Posted on 02/12/2003 12:23:33 PM PST by RCW2001
LOS ANGELES Feb. 12 —
A federal grand jury has indicted 17 people who authorities say hacked into satellite television transmissions, causing millions of dollars in losses to DirecTV and Dish Network, the U.S. Attorney's office said.
Six of the defendants were charged with violating the anti-encryption provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The other charges involved conspiracy or manufacturing a device for the purpose of stealing satellite signals. All three counts carry a maximum prison sentence of five years.
The indictments were returned last month and unsealed Tuesday.
Ten defendants already have agreed to plead guilty, authorities said, including a 43-year-old West Los Angeles man who has acknowledged causing $14.8 million in losses to satellite TV companies.
The investigation was aimed at people who develop software and hardware devices that crack the scrambled signals designed to limit satellite TV services to paying customers. DirecTV, for instances, uses "smart cards" as part of their set-top boxes that descramble satellite signals.
The defendants named Tuesday are charged with thwarting that security, often meeting in secret online chat rooms to exchange data and techniques and using such nicknames as "FreeTV," authorities said.
The defendants range in age from 19 to 52. Most live in California, although some are from Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Indiana, Florida and Ohio.
"This case demonstrates our commitment to identifying and prosecuting sophisticated computer hackers who steal the intellectual property of others for their own economic benefit," U.S. Attorney Debra Yang said.
Activation of a Dish Network account means enabling your smart card. The above is from the top of the residential agreement...
If no information was deposited there, how can I be accused of descrambling it?
Don't you ever feel silly making silly assertions that contradict common sense?
"Salt in sea water is just an illusion; it's not really there! That's the truth!" statements carry a lot of weight with informed adults.
The answer is...
...wait for it...
YES!
Why? because miltary SATCOM does not use lame security. You can, in fact, monitor those transmissions. You can count on our enemies monitoring them. If our military is so lame that their transmissions can be cracked by hobbyists, its better that we know that.
And if I were a hacker, and I never bothered Dish about their card, I have neither agreed to their terms, nor forced them to activate the card. Hence, I would have never have opened a dish account. Again, it's like saying that once you buy my car; you must forever purchase my gas at whatever price I chose to sell it at; or else sell/toss the car away.
Of course not.... none of us do. We are simply discussing a 'what-if' scenario. What do you expect someone to do? Say 'Hi, arrest me!"?
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, in part:
Makes it a crime to circumvent anti-piracy measures built into most commercial software; and, Outlaws the manufacture, sale, or distribution of code-cracking devices used to illegally copy software.
It's simply not right -- as in "right" vs. "wrong" -- to take without compensation that which does not belong to you. How would you like to invest billions of dollars with the goal of generating a return on that investment by licensing access to your product, only to have the unscrupulous attempt to steal your work "because it's there" or because it's technically possible to do so? I know I wouldn't like it and I think it's wrong to do so.
Because you are selling something that allows a third party to receive a service for free from some company. IOW, your “service” is to sell something that allows someone to “steal” their service. They go nuts over that sort of thing, and they’ll tend to go after the entity selling, rather than using, the info or device.
If they’d just been playing with their own equipment and kept their mouth shut, I doubt DirecTV would have acted even if they knew about it - too much time/energy/trouble. Once you start selling that info or device to everybody it will get out of hand and they have to pursue it, IMO.
That's my suspicion - that they were selling something. Otherwise I don't think anyone would care that 17 people were getting free TV. And I don't think they could pursue any theft of service type deal for 14 million with just 17 people involved. I could be wrong.
These are all interesting assertions, but entering into a contract without signing anything is legally dubious.
You paid to get it, it is in your house, and only by intrusive means can anyone determine if you broke that "agreement." Sounds like an invitation to rape the IVth.
FWIW and IIRC, no one has ever emulated Dish Network's smart card firmware (i.e., a cardless receiver), but I think it's been done with DirecTV.
So, in an extreme defense emergency, when the military needs some "public" bandwidth for communications, then you're saying that you have a legal right to decrypt the stuff and sell the access to the Chinese.
I can answer that from direct experience: It is much better and more effective to design a product in such a way that theft is difficult or economically inefficient to steal, or that it contains a service element that cannot be stolen, than it is to try to get passed and enforced draconian laws that create an incentive for intrusive enforcement, that go against longstanding doctrine, and that generally rub people the wrong way.
As a disinterested party in this case, I have to ask: What causes more harm? Intellectual property theft or bad laws? If the answer is bad laws, I'd rather see the theft continue than give up my rights and the rights of other law-abiding people so that intrusive enforcement can be used to stop theft.
DirecTV could use less lame encryption techniques rather than force us all to bend over for the anal probe.
Not only is it on my property, it is passing through my body as I type this message. I say I have a right to do whatever I want with it.
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