Slashdot Mirror
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.
Of course, the notion that just because something is connected with litigation it should be immune to anti-racketeering laws is rediculous, the threat of being bankrupted by an legal battle can be at least as coercive as the threat of having your legs broken with a baseball bat, so why should one be legal, and the other not?
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.
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."
If only he hadn't blown the whistle, he could have had attractive career opportunities at the RIAA.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
DirecTV is continuing to operate this SCOish collectors and lawyers devision.
SCO is enforcing conjured fantasy with no basis in reality. There are no real Linux Thieves of SCO Code.
There are DirecTV Thieves.
Or, to state it in a less pretty way, they were harassing completely innocent techies with to 5-10% of their efforts.
Failure does not necessitate innocence.
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...
When people speak out on issues like this, it helps managers in big corporations to .. err ... be careful to clean out their closets. What you don't want people to know about, don't do. Don't hide behind your 'corporate position'.
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.
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*
Don't use their products. If they want to screw people around with underhanded tactics in the name of a couple bucks- find someone else to deal with.
Sure it is their livelihood, and I bet it feels bad for them when someone gets something from them for free... it's one of the risks they took when they started their business dealing with an unlimited "resource" like microwaves (I think that's what those satalites use right?). If they want to fix the problem- make better hardware, better software.
Sometimes it's better for a company to spend a little more at the beginning in order to avoid the consequences down the road of being cheap .
There would be less of a problem with a "need" to have hack-cards if DirecTV would only sell the services in the first place. Mainly, network feeds. I'm pretty much barred from getting DirecTV because I want it to have CBS/ABC/NBC/Fox. The local affiliates have a policy of "we don't grant waivers", and on top of that, they are not full affiliates anyway (pre-empting prime-time network shows willy-nilly and never re-showing them. If DirecTV could find some way around the local broadcasters' censorship and send network content in the satellite signal, that would be a big plus.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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've always had a really hard time trying to side w/the satellite providers on the issue of piracy.
I mean, in the case of cable piracy, you're exploiting a service which you're paying for the priveledge of. In other words, you wouldn't have cable if someone hand't hooked it up and ran wires.
It's the same with stealing electricty. It's not just laying around on your property waiting to be used... You have to pay for the priveledge of having electricty, just like you have to continue to pay in order to use it.
But with satellite it's different. They're shooting their signal across my land, so to my twisted way of thinking, there's not a lot of difference between me putting up an antenna to catch on-air broadcast feeds (ie, NBC, ABC, etc), and me buying a receivier and antenna to receive the satellite waves that are there for the taking.
I know there's a lot more to it from the legal point of view as well as from the ethical standpoint, but to me it's hard to really call someone who just buys the equipment and sets it up in their own home a criminal. They didn't run a line to illegally tap into some companies pay-for-use system. They didn't splice into someone elses services.
They simply installed the neccesary equipment to receive what's already on their property.
In one sense, I have to say that I can't really see why the satellite companies don't just sell the equipment and then make their money in premium services and advertising (as tv networks have been doing for some time now, with amazing success!). 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).
In other words, give the razors away, and sell razor blades.
Of course the capitalist side of me says "That's no way to run a business", and thinks of all the backend licensing and copyright work that would be involved in order to make something like this happen.
But still... I have a hard labelling those who choose to freely receive what's already being broadcast to them as criminals. The day there's no more rape or murder in the world, that's the day I'll start considering satellite piracy a real crime.
Not trying to troll... Just thinking out loud...
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.
I understand that SCO has just made him a job offer.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This is not "the world of null-A". The definitions of words are not static Definitions aren't imaginary, either. The only reason the term "theft" is being used is because it is emotionally-charged, despite the fact that it has absolutely nothing to do with what is going on.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Someone referring to the blindly aggressive tactics of corporations as "the mob", I love it!
You know why? Because it's accurate.
Human beings are not as complicated as they might wish themselves to be. Gatherings of men in one context are going to be just like gatherings of men in another. It always seems to end up badly whenever we allow power to go to the hands of a few. Over and over and over and over again.
It's what human beings turn into whenever they get the opportunity. Hence the Constitution, and all the other lessons history has forgotten. We're just doing it all over again, just more thoroughly with the aid of technology. What does the future have in store for us? Maybe we can all see it in our peripheral thoughts in a hazy kind of way. THat something just isn't right. Pass the Zoloft.
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
...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.
That reminds me of an old quote about copyrights, to paraphrase ...
"If you draw a cup of water from the sea, it is yours, if you pour it back it belongs to the commons. All creative works are drawn from the sea of knowledge. Kept to yourself they are yours, but once exposed are the commons."
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.
I know I'm generalizing the slashdot community here, but I find it quite amusing that when someone posts something about how they freely download MP3s or games, a dozen anonymous cowards respond with some attempt at "You're stealing my job" or "You're a thief." The pro-piracy comments are often modded as trolls.
And yet, here, the highest modded comments on DirecTV stories are generally those that include some kind of variation of, "They're putting the airwaves in my backyard, I just happen to be catching them in my satellite dish!" Or, "It's not technically illegal to just capture it from the airwaves!" I think it's safe to say, this being slashdot, that some of these people are software engineers or the like. I wonder if these software engineers feel the same way about people in foreign countries who break no laws in their own countries but still pirate software.
Just because you can do something, even if it is not illegal, doesn't mean you should. I know this is unpopular to say, but you're still receiving something that the producers intended to receive compensation for. They are doing something, even if that is just retransmitting. Whereas FM radio and local stations do not expect compensation, DirecTV does, so the analogy that it's "in the air" doesn't really make sense ethically. If you think it's too much to pay for, patronize someone else or don't watch the TV. Just because DirecTV is a big company, or it's easy to take advantage of a service they're providing, doesn't mean it's right. Saying they're a big company and citing their scrupulous tactics is merely a justification, an excuse. It doesn't make stealing right. It might be cool to show off to your friends, it might even be legal, but receiving something you didn't pay for when the party providing the service fully expects compensation is stealing. I know DirecTV does some very questionable things, but like for like doesn't accomplish anything. Patronizing a competitor who does not utilize those tactics is ultimately far more effective than merely stealing service.