DirecTV Extortion Program stopped by EFF

eticket writes "After several years of an Organized Extortion program DirecTV has been stopped by the EFF. As many of you may know DirecTV has been suing people who purchased card programers even if they had legitimate reasons for them. Many have settled to avoid legal issues. The problem was they had to prove innocence instead of DirecTV proving guilt. The only thing that DirecTV did was say they purchased the card programmer from a site that sold Satellite pirating equipment. Even though there are legitimate uses. Thanks to the EFF for stopping this horrible miscarriage of the legal system. "

Comments

Re:What are legitimate uses

[belgar]

I have to preface my comment by saying I agree that the "guilty before proven innocent" strongarm tactics are bullshit.

However....

I for one am tired of the argument "there are legitimate uses for this technology," especially in this case. You're right -- there are legitimate uses. But 99.99% of these readers that are purchased are for the purposes of pirating satellite signals. DirecTV may be wrong in their methods of fighting back, but they are fully justified in protecting their product. I for one think it's cool that (until the release of the new cards) it's possible to hack these cards -- I work with several people who did so on a regular basis. But, the bottom line is, it's stealing. I fail to see an argument in the case of illicitly snarfing satellite signals that has the legitimacy of anti-DRM movements, which I wholeheartedly support.

Flame on....