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EFF Lands a Blow On DirecTV
An anonymous reader writes to alert us to a court win for the EFF in two cases in which DirecTV employed heavy-handed legal tactics to suppress security and computer science research into satellite and smart card technology. Here's the ruling (PDF) from the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. From the announcement: "The cases, DirecTV v. Huynh and DirecTV v. Oliver, involved a provision of federal law prohibiting the 'assembly' or 'modification' of equipment designed to intercept satellite signals. DirecTV maintained that the provision should cover anyone who works with equipment designed for interception of their signals, regardless of their motivation or whether any interception occurs. But in a hearing earlier this year, EFF argued that the provision should apply only to entities that facilitate illegal interception by other people and not to those who simply tinker or use the equipment, such as researchers and others working to further scientific knowledge of the devices at issue."
pay per view channels.... That is scientific tinkering too.
Just kidding. I want a cablecard mythtv box. Now.
Just because we cannot, by default, assume a legal motive does not mean we should discount the existence of one. Furthermore, DirectTV aruged that it should be illegal regardless of whether or not such a motive could exist, not simply because such a motive could not exist.
I'm giving up my ability to mod this thread but I need to set the record straight. DirecTV went as far as obtaining lists of people who purchased smart card equipment on the internet, and corelating them with people who had bought DirecTV equipment. Anybody who fit the profile was sent a "demand letter" which threatened a federal lawsuit unless they paid DirecTV thousands of dollars. There were lots of innocent folks caught up in this (and lots of not-so-innocent ones too). At issue is the fact that the innocent people who had an interest in smart card research for computer security purposes, and who happened to purchase equipment from low-priced on-line retailers were wrongly harrassed by DirecTV.
Because that's what this case was about - anyone who bought a smart card reader/writer anywhere in the country was threatened or taken to court by DirectTV.
DirecTV didn't go that far, from the EFF's web site:
involved a provision of federal law prohibiting the "assembly" or "modification" of equipment designed to intercept satellite signals. DirecTV maintained that the provision should cover anyone who works with equipment designed for interception of their signals, regardless of their motivation or whether any interception occurs.
People bought smart card read/writers for their computers. There is no direct evidence to prove that they used these smart cards for their DirecTV systems.
DirecTV is claiming that anyone who bought such a smart card reader for their computer is deliberately trying to get "TV for free".
Will "DirecTV sue you next?"
Such devices are available for $30-$60 integrated within keyboards, within a computer case and as external USB devices.
It seems that Microsoft were involved in the development smart card technology for encryption purposes, DirecTV makes use of similar technology, and these gets all hissy about other people using
the same technology.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
It's NOT illegal to own a fully automatic firearm if it was built before 1985 (at least I think it's 85...84-86, one of those three years...can never remember...or is it 83?)
Living With a Nerd
My big problem with this issue is that at my past two jobs I worked for companies that did work with SIM cards. These are basically just a smaller form-factor of a smart card. At the time, there were various companies selling smart card readers specifically for the purpose of defeating DirecTV's copy protection scheme. As it happens, they had better prices on the same equipment I used for my job, so I ordered several for myself and a few cow-orkers.
DirecTV's lawyers started going after these businesses, obtained their customer lists through discovery and started going after their customers, too. You can guess what happened next.
As it happens, I was a DirecTV customer at the time. I never used these card readers to hack my DirecTV smart card, but I did use it legitimately for work. It took quite a bit of song and dance and a discussion between them and my (Sweden-based) management and CTO to convince them that I did have authorization to procure "SIM card readers" and expensed them through my company and wasn't using them for illicit activity, though it almost cost my job. Smart cards are very popular in most of the Scandinavian countries in many industries, and it was a bit amusing to hear DirecTV tell my CTO that he had no business reason to need a card reader for ANYTHING other than to steal from DirecTV.
For some examples, look at the security industry (physical access requiring a smart card - very popular in Finland), secure banking industry (you've seen the American Express Blue with the built-in smart card), cellular industry (all GSM SIMs are really smart cards), and Finland even uses smart cards for their national ID (which I hear makes their voting system work well).
Yes, perhaps I should have looked for a more "authorized" dealer or whatever, but money is money and my original bright idea that made my popular with my manager cast a shade over me that pisses me off to this day.
Maybe the correct question is, "Are you liable if you purchase equipment intended for illegal/illicit/immoral/ purposes for a legitimate reason?"
Tying in to the original point, it's amazing what power these guys have over people that don't have a company "in the business" to back them up. If I were doing the same job as a freelance contractor (which is very possible and more profitable in my former industry), I would have been legally fucked.
There are good reasons why lawyers should not be able to shackle research, industry, and "creative" self-education that fall outside of their business model. Generally speaking, smart cards are very secure devices, and if I recall correctly, DirecTV's woes started by using a vendor that leaked critical information (whether through subterfuge or buying off one or more of their employees) about how to confuse one of their specific types of smart cards into giving up it's secrets. This made the entire smart card industry look bad, and instead of taking it up with their vendor and immediately replacing those cards, they started suing potential customers. (I say potential, since I doubt many of them actually had subscriptions. At the time DirecTV was allowing their equipment vendors to sell receivers directly to people who obtained an unauthorized smart card to receive the service for free. Who really knows if they would be real customers had this avenue of exploitation not been available?) They took years to phase out the old cards for new, secure ones, and have since gone to a lease-only model for equipment so they can track who actually has a receiver and demand the equipment back if they're not suing it.
I'm not sure that DirecTV is evil, per se, but rather incompetent and legally blame everyone other than themselves. *Shudder* I'm glad someone is finally putting them in their place, as they have contributed to the overall chill on research that seems too prevalent today...
This comment does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the author.
I think there is more to the story than you are letting on...
There is. DTV went around suing smart card sellers for lists of people who bought devices that were capable of writing to DTV compatible smartcards, and then went around threatening those people whether they were unscrambling DTV shows or just getting a security system for their small company on the cheap.
This isn't true. You can legally own fully automatic firearms after you have purchased a $200 tax stamp from the BATF. They do sell this stamp, upon proper application. Some states may have laws which restrict this freedom.
Be careful with this one: it isn't generally true. The BATF has held that certain parts of a machine gun are a machine gun. Exactly what parts of a particular machine gun constitute a machine gun varies from time to time; it's decided by the whim of the BATF. It seems to boil down to ``If they want to get you, your machine gun parts are the bad parts.''
The problem here is that even though it is legal to own or manufacture machine guns, manufacture is only legal after you have bought the special manufacturers tax stamp. The BATF has refused to sell these since 1986, if I remember correctly. So, possessing certain machine gun parts (including some ``conversion kits'') is a felony. Possessing a full auto sear for an M16, and an AR15, is a felony, while possessing only the sear or only the AR15 is not, if I remember correctly (and I might be wrong on some or all of that). Possessing a full auto sear for an FAL is not a problem, but possessing an FAL receiver cut to accept that sear definitely is a felony with or without the sear, and so on.
In general, if you could put your parts together to make a machine gun, you are a felon unless you can somehow purchase that magic tax stamp.
These taxes were enacted by the National Firearms Act of 1934. There was a time when this was a free country.
See what I've been reading.
involved a provision of federal law prohibiting the "assembly" or "modification" of equipment designed to intercept satellite signals. DirecTV maintained that the provision should cover anyone who works with equipment designed for interception of their signals, regardless of their motivation or whether any interception occurs.
That's what the law says and how DirectTV interpreted it. You are parroting DirectTV's now shown to be false argument. The company began its crusade by raiding smart card device distributors to obtain their customer lists, then sent over 170,000 demand letters to customers and eventually filed more than 24,000 federal lawsuits against them. Because DirecTV made little effort to distinguish legal uses of smart card technology from illegal ones, EFF and the Cyberlaw Clinic received hundreds of calls and emails from panicked device purchasers. See? They claimed anyone using a smart card for any reason what trying to hack them.
This, too, was from the EFF's web site: http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_11.php
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
That's the Declaration of Independence.
-- nolesrule
If you actually read the ruling, it has absolutely nothing to do with allowing, or not allowing, legitimate research into decryption technologies. The case concerned DirectTV's attempts to find the defendants liable under sections of the statute meant to cover distributors of piracy devices, in addition to the parts of the statute meant to cover individual possession and use of piracy devices.
There is no argument mentioned that the defendants were not liable under the parts of the law covering individual use of piracy devices.
The article by the EFF is also wrong/misleading. Yes, they have been fighting "DirectTV's heavy-handed legal tactics", but in this case, it just prevented them from using a bigger hammer against folks already found to have violated the law. (Did they actually do so? Who knows. They did not respond or appear for the original complaint, so default judgement was entered against them.)
SirWired
The card reader is not the card. The card reader is -never- used to decrypt DirecTV. The card (which so far, has to come from DirecTV themselves, as it's not been completely hacked) has a sophisticated chip on it that does the decrypting.
The card reader is used to hack the card and/or reprogram it.
The card could be argued to be used to intercept (even though it's actually just decrypting), but the card reader doesn't even have exist once the card has been hacked/reprogrammed.
There used to be more sophisticated rigs that involved a card, card reader, fake card, and a PC. I don't think any of those work any more, though. They aren't at issue here as the -only- use for that rig is to hack DirecTV and the components are specific to it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
That's not true. It's legal for an individual to own a fully automatic firearm (under federal law; state laws differ) if it was registered with the BATFE prior to May 19, 1986. "Conversion kits" (i.e. fully automatic sears) meet the statutory definition of a machinegun (26 U.S.C. section 5845 (b)), and must be registered as such (BATF ruling 81-4, 1981-3 ATFB 78)).