the main problem with your argument. The money for the broadcasting infrastructure has to come from one of three places: advertisers, viewers, or the government. Not many people agree that the government should pay so that everyone can watch satellite TV. Furthermore, remembering that satellites can't be maintained, the costs and risks of satellite broadcasting are orders of magnitude larger than terrestrial broadcasting. Launches are expensive, and if something breaks (or if technology advances), the only option is to launch a new satellite. It's not viable to ask advertisers to bear the sole responsibility for subsidising the medium, especially since people are bitching even now about the amount of advertising on TV.
As for your claim that "DirecTV could have made a killing selling dishes," you're advocating that DirecTV should use the access equipment to subsidize the service? How would this be different from using smart cards?
The fact is that DirecTV is not viable without paying subscribers. So once again we encounter the problem of common good versus the I-want-my-MTV mentality. Why is it that people think that, just because they can do something, they have a right to do so?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
...in the beginning, didn't even have commercials! The radio spectrum was more closely held to be a public commons, with a public benefit. Broadcasts were more a free service in the sense of they were donated by the companies on their nickle. Later on commercials started slipping in, now these various broadcasters get to "own" a slice of spectrum,apparently forever and forever and forever, and their relicensing hearings are a COMPLETE SCAM, a mere rubber stamp job. It's apparently illegal to run your own non commercial very low power radio station, even on a totally unused piece of the spectrum. And to just listen, to use a wireless receiver? To my mind, you broadcast it out at random into the ether, then anyone may listen if they have the equipment. It is NOT the same as illegally hooking up a wire, then you have touched, altered property that is not yours, it's anothers, but over the air broadcasts to my way of thinking are open to reception. Of course, the courts and companies don't agree, but what else is new when a public "thing" gets sold to a private for-profit concern, turned into a "private" thing? To me, there's the theft in the first place. Just to get MY permission as a joe tax payer, part owner of all the spectrum around me, at a minimum your boradcast should be available to me to receive. If you want to make money, ask for donations of sell stuff. IF you wish to broadcast commercials to garner a cash flow that MIGHT lead to profits, that is your right to do that, and I don't see the government should interfere there as well, YOUR choice of programming and how many and what commercials you may transmit for that "license" to "own" some of the EM spectrum, untilsuch a time as your relicensing comes back up, and we need REAL hearings, not this joke we have now with industry insiders licensing other industry insiders..
That's my take on it.
Story, long time ago when cable first started, you didn't even need a box, just the cable. I moved into an aprtment that had a coax hanging out of the wall. Now I had a TV, and normal rabbit ears, but the reception sucked, and I was not able to get a normal antenna, as I didn't own this apartment. I had not purchased the cable networks offerings, but I DID feel it was my choice to screw that coax on and see if the longer wire that went out the wall and up the wall and "over yonder" some place might somehow improve my over the air reception, as it was the closest thing to having an outdoor aerial. Much to my surprise, I got cable feed, and it WASN'T connected, but it ran parallel to a connected cable. I guess induction did it somehow. Now, I would NOT have physcially screwed that together to the for-pay feed, or climbed the pole and hooked myself or anything of that sort, to me, that was and is illegal. But I saw no illegalities in receiving the signal. I rented the apartment, there was the wire, it worked, no physical connection, I did nothing to get the reception, it just "was there".. Eventually the cable company came and moved all the wires and I lost feed,so be it, so I went back to fuzzy rabbit ears.
There's the difference. There's physcially hijacking someone's property, then there's recieving a broadcast that is transmitted "at random" down from the sky, using a granted monopoly piece of the spectrum that is part mine anyway. They are not some sort of tight aiming it to individual people, they broadcast it out in a WIDE spread that hits everyone basiclaly under a huge area. It's as random as their altitude can get in the "down" direction.
Basically, I am tired of the government saying it can just take MY property and sell it, then saying it's OK for this private company to sell me my property back. I fully realise it's expensive to run a satellite and launch it and etc, but, we already figured out that advertising is "enough" to make incredible profits for broadcasters, I have no idea, but the sum totality of over the air broadcasting profits since the beginning of the radio age has to be into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
You have no idea of how many people do not and will not connect their boxes to telephone lines. People are afraid that the company will track their viewing habits or sell them to marketers.
Many people DO NOT and WILL NOT connect their receivers to telephone lines.
I'm sure that some will respond with "Well then tough shit for those people, don't let them use the service". To which I reply that it's not in any business's best interests to alienate their customers. If you treat all of your customers like thieves you have no right to complain when they stop partaking of your services (*cough*RIAA*cough*).
These companies operate with a certain measure of trust. It's simply not their responsibility to verify all of the information that they are given by their customers.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
When I first read this I took it opposite of the way I think you intended it.
i.e. Actually the common good is served by NOT making it illegal to decrypt this stuff because such a law is overly restrictive of personal freedom. So the 'pirates' are actually acting rationally and the broadcasters are the actual "I-want-my-MTV" party in this transaction.
Like you say, just because we can (have satellite TV by selling decryption keys and creating draconian laws to limit their usage) doesn't mean we should.
Why doesn't DirecTV owe me damages? They are irradiating my property with microwave radiation without my consent.
I'm sorry, but this is a classic case of IIA (Idiots In Action). These guys are like the kid who hits his baseball through your window and then calls the police claiming you stole his baseball. And "of course" you're guilty - you're in possession of "stolen property". But who put it there?
The reason why I'm unsympathetic is because DirecTV set themselves up for piracy - there's no physical control over the infrastructure, and the signal is available everywhere. Did they really believe that their signal wasn't going to get hacked? The military learned a long time ago that when it comes to broadcast commo, key control is of the utmost importance. How DirecTV thought they could maintain a secure distro channel when they passed out keys to the general public remains a mystery.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
You do realize that the term "Piracy" has been used as a synonym for "Copyright Infringement" since at least the year 1828, don't you?
It's not like someone just got up in the morning and decided "Hey, I think I'm going to come up with emotionally charged language today... and boy do I feel like a salty sea-dog!".
Piracy has meant taking someone else's intellectual property without permission for a very long time - nearly 200 years. Get used to the phrase.
Webster's 1828 dictionary entry on "Piracy"
Coming soon - pyrogyra