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?
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
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*
If you were an innocent techie who had NEVER tried to steal DirecTV, and had this equipment for hobby purposes.. you would defend yourself. You would ask the courts to show proof that you stole.
Thats right- you would be just like me. I've already spent $5000+ and I'm just getting started with discovery. The chance that I'll lose the case is nil, the chance that I'll get my court costs back- also nil.
This is the reason that settling for 3500 before you're sued is attractive.
For the slow:
3500 no trial, no public records
-or -
15k+ trial with me winning, p[lus a small sense of satisfaction
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.
Bickering about language will accomplish little, but those who have used "theft" and "piracy" for copyright infringement deliberately chose those words for their negative connotation.
:)
You can use the same stupid argument to justify any sort of espionage or hacking. Do you also think hacking someone's wlan from their parking lot is OK, since they broadcast intentionally to the parking lot and you are there.
What, do you think that the U.S. doesn't intercept (or try to intercept) foreign governments' transmissions, because that would be theft? Or that they don't try to do the same to the US (and each other)?
Hacking, is different, because it's active (you're sending instructions, not passively monitoring transmissions). But if someone is stupid enough to send valuable data unencrypted over a wireless link, sure, they should expect that it might be monitored. The same way two people talking loudly in public should expect that others can hear them.
If a pervert spies on a lady undressing who forgot to close her window is the pervert justified in taking advantage in your opinion.
If she's doing this in public and charging some audience members, I wouldn't expect the police to make others who want to see it pay as well.
Right now the biggest problem in the world is your stupid posts, at least to me.
You must live in that Walgreen's "Perfect" world, right? Where countries don't spy on one another and the biggest problem is someone's opinion on the Internet?
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
...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."