Slashdot Mirror
Murdoch Faces Allegations of Sabotage
Presto Vivace writes "Neil Chenoweth, of the Australian Financial Review, reports that the BBC program Panorama is making new allegations against News Corp of serious misconduct. This time it involves the NDS division of News Corp, which makes conditional access cards for pay TV. It seems that NDS also ran a sabotage operation, hiring pirates to crack the cards of rival companies and posting the code on The House of Ill Compute (thoic.com), a web site hosted by NDS. 'ITV Digital collapsed in March 2002 with losses of more than £1 billion, overwhelmed by mass piracy, as well as technical restrictions and expensive sports contracts. Its collapse left Murdoch-controlled BSkyB the dominant pay TV provider in the UK.' Chenoweth reports that James Murdoch has been an advocate for tougher penalties for pirates, 'These are property rights, these are basic property rights,' he said. 'There is no difference from going into a store and stealing a packet of Pringles or a handbag, and stealing something online. Right?'"
This guy is basically like Mr. Burns on the Simpsons. What a horrible excuse for a person.
I have not RTFA, but, this would be damning if the board (including the Murdochs) were aware of it. They appear to be getting pounded in UK, though that has not yet reached this side of the Atlantic..
Wonder if the corruption is so pervasive that they've broken the law here as well, or if it was confined to the operations (and management) in UK alone.
Captcha: crotch.. :P
My outrage is reserved for the likes of the Murdoch clans criminal behavior not for piracy.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If ITV Digital was a publicly traded company
And it has ceased to exist due to bankruptcy
And the bankruptcy proceedings have been all wound up
And the allegations against BSkyB are true
And BSkyB can be successfully sued for large damages for what they did to ITV Digital
Who could bring such a suit? How would the proceeds be distributed? The obvious candidates are ITV Digital's creditors (who got paid less than they were owed) and ITV Digital's shareholders. However, it won't always be clear who owns those shares and bad debts, as they've been assumed to have zero value, so haven't been tracked since the end of bankruptcy.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
These stories of corporate evil have been posted on Slashdot since 1997. You'd think these issues of corporate responsibility and malfeasance would have been solved already. It's been 15 years already people! The same old corporate corruption, everyday, for 15 years!
It reminds me of that movie Groundhog Day. Every day its the same old shit. But at least in the fiction of the movie, things got better, and the Bill Murray eventually got laid.
Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)
...the close resemblance between Rupert Murdoch and Emperor Palpatine...?
NDS card hacking has been well known for a long time. They spent a year with some 30 guys using electron microscopes to reverse engineer their competitor's cards. When they published each new revision, they destroyed the Dish network's profitability for years, and everyone else using their competitor's technology. NDS mades the cards for DirecTV. They actually rate the security of their chips in electron-microscope years. This is well known, and well known that NDS and DirecTV are more Murdoch properties. I'm sure the people who have been discussing this for years are not surprised by the phone hacking scandal, which is like comparing pre-school with ... electron microscope school?
You know how I know you've never been to /d/ ?
This incident followed the same pattern as the News of the World phone hacking scandal. An overly aggressive manager broke the law and was rewarded, and News Corp crushed the competition. When the bad deeds were found out the internal investigation was a joke:
Then for some strange reason when the authorities investigate they decide not to press criminal charges (can you say political pressure, i knew you could). In the final stage, there is a civil case and it is settled out of court. In this case the total payout was $650 million. Note this figure includes some other wrongdoing besides the Floorgraphics case.
This is exactly what happened in the News of the World scandal, until The Guardian newspaper in England did some investigation and found out how massive the phone hacking was. Given these two cases, one in the US and one in the UK, what are the odds that News Corp is blameless in this situation.
Why is Snark Required?
Did Canal+ not already try to sue NDS over this back in 2002?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1868140.stm
http://onhistory.co.uk/timeline/2002/03/12/tv-firm-sues-over-1bn-piracy-loss
So all those rumors about Procter and Gamble being a satanic organization might be true after all...
Mirror, Mirror on the wall
Who's the biggest crook of all?
If you're a big corporation, piracy is a Good Thing, especially if it takes down a rival corporation.
But if you or I download 1 song 'illegally', it's 250,000 in fines and five years in pound-them-in-the-ass prison.
Have I got this right?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
There is clear signs of piracy, that was intentional. Close down ALL of it, all the newspapers, the tv stations, everything, and sort it out in court first.
Thats what they did to Megaupload, fair is fair.
We know he's a pirate because he distributes file sharing software: http://www.fileplanet.com/73/0/0/0/1/section/File_Sharing
Scroll to the bottom and note it's operated by IGN Entertainment. Then check who owns IGN: http://corp.ign.com/about/
That's right, News Corp, Murdoch's company.
it's sabotage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE&ob=av2e
if he ever really goes down, he'll take a few politicians down with him
And that's his protection, right there. All the politicos in a lot of countries know that if they investigate his companies too deeply they'll uncover such a can of politically interconnected worms that their governments would have to relocate to the nearest jail.
He's been in so deep for so long that no major party would come out with clean hands, or be able to "cast the first stone". He knows it, they all know it and are just hoping that the media knows it too.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"And what about all the nerds that actually did it? It's not like he sat around writing code himself. What about their (existent?) scruples? Did they know who paid them or wonder why? Did they just ignore those questions so long as they could?"
None of that happened. The company that made the decryption cards was owned 50% by News International, and it made cards for Sky, and competitors like ITV's On Digital. Murdoch was a non-executive director at the company then this happened too.
There was no hacking, the company that made the cards was leaking the decryption keys, likely at the behest of James Murdoch/News International who had such a stake in the company.
Maybe you slashbots decide at last...
'There is no difference from going into a store and stealing a packet of Pringles or a handbag, and stealing something online. Right?'"
One [obvious] and distinct difference: physical deprivation of property. If someone steals a handbag, the lawful owner no longer possesses it (theft). If someone copies a file, the original is not removed, nor does the rightful owner lose possession (presumably).
You must be corporate shills!!!
Seriously, there is a lot of evidence that the system is being gamed to simply keep the falling companies on top. Murdoch is just one. The labels are right up there as well. No doubt if we look, we will find the *IAA's are up to their own BS as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What's it like where money matters above all else, nepotism abounds and professional ambition transcends all known ethics? Let me tell you.
I've been an employee of NewsCorp for the last 4-5 years. I stay with them because they offer the best compensation in my field, security in this recession, and yet we have our differences. On many occasions I've defended my employer and media outlets, mainly Fox News by saying, "I may not agree with the narrative but no one can say it's not a commercial success." Each business unit only worries about the bottom line, and not a soul has the well being of the U.S. and it's future in mind. Now it's starting to bother me.
Rupert Murdoch may be more feared by his employees than Steve Jobs ever was. Instead of a razor sharp focus on perfection and simplicity, Murdoch works his media holdings like a venture capitalist, his political influence like the dirtiest lobbyist, and just doesn't seem to 'get' the web and social media. This old-fashioned media tycoon acquires, prunes and drives companies and their talent to exact his will.
The pressure on his people shows. Employing very creative accounting (tax havens), phone hacking and leveraging threats of media smear campaigns, NewsCorp employees cross ethical boundaries more often than Rupert crosses time zones. It's no secret he enjoys the power he wields. On the editorial conferences he attends, on the way he treats political enemies, competitors and anyone else that dare disagree, it is striking from the inside.
Rupert has always shown his considerable ego, from the (good for all of the British press) breaking of the print unions in Wapping to his new rambling outlet, Twitter (@rupertmurdoch) . This 80 year old man tweets solo from his iPad, attacking Google, President Obama and others, all the while disregarding his plethora of Lawyers, PR entourage and social media experts. But that's the thing. He doesn't care. He's an old, angry, ballsy billionaire with mostly incompetent, disappointing children who is set on nothing more than doing what he and he alone wants for the rest of his life. I would say his tireless work has earned him that privilege if his empire wasn't pro-SOPA, against LGBT and other rights, constantly polarizing America and driving the Republican Party farther right than I ever predicted. The national dialogue has turned into a screaming match and I know who to thank.
With Roger Ailes as his Dick Cheney, Murdoch has incredible control over conservatives. 'Fair and Balanced' stopped being a funny joke years ago. I never thought I would live in a country where science was laughed at on the news, calling the sitting President a Communist was acceptable, or where a GOP candidate has no chance without the backing of Ailes, Czar of Fox News.
This might be the future, where only money matters, your voicemail isn't safe and anything can happen when dirty police officers get their take. It might be, but I don't like it.
Kinder, ist die heutige Wort; Schadenfreudegasm.
Was für ein Schrei! Ich bin, es zu meinem Wortschatz Deutsch auf einmal.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
"Listen, all of y'all, this is sabotage."
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
All I can think of is how in 1577 Queen Elizabeth gave financial backing to pirates in the Caribbean to break the Spanish hold in the area at the same time publicly being very against the whole idea (why yes you would be hanged as a pirate if you were caught without the secret papers). This is not any different (well except that in this case no one was actually hung). It does put a different view on everything overall how a large company actually can benefit from some well placed and promoted piracy.
Who do we support? The people behind Fox News who just wanted "information to be free" - or the companies who were trying to protect their intellectual "property"? Which is it?!
Apparently, thanks to compartmentalization, Slashdotters are fine with supporting IP in this instance, if it means bringing down Murdoch.
This is old news.
NDS has been doing this since at least 1997. It has been dox http://www.out-law.com/page-2439 before.
Oh wait its ok since it bashes Monty Burns / Fox notsonews
and I am a libtard FYI
Just be fair and balanced ok?
Piracy never hurts anyone! I know it has to be true because that is what I keep seeing people say here on Slashdot!
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Parent is completely on target, and this may be the most insightful post ever written on Slashdot.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
All the more reason to make an example out of Murdoch. What type of society do you want to live in? One where the powerful break the law and cow politicians by endlessly propagandising the public? The Murdoch's probably think of themselves as stand-up guys, but they have caused so much harm that it is an embarrassment to a civilised society. Jobs said that Murdoch should think about his legacy, like somehow the karma boggie-man will do something about his behaviour. I would put more faith in jail-time for serial malfeasance.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Because there wasn't any collateral damage in the Megaupload case?
Collatoral damage would require damage. Closing down every Murdoch outlet and unemploying his minions would cause no damage. Yes, the minions are damaged, but that is no more "collatoral damage" than a dead Taliban is collatoral damage when you target a Taliban safehouse to take them out. They are the rot, their removal is a net improvementm and certainly not "collatoral".
Thus, no collatoral damage. No, the reason for the double-standard has to do with political connections and right-leaning institutions, not "collatoral damage." (All screams of "liberal bias" notwithstanding. The only thing with a liberal bias are facts and reality, not the institutions and politicians that coddle the likes of Rupert Murdoch and his filthy son.)
I know this answer is has nothing to do with the civil law question you asked, but I think eye for an eye would be a very appropriate response to the antitrust aspect of their actions. Since it is difficult to gauge the actual level of harm caused by their actions, I think the fairest response is to make them suffer the same fate. If they were leaking this information for X years, rule that all broadcast, satellite and streaming encryption keys for all Murdoc media must be freely available for the next X years.
It is easy to reconcile those two ideas. The problem was the asymmetry of the IP protection. If Murdoc was also leaking the encryption keys for his companies, then there wouldn't be an antitrust issue, as both companies would have been competing on the same footing. So a good punitive action is to force him to just that. Cognitive dissonance be gone.
Note that I don't actually think that it is okay to pirate (in most cases), and definitely don't support theft of service. I'm just pointing out that there is more to the issue than IP.
'There is no difference from going into a store and stealing a packet of Pringles or a handbag, and stealing something online. Right?'
Bulls**t.
Piracy is piracy. Theft is the physical act of stealing the original. Piracy is like trying to steal the hypothetical packet of Pringles, but the Pringles are still there.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat