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DirecTV Extortion Program stopped by EFF

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the fighting-the-good-fight dept.

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. "

6 of 470 comments (clear)

  1. Lawsuit! by Mz6 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    IANAL, so, the obvious question that arises is... Will those that settled be able to turn around and sue DirecTV? I know they settled, however, when they signed the settlement paperwork it was under false pretenses. Meaning that the people that bought the equipment probably thought it was illegal (at the time) to own it and settled to avoid further prosecution. I'm sure many didn't bother to contact a lawyer to determine their rights, but after such a change in policy I could see it happening. I mean DirecTV all but admitted that they were going after these people that might have had legitimate uses for it.

    --
    Hmmm.
    1. Re:Lawsuit! by rnicey · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Bit fuddy of you.

      You don't have to travel out of state if you don't want to. What jurisdiction does an out of state court have over you? You have a couple of options.

      a) Mail in a motion to dismiss and ask that because of it's trivial nature you'd like to participate over the phone. It doesn't take a lawyer to fill out that form in most states.

      b) If (a) fails, or if you can't be bothered travelling to another state let them get their judgement. It's a worthless piece of paper, they have to come to your state to collect and they need to go before a local judge to enforce an out of state order. Thats when you can defend yourself much better.

      For example I just had somebody sue me in CA and the FL judge wiped his arse with it. Doesn't even touch your credit either.

      Let them get on a plane and come to you. Chances are they won't bother.

      Bottom line. A good lawyer would have no problems with a suit like this.

  2. miscarriage? by ack154 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Thanks to the EFF for stopping this horrible miscarriage of the legal system.

    I had to look this one up:
    miscarriage - (mskrj, ms-kr-) n.

    1. The premature expulsion of a nonviable fetus from the uterus. Also called spontaneous abortion.
    2. 1. Bad administration; mismanagement. 2. A failure of administration or management: a miscarriage of justice.

    That just sounded like really strange wording to me, but I guess I just don't have that broad of a vocabulary.

    Also - DirecTV isn't STOPPING it's hunt... they're merely modifying it:
    satellite television giant DirecTV has agreed to modify its nationwide campaign against signal piracy in order to reduce threats and lawsuits against innocent users of smart card technology
  3. What are legitimate uses by Matt2k · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Clearly, I don't believe that 170,000 people bought card programmers just to play with the technology, but surely some percentage of those users purchased them for uses other than piracy-- however as a someone who has no experience with DirecTV, I can't imagine what they are?

    So what exactly are the legitimate uses of having a card programmer?

  4. Quite the coincidence, eh? by javab0y · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Everyone thinks this is due to the EFF's hard work. As much as I have great respect for the EFF and honor thier initiatives, this deceision was not due to thier hard work.

    DirecTV swapped out thier P3 cards and shut down mass piracy in April. They have sued over 24000 people. With piracy down to 0 for them, they will have a hard time convincing courts since thier arguments are not nearly as strong without all of those web sites hawking hacked cards. I think this agreement to be a "kinder and gentler DirecTV " is purely due to them cleaning up the stream, and not the hard work of the EFF. If there were still 1000s of hacked cards out there, rest assured, DirecTV would continue its extortion campaign.

  5. Re:A step in the right direction, but... by XMyth · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The problem is whether or not they actually investigate. In the past DTV's methods of investigation is

    1. Send out extortion letters (170,000 of these mind you) demanding ~ $3500 settlement or $10,000 lawsuit.
    2. X% of letters result in settlement of $3500. Lets say 5% settled.
    3. $2,975,000 (minus overhead) PROFIT!