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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. "
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.
I had to look this one up:
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:
"The company will no longer pursue people solely for purchasing smart card readers, writers, general-purpose programmers, and general-purpose emulators. It will maintain this policy into the forseeable future and file lawsuits only against people it suspects of actually pirating its satellite signal. DirecTV will, however, continue to investigate purchasers of devices that are often primarily designed for satellite signal interception, nicknamed "bootloaders" and "unloopers.""
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While I guess it's a step in the right direction, reading this part just drives me nuts:
"The company also promised that it will investigate every substantive claim of innocence it receives. If purchasers provide sufficient evidence demonstrating that they did not use their devices for signal theft, DirecTV will dismiss their cases."
Oh, now I have to provide "sufficient evidence" that I'm not guilty? Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Shouldn't the burden of proof be on their side?
Basically, the bully is going to try to be a little nicer.
Ahh, thanks.
As someone is the market for cable/satellite service I had been looking for a way to really differentiate between Dish Network and DirectTV. I think my decision has now been made. Or, does Dish Network also like to sue people?
Casual Games/Downloads
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?
The best way to stop such DMCA nonsense is not in the courts, it is by grassroots public awareness. If somebody tries to sell you a DirectTV subscription, or a Lexmark printer (with DMCA protected non-3rd party ink cartridges) let them know exactly why you will not purchase it. If they hear it more than once or twice, this will work its way back to headquarters. Eventually the execs will clue in that they are pissing off enough potential customers that they will back off, even if the law was on their side.
My rights don't need management.
Is everyone forgetting that DirecTV has effectively shut down the "pirates" (for now) by phasing out the last of the "hackable" smart cards? Between that and their soaring subscriber base (especially when compared to cable), it's no longer cost effective for them to continue with these tactics, nor is it worth the negative publicity. I'm all for the EFF, but if the RIAA found a way to stop 99.9% of file sharing, they'd drop their lawsuits too. Hate them all you want, but they are only fighting a perceived threat, using what they consider to be a deterent. If there's nothing left to deter, they aren't going to spend the money on it.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
As a business, the worst thing to do is to sue your own customers for some obscure reasons...... the same goes for RIAA!
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"If everything seems to be going well, you obviously don't know what the hell is going on." - Murphy's Law
Directly from the article:
"If purchasers provide sufficient evidence demonstrating that they did not use their devices for signal theft, DirecTV will dismiss their cases. EFF and CIS will monitor reports of this process to confirm that innocent device purchasers are having their cases dismissed."
So you are STILL guilty until proven innocent. This saga is not over yet.
I suspect part of the reason DirecTV has softened on this is that the particular series of access cards these programmers were designed to hack are no longer functional. In mid-april DirecTV switched from the older encryption stream decoded by the (hackable) P3 cards to the new encryption only decodable by the P4 or higher series. They figured that few enough legit customers were still running on old P3 cards (they'd been sending P4's to all subscribers with P3's for months) that they could safely shut down the old cards entirely. So DirecTV promising not to be so heavy-handed in the future is a moot point. Anyone buying a smartcard programmer to hack DirecTV now is an idiot throwing their money away.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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.
DTV has recently shut down the HU stream, the only hackable signal thus killing the demand for these equipment. This PR throwing a meanless bone, in reality it is no longer a significant concern for them anymore.
In the military you are held accountable for what your subordinates do. Unless they make a conscious, conspiratorial effort to keep you out of the loop, you are presumed to know what they are doing. In other words, 999 out of 1000 cases, a noncom or officer is presumed to know exactly what they are doing. Therefore they are held responsible if they are violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Unlike the civilian world, in the military world, the buck stops with whoever is in charge where the violation was occurring, and damage can spill over into higher ranking personnel.
The only way to stop stuff like this is to apply that standard to the civilian business world on criminal activity. Don't punish the stockholders by fining the company because Mr. Big Rich White CEO claims he didn't know what was going on. Bullshit, he was hired specifically to know what at a minimum his underlings were doing. Can you imagine the fallout of an army major saying "gee Mr. JAG Officer, I had no idea that lieutenant smith was killing civilians while we were occupying this village." The JAG would laugh his ass off as military police escorted at least the lt. and probably the major too off to a brig.
Personal responsibility is out of style in America today. We want power, but so many don't want the responsibilities that come with it. Look at the female general who is trying to cry like a little girl that she "didn't know that the abuse was going on in Abu Ghraib." Bullshit. With a command that small in such tight quarters you'd have to know. Let the DirecTV executives get hit directly instead of the company and that will scare off anyone that would follow in their footsteps.
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But bootloaders and unloopers exist solely for the purpose of unscrambling satellite signals.
Arguments about "if the signal reaches my house I should be able to use it" aside, this is how the law stands, and that's who they should be after.
It's like the diffence between an xbox mod with a hardcoded version of a hacked MS bios vs doing it yourself with a blank EEPROM. The first is an infringement if it ships out with MS's IP (which is why all current mods ship out blank, or with cromwell), the second is just a stock part you can get at any decent electronics shop.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
those ads on tv, and the phrase in the article "Stealing Satellite SIGNALS"... Now i may be way off base, but how the heck does one steal a satellite signal? They are beamed to everyone in north america/world... Basically the phrase stealing satellite signals could be applied to someone who has a dish on their roof, but no decoder, since they are collecting the satellite signals.... I mean really, its not stealing the signals, its illegally decoding the signal that the problem...
No, unloopers exist for repairing smartcards. Check out SDLOGIC's equipment. They sell unloopers for purely legitimate purposes yet DTV is intending to sue them.
Bootloaders as well have legitimate uses....they can be used for retrieving critical data off physically damaged smartcards.
If the wording of the EFF's statement is held true, and DTV actually INVESTIGATES these purchases rather than carpet bombing the customer lists with extortion letters, then it will be what we've wanted since the beginning. This is only half.
It's nice that DirecTV has agreed to restrain itself, but the REAL problem here is a legal system that allows a giant corporation to bankrupt and besmirch an individual without FIRST having to provide concrete proof that they have a case.
This is what DirecTV was doing, and it's what the RIAA is doing now. This has GOT to stop.
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I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Right, DirectTV is filing their claims under tort law, not criminal law. DirectTV is not accusing the defendant of necessarily breaking any laws, only that they were harmed as a result of the defendant's action. Remember when OJ was found not guilty at criminal court, then later was found responsible at civil court?
That's another reason defendants in these cases may have been urged to settle: civil trials are held to a much lower standard of proof than criminal trials are. "Guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt", only applies to criminal charges.
/not a lawyer
Ya right... most people do not have the kind of money it takes to hire a lawyer... especially when it looks like a big bully with deep pockets is pushing you around. Hobbyist does not equal "rich person" (though there may be hobbyists who are well off). Even an average person can't afford to shell out a hundred or more dollars an hour it takes to hire a lawyer. This is why Direct was doing this. You seem to have too much money, and not enough thought.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Some progress has been made, but not nearly enough. DirecTV will still threaten people for mere possession of devices, and you're at their mercy as to what constitutes "sufficient evidence" that you didn't steal their signal.
Well, actually the government didn't make any such declaration - if you recall, the government was arguing very strenuously that he was, in fact, guilty. In the criminal case, a jury of his peers determined that he was not guilty according to the standards used to decide guilt in criminal cases, and the government - and the rest of us, for that matter - are bound to respect. Now, in murder cases, the government brings charges on behalf of the dead person - it has to be that way, since they're not around to press charges any more. But that doesn't mean the victims were the only ones harmed by the murder - others who have been harmed, but not criminally victimized, can sue in civil court to recover the damages they have suffered. So the state prosecutes criminally on behalf of the victims, and the families sue on their own behalf, based on the idea that they have been harmed by the actions of the accused - specifically, they were deprived of family members. And double jeopardy doesn't apply the way you might think in such cases - you can be sued for as many times as there are people to bring claims of damage against you, although each person who has been harmed may only sue you once. But if you murder twenty people, you can expect dozens and dozens of lawsuits from their family members, each one claiming you've harmed them.
As well, you can be tried more than once for the same act, if that same act encompasses more than one offense. Suppose I intend to kidnap you and hold you for ransom, but as I grab you off the street, I handle you too roughly, and you die. Even though there's but a single act that I performed, I can be charged with any or all of several offenses - murder, attempted kidnapping, assault and battery, and so forth. And charging me with all of those things, and even trying me seperately for them, doesn't violate double jeopardy. Finally, concurrent or subsequent state and federal prosecutions don't violate double jeopardy - so sez the Supreme Court - on the theory that the federal government and state government are both sovereigns, and both have an interest in prosecution. This is how the federal government was able to prosecute the police in the Rodney King affair, despite the fact that they had been acquitted in state court - A) dual sovereignty, and; B) they were charged in federal court with a different offense arising from the same act, namely depriving King of his civil rights, which is a crime under federal law.
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