EFF Coordinates Fight Against DirecTV 268
wumarkus420 writes "In response to recent lawsuits filed by DirecTV against purchasers of smartcard equipment, the EFF and Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society have announced a new site devoted to the legal fight against DirecTV's aggressions. Hopefully, this new site will provide innocent consumers that have been threatened under the veil of the DMCA with professional legal advice and information."
Oh, come on (Score:0, Interesting)
In this case I can't buy the "substantial non-infringing use" argument, as having dabbled in satellite technology for a while, I know how huge the market is for pirate cards. It was one of the factors in the collapse of ITV Digital in the UK, as half the population of Scotland - where for some reason, this is especially rife - were using bent cards.
There also used to be a huge trade in D2MAC cards and PC-connected EEPROM programmers so people in the UK could get free Swedish pr0n and Premiership soccer games on Norwegian TV.
Bahh!!! DirecTV has no case! (Score:3, Interesting)
Once you buy hardware, you own it.
That may not be the case with copyright protected content, but just as you are authorized to privately show a DVD you own as many times as you want to (.. for now), you can privately hack your hardware any way you want to! Sealand, anyone? Or perhaps China. Australia would be good, except they just reversed their earlier decision and made selling mod-chips illegal again. However, it is still legal to install them over there!
What about for the RIAA? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just watch, they'll lose their domain name (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine has operated a website called www.afm.com [afm.com] for quite some time. "AFM" stands for American Flea Market. A little while ago the American Film Marketing Assocation [afma.com] disputed the domain, saying that he was cybersquatting on their trademark. Their complaint filled a four-inch binder. He's operated the domain for several years before hearing from these jokers.
They accused any of everything from kidnapping the Lindbergh baby to crashing those planes into the World Trade Center. Oh, yeah, and Andy had weapons of mass destruction.
My friend is no fool. He fought the dispute tooth and nail, without any legal representation - and won, he got to keep his domain. But not everyone has been so lucky.
Andy put up a site about it called www.ShameOnTheAFMA.com [shameontheafma.com], which has some resources that others could use to defend their domains.
Re:Oh, come on (Score:5, Interesting)
and there is a huge market for pirate video's too (as hilary rosen so vociferously predicted), should they have been made illegal too?
yes, there are alot of people who do use the cards to pirate signal, but there are also quite a few people who have legitimate uses for them and for drecttv to blanket sue *anyone* who has one is just plain wrong imho.
besides, there is a certain logic to say that the consumers are being sprayed with encrypted signal, why should someone else have a say in what they can do with the EM waves in their own property? if they can break the crypto, then perhaps directv should try making the technology better. after all, the consumers are passively receiving the signal, it's not like they are tapping into a private line.
dave
It's a Witchhunt (Score:5, Interesting)
Now he is a fan of Dish Network...
Re:Oh, come on (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wrong Discussion, Bozo (Score:3, Interesting)
>DirecTV seems to be hassling people who have the ability to steal programming
Have or had. Let's say I sold my programmer at a garage sale. Now, how do I go about proving that?
Re:Oh, come on (Score:4, Interesting)
you're missing my logic. yes, I do think it's an invasion of privacy to listen to someone elses phone calls, but I also think the onus is on the phone companies to make the encryption of cellphone calls strong enough that people can't listen in.
and no, I don't buy the story that the authorities need the crypto to be weak so that they can listen to crims plan their next crime, cell phone conversations are only encrypted when over the air, they travel along the wires (ie from cellbase to the cell companies switches) in plaintext form and if the authorities have a warrant then they can listen there.
I'm a proponent of crypto, everyone should have access to it and it shouldn't be artifically weakened, if the authorities want to break it, then they should break it or find the guy who crypted it and ask for the keys. artificially weakening crypto will only hurt in the long run I think.
so frankly I think it should not be illegal for someone to try and crack the crypto on the mobile phone waves going over their property, but I also think that the phone co should have an obligation to make sure that the crypto for their phones is kept uptodate and that no-one cal break into it.
thoughts and comments?
dave
Re:We don't live in a Utopian society... (Score:4, Interesting)
yes, I know we're not living in utopia and indeed I have both locks and alarms on my car and home, more's the pity.
I don't know, I think that there is much to be said for companies making sure they do things properly rather than do it half heartedly and then use the law to go the rest of the way. if they did it properly to begin with then there would be very few lawsuits as very few people would be capable of committing the crime in the first place.
directv's business plan involves spraying EM radiation across everyone in america, you get that radiation whether you are a customer or not. cable companies only send their signals to people who are paid up customers to some level. a cable co can, theoretically, only send the tv stations to each customer that the person is listed at head office as having paid for (I admit, I really don't know all the tech involved) but a satellite company can't do that so easily. thats a given fact thats known beforehand and must be taken into consideration. they obviously have done so when the decided to encrypt the signal, but if they're going to do so then they should do it properly instead of doing it badly and then bleating about it afterwards. it's like adobe complainging that someone broke their rot13 encryption and having someone arrested for it, ffs, they put it out there in the first place in that bad state and then they expect someone else to take responsibility for it.
yes, it costs money to develop all this, but that should be known beforehand and written into their plan. it's like companies who produce drugs, it would be alot cheaper for all concerned if they didn't have to go through all that silly fda testing before they hit the market, yet they do and thats known about beforehand. not everything should be produced at lowest cost, sometimes you have to pay extra to get a better product.
with a satellite company there will likely be people getting the signal who don't even live in the states (I guess that the signal overlaps into canada and mexico?). it seems to me that if you're publically broadcasting data at such a wide scale, you've got to expect that people will have a play with it.
going out of your way to evesdrop on someone is one thing but if you're sitting in your home, not constrained by any licences you've signed (as you might not be a customer of directv) etc, then why is decrypting some signals that come *to you* illegal?
who knows how much IP of aliens we've ignored by recording all that stuff at arecibo for example
talking about dvd's. the licencing costs for them are hideous, I think they are in the league of 70% of the retail cost goes to the dvd consortium in licencing money, however, I think most of the cost of that has nothing to do with pirates, and everything to do with wanting to control the market and squeeze some more cash out of the consumers. look at the infamous divx? (the dvd-like "expiring movie" concept, not the video file). I don't think that had any copy protection in it, it was purely based around selling someone a film and then restricting how they watch it (in this case, number of times).
why should I not be able to buy dvd's in america and watch them here. yes, I know I'm preaching to the converted here, and I know that I can (and have) had my player hacked to be multiregion, but why should I have to do these things? thats not about piracy, it's about control and I, like many here, don't like it.
I do find it very difficult to accept the idea of banning technology though, it's a short term measure at best, you can't stop the progress of humanity. banning the tech won't get rid of it, just make it harder to find. necessity is the mother of invention and if you force people to kake their technology hard to find, then they will find new and interesting ways of making it hard to find. if you force the companies to find new
Re:Internet, credit cards, and anonymity (Score:2, Interesting)
Alternatively, you might use someone else's address, if you felt you could intercept the package before they picked it up.
Take it from someone who knows (Score:2, Interesting)
I Was contacted yesterday to see if i wanted to pay them off. . . . and i was told that all they wanted was 3 months of my pay-checks upfront, and half of the money i make for 6 months. . . I have a wife and 2 children, we can't live up to there demands and eat. . . . So, its off to the slaughter I go. . . . . Alone. . . . .
Intercepting Satellite Signals (Score:5, Interesting)
Take it from someone who knows (Score:5, Interesting)
More DirecTV Abuses (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Too bad (Score:2, Interesting)
DirecTV action not justified by numbers (Score:1, Interesting)
I cancelled my subscription. I've been a customer for many years, but never again.