Slashdot Mirror
Man Convicted For Helping Thousands Steal Internet Access
angry tapir writes "An Oregon man has been convicted of seven courts of wire fraud for helping thousands of people steal Internet service. Ryan Harris, 26, of Redmond, Oregon, was convicted by a jury in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. He faces a prison term of up to 20 years and a fine of up to $250,000 on each of the seven counts."
don't to the crime if you cant do the time
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Courts are an odd unit to measure instances of wire fraud.
If this guy could build a business, complete with websites, forums and so on, it must have gone on for quite a while (6 years it turns out), so it is obvious that:
1) The ISP didn't know enough about their business to realize the giant holes this guy was exploiting.
2) The ISP was incompetent enough to let this guy and his customers steal service (which the ISP's other customers paid for) for a long time.
Any sentencing here should include a heavy fine to the ISP for technical incompetence.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Get your terminology right, please. There's no such thing as "intellectual property", there is a large body of laws and regulations that pertain to patents, trademarks, copyright and other related rights and mostly create various monopolies. "Intellectual property" is a WIPO marketing term for the weak-minded.
No, bandwidth requires infrastructure and maintenance, while "intellectual property" can be copied infinitely for a near-zero sum of money.
There a huge difference. You can indeed steal Internet service - you are not making a copy - you are actually taking something someone else paid for, i.e. theft.
When it comes to 'stealing' intellectual property - you are not taking anything away, nor are you taking something someone else paid for. You are making a copy that detracts nothing from the original. Any loss would come from the loss of a potential sale, but as must file sharing either is done by people who would never pay for the stuff they download (no lost sale) or by people that buys the downloaded material later when it becomes available, there's usually no loss involved and thus no theft.
Understand it now?
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Writing tools to configure cable modems is what he got convicted for. He just wrote some tools so you could BOOTP your cable modem with a "valid" MAC and uncapped access speed. The cable companies knew they were putting the security in the dynamically configured end user device. They didn't fix the security flaw after it was publicly known. All the guy did was write an exploit for a publicly known bug, others (end users) were the ones that abused it.
Oh well, at least now there is jurisprudence to put gun manufacturers into jail. After all, they make the tools that others use to commit crimes, which is what this guy is going to do hard time for.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Tcniso uncapper to remove bandwidth restrictions http://www.cable-modem.net/dcforum/DCForumID5/205.html lot of interesting software still available by googling tcniso and on the torrents... stuff is really interesting how he wrote it
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Generally the assumption is that they'll never be caught and thus never have to pay. If they knew for sure that it was going to cost many years out of their life I believe they might choose otherwise. It's some of that "It can't happen to me" kind of thinking that results in so many bad ends.
Are you really as retarded as you are making yourself out to be, or do you actually not understand something this basic?
By using an ISP's connection without paying for it, you aren't piggybacking on another person's packets, you're using up the limited* space in the pipe. By not paying, and essentially being an unknown factor to the business providing the pipe, you are lowering the quality of service for everyone else. If not through using bandwidth that wasn't accounted for, it's by delaying their packets with your own, during an especially congested time.
* Regardless of how big the pipes are, the ISPs do need to calculate just how much capacity they have for the amount of people they are serving. Adding a few hundred extra people without accounting for them can be a big difference for their neighbours. Add thousands of unaccounted users, and you can have a massive congestion problem that will be extremely hard to track down, and costly to locate and fix.
probably that your brain contradicts his line of thinking
You are ok with a fine on you if your house gets broken in to and it is found you didn't do a good job securing it. After all, if we fining people for not doing security properly, then it needs to apply to physical security too, and to individuals too. So if you are like most people and have a cheap lock that is vulnerable to bumping and picking, single pane windows with no security screen or coating, no security locks on your windows, no alarm system, and so on then if you get broken in to, you get fined too.
After all, it is something you can fix. You can get high security locks from someone like Medeco or Assa that can't be bumped, and key controlled, hard to pick etc. You can have your windows replaced with coated glass and screens that are very difficult to break through. You can buy friction security locks for your windows that you take on and off when you want to open them and so on.
You probably don't choose to. Few people do. It costs more and is inconvenient. However it does make it much easier for someone to break in to your house.
Now if you aren't ok with that, then I have to ask why it is ok to fine the ISP. Could have the had better security? Most certainly. However they chose not to and that doesn't make what was done to them right. Same shit with you. You can choose to have better security. Just because you don't, doesn't make it right for someone to break in.
OTOH, the bits that you copy from me don't disappear from my hard disk by your copying, for information is being a virtual world entity.
Any loss would come from the loss of a potential sale, but as most [sic] file sharing either is done by people who would never pay for the stuff they download (no lost sale) or by people that buys the downloaded material later when it becomes available, there's usually no loss involved and thus no theft.
I'd actually argue that most filesharing is done by people who wouldn't pay for it and there's still a loss involved.
For example, let's imagine a thought experiment: if a company is selling 100,000 copies of some digital media product and then piracy comes along and now 1 million people are pirating it and only 50,000 copies are being sold. We could say that piracy halved the sales - causing a "loss" of 50,000 sales. However, since there are 1 million people pirating it, we could calculate that 95% of them (950,000/1,000,000) wouldn't have bought it. The fact that most of them wouldn't have bought it doesn't change the fact that it caused the sales to be cut in half. Heck, if piracy became the norm, and let's assume that all the sales disappeared (i.e. a loss of 100,000 sales) then we could still truthfully say that "90% of them wouldn't have bought it". My point being: even if you can truthfully say that most of them wouldn't have bought it doesn't mean that it doesn't produce lost sales.
(And just to head-off the "potential sales aren't real they're purely fictional" argument that someone might want to throw my way - if anyone believes that, then they should argue that copyright should never have existed in the first place and corporations should've always been allowed to print all the books they want and sell all the software they want and sell all the movies they can - because it only means a "potential" loss for the creators and corporations should be allowed to pocket all the money for themselves.)
What did the customer pay for that these people were stealing? Do terrestrial/cable ISPs still charge per-hour or per-GB for bandwidth?
Last I checked every provider in my area was offering (truly) unlimited high-speed access for a flat rate, and they couldn't tell worth a damn if someone else was using my connection. They certainly didn't charge me more (for example) when my friends would stop by and use my WiFi.
This is no more stealing than using Coffee Shop WiFi, the only difference is how the connection was made.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Are you really as retarded as you are making yourself out to be, or do you actually not understand something this basic?
By using research without paying for it, you aren't piggybacking on another person's discoveries, you're using up the limited* funding in the field. By not paying, and essentially being an unknown factor to the business providing the R&D investment, you are lowering the return on investment for every other researcher. If not through reducing sales of a final product, it's by crowding their publishable papers out with your own, in a given issue of a journal.
* Regardless of how big the wallets are, the investors do need to calculate just how much return they will see from the research projects they are funding. Adding a few hundred extra competitors to a market without accounting for them can be a big difference for the feasibility projection of a project. Add thousands of unaccounted clones & derivatives, and you can have a massive marketability problem that will be extremely hard to track down, and costly to locate and fix.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I mean -- 20 years for a simple financial fraud thing. In other countries, murder is less.
No wonder you have a considerable fraction of your population in jail.
Scary.
the guy did offer software to modify the cable modem firmware to get uncapped connections or clone the mac addr of some legitimate modem to access the nework (yes cable modems are authenticated with mac addr) . he didn't do it himself.
Infinitely copied, yes. Infinitely produced, no; that also requires infrastructure and people's time.
Blank until
You haven't accounted for the pirates who then turn into customers, either.
Or pirates that tell their friends about how great of a program it is, and those friends purchase the program legitimately.
---
No, let's operate off of the assumption that piracy never occurred. Who is to say your program will have as many paying customers? Don't think you can simply say, "HEY LOOK X PAID, BUT Y DIDNT, THEREFORE WE LOST PROFITS!" Which is mathematically wrong. It should be represented as:
x = customers who are customers regardless of piracy
n = customers who are customers because of piracy
p = pirates that who are not customers, but would otherwise be customers
r = pirates who are not customers, but would not otherwise be customers
If you're going to claim damages, please provide proof that x > p, not that x + n > p.
By using research without paying for it, you aren't piggybacking on another person's discoveries, you're using up the limited* funding in the field.
On the contrary, you are actually not using up the funding in the field. You would be, though, if you had to replicate research already done once and again. That's why researchers consider publishing your research a good thing: they get information quite more cheaply than if they had to research everything on their own and they may also get validation/refutation of their own research.
..you are lowering the return on investment for every other researcher.
Only, perhaps, if you don't share back. But if you don't share back you will get sidelined.
...investors do need to calculate just how much return they will see from the research projects they are funding.
Weren't we talking about ROI for other _researchers_? Investors putting money into research and looking at ROI means they don't care about research but its products... and will probably keep research results secret anyway.
Do you know how much the artist paid for the copies you take? They have donated both their time and their money into creating it. It's not like they come to them for free, it's just that most of the cost is incurred very early in the creation process.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
And along those lines, I don't like the Chicago Cubs, so maybe we can all just pretend they don't exist. Problem solved!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
The thing that people have yet to touch on in this thread is that the bandwidth used does not just affect the end consumer that is having their connection increased or hijacked - and I'm not talking about the effect on other users on the network.
Let's talk peering arrangements. No ISP has access to the entire Internet, so they peer with other networks and backbones to increase their reach - and those agreements are routinely based on an amount of data transferred per period. Go over that agreed amount and the ISP has to pay. Routinely go over that agreed amount and they have to renegotiate the agreement. Routinely stay under the amount and the ISP can renegotiate a less costly agreement.
So yes, there is a real effect here, it's just some way downstream from you.
Grammar nit-pick - you use "[sic]" when correctly quoting a mistake in the original, not when correcting one when quoting.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
We should never outlaw creating tools like lockpicks, knives, cable modem sniffers, or CPUs able to run unsigned code. We should only outlaw specific usages of said tool.
A priori, there is nothing wrong with explaining how such tools work either, but aiding customers with the specifics of their particular cable provider could eventually cross the line into conspiracy to commit wire fraud, just like helping a robber a house's door would become conspiracy to commit robbery.
I therefore hope they convicted him on specific instances of technical support he provided which unambiguously made him a conspirator in specific customer's wire fraud. And I hope he wins back his freedom on appeal if they convicted him on any other grounds.
In fact, we should discuss the physical plans for equipment and software which he sold here because I'm sure we're curious what exactly he sold. Anyone got links to DIY kits? We should add this stuff to thepiratebay.se's physibles section : http://thepiratebay.se/blog/203
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Those that walked in to various loans, eyes wide shut? Or those who took loans they couldn't afford because they figured they'd just flip the house and make money?
The idea that individuals were completely blameless in the financial crisis is silly. Sure there were some people who were suckered in. They were told one thing and given another. For them I have some sympathy (though really, there's a standard loan terms sheet that comes with every loan, it isn't hard to read). However there were plenty that got greedy and just ignored all good sense.
An example would be my cousin, call him B. He owned a house that he'd had for quite some time, around 8-10 years on a 30 year fixed mortgage he could afford. then things went crazy and he decided he's take all his equity out in a refinance so that he could buy a bunch of new toys like a truck, take an expensive vacation, shit like that. His loan amount went way up because he was taking out more than the original loan had been for since his house was allegedly worth more. He couldn't afford a fixed loan at that rate so he got a cut rate ARM. Then prices crashed, the rate went up, and he lost his house. Not only should have he known better, my dad (among others) told him this was a stupid idea.
Then there's me, I have a house that I had since before things went crazy, on a 30 year fixed mortgage that I can afford. It supposedly doubled in value during the craziness. I could have taken a ton of money out. I didn't, because I knew that was a bad idea. I still have my house, and I can still afford my loan.
We were both in a similar situation, he chose one option, I chose another. Nobody held a gun to anyone's head and forced the issue.
The crisis was caused by failures and greed at so many levels. The government, the bond rating companies, the investors, the banks, the loan officers, and yes the individuals. You can't just act like a certain group were the evil ones who caused everything. There is a lot of blame to go around.
Now if you just want to start locking everyone up, I guess that's a valid position, but you might want to ask how well that's work in, say, the drug war.
You're missing the point. To allow people to pirate because a small portion of them could potentially purchase down the road may be great for marketing, but is poor for revenue.
I am just unable to understand the intellectual lethargy that I find on Slashdot when it comes to piracy. You may disagree with how someone feels about piracy, but if it is their content, it is their prerogative.
Kevin Mitnick was far more dangerous than this guy! After all, Kevin Mitnick knew how to ask people to do things, in a way that actually convinced them to do it! Imagine the danger that such a person poses to the public -- a danger that is so severe that he needs to be incarcerated for five years without trial.
Not to say that a cable modem hacker is not a dangerous criminal, who is constantly putting the general public at risk. I mean, this guy modified cable modems to break the rules set by cable companies! Can you imagine a world where that sort of person is allowed to be free, to be near your children?!
In all seriousness, this guy is facing 20 years for each of 7 counts, which is more prison time than some convicted murderers face. What does that say about our society? That we value cable company profits more than human life? That is the scary thing about this case: the severe sentence that might be imposed.
Palm trees and 8
prison term of up to 20 years and a fine of up to US$250,000
...the real criminals in the banking and mortgage industry got away scoff free even after they caused damages in the trillions. Is the law blind?
No, Kevin engaged in active destruction, both deliberate and accidental, of the systems he probed. You seem to think he just engaged in social manipulation: while effective, it's hardly the only tool he used. And the destruction was as much from his _incompetence_ than from his expertise. By re-arranging and casually ruining core security systems he made production systems crash repeatedly, lose data and code, and cost developers, customers, and companies many millions in lost work. He also _kept_ doing it, even when he turned informant against other crackers and cut deals with the FBI to avoid prosecution.
Mitnick was, indeed, _much_ more dangerous than this guy. He was also too insistent to _stop_ after being caught repeatedly.
I'm tired of "stealing" getting applied to every instance of "underhandedly doing something you weren't supposed to".
I don't think most people get that kind of a sentence for murder.
I saw one case on this "I Survived" show they have on Biography channel: a woman shot her husband six times in the chest, and she was sentenced to six days for aggravated assault. Six days for unloading a gun into somebody's chest, 20 years for stealing internet; what a wonderful justice system we have.
If it's been 30 years then I should be able to violate the author as much as I want. That's part of the bargain.
Genuine natural rights don't expire like that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Now, let's suppose they're selling 100,000. Piracy comes along, 1 million pirating, and they're selling 200,000. We could say that piracy doubled the sales, causing a "gain" of 100,000 sales. This is fun! Complete and utter bullshit, but fun!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I imagine you're also lumping Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) loans into the culpability for the crisis. This is a thirty-year old law. You may want to look into that; CRA-approved mortgages were less likely to be subprime and less likely to be resold.
Also, Fannie and Freddie have rules that stipulate they would cover only 80% of a mortgage. Where did the other 20% come from? Ask Angelo Mozilo; Countrywide would just give you a second mortgage to cover the other 20%. Ta-da, 0% down payment home mortgages.
Fannie and Freddie also would not take Jumbo loans. So those McMansions could not be financed that by them.
As far as "liar loans"(or NINJA loans), the fault lies 100% with the broker. While consumers are morally obligated to be honest, it's supposed to be the broker's responsibility to keep liars from getting money they can't pay back. Instead we had brokers facilitating fraud.
The biggest cause of the problem was the large secondary market for mortgages. It's all basic Supply and Demand. If there had been no market for selling shitty mortgages, the brokerage firms would never have been able to get rid of the bad mortgages and they would have crushed under the weight of their own defaulted loans (as they did when the big banks finally stopped buying their trash). But back then Wall Street was more than willing to buy up this crap, so the fly-by-nights had a willing buyer for their doomed-to-fail mortgages.
And make no mistake; Fannie and Freddie were not big players in subprime loans until Countrywide said what amounted to "if you don't buy these loans, Wall Street will, and you will lose all your market share". Fannie and Freddie didn't really get into subprime loans until about 2005. And in 2010, their loans had a foreclosure rate 30% lower than the national average.
Oh, and let's not forget the SEC decision in 2004 that exempted the banks from the capital reserve requirements. Without this ruling, they wouldn't have been able to lever up their balance sheet as highly as they did.
And all the deregulation and mega-mergers that made banks too big to fail, and allowed a shadow banking system to grow in the derivatives market which then began to exceed the size of the real banking system. And the Credit Ratings Agencies which were complicit in labeling toxic CDOs which were designed to fail as AAA-worthy.
:(){