Unfortunately the smart cards weren't quite "Hal", otherwise we would have heard

I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that

last Sunday night.

I once was "Ungrounded Lightning Rod" but /. slashed off my " Rod". Is that why they call Linux a Unix workalike?

Hackers will find a way around the new system. They always find a way, and they will have fun doing it.

What would be cool is if someone found a way to actually revers-engineer and manufacture smart cards that recieved the regular updates, and acted exactly like legit ones, except they didn't dial into DirecTV.

This is the way companies should combat hackers that are "stealing" or "bypassing access control methods"... not tracking them down and suing them, and getting laws put in place to ban things that are useful to the community at large. DirecTV was able to attack hackers without infringing on their paying customers!

"Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"
--Minsc

Ummm... bullshit! I know more than one legitimate DirecTV subscriber who was knocked off by these ECMs.

Taking out the hackers in only one of Hughes goals with these ECMS. The other was to destroy ALL H-cards, thus forcing their paying customers into upgrading to the HU cards.

But I'm sure they're _real_ sorry for whatever inconvenience they've caused people.

"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay

"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay

Watch out - the DirecTivo does not record your OTA broadcast signals. It only records the channels you get from the satellite. So, if you don't get the network channels from your dish, then you won't be able to Tivo them (or, I assume, use the Tivo remote to change to the OTA channels).

Once I found that out, I ended up getting the Sony DNR Tivo system. It interacts perfectly with the Sony SAT-B2 receiver, and my OTA channels. In fact, there is a cable that plugs from the Sony Tivo unit into the Sony sat receiver to control it. My one Tivo remote is thus the only one I have to use to get all the channels. Works perfectly.

I had thought that having the satellite receiver and Tivo all in one unit would be a good thing, but I've had absolutely no problems with the setup I've got. If you don't yet have a Tivo system, get it! My wife thought we didn't need it at all, but she is totally convinced now.

"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay

"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay

I have a kind of philosophical question here. Was it right (and possibly legal) for DirecTV to physically destroy someone else's property?

This is all very similar to the Videocipher 2 chipping that was going on until the early 90's. VC2 was the encryption method for big dish C band. Some hackers had figured out various ways to clone subscribed units, convince then they were subscribed to all services, etc., and sold these "chipped" units to unsuspecting consumers for large fees ("free satellite TV forever for just $800"). Many of those consumers didn't realize they were buying illegal equipment, although if they had half a brain they would have realized what they were getting.

There were attempts at fighting the piracy - ECM's that disabled some of the chipped modules. Since the VC2 was not particularly secure, it was easy for the hackers to get around this, or to replace a useless chip with a new one (until it got ECM'd). Many people spent a lot of money buying these chips from the hackers, possibly more than if they had just subscribed legally since some had to buy new chips.

Eventually, VC2 was replaced by VC2+ and VCRS, which have still not been cracked as far as I know. VCRS uses some new encryption techniques, and the hardware uses tamper-resistant packaging (I think the chips are encased in epoxy so you'd have to destroy the board to remove a chip). This upgrade was expensive for the satellite industry and for consumers who had to buy new VCRS modules. I don't recall whether legitimate subscribers got free replacements or not (they probably did). I had inherited a chipped VC2 when I bought my house, so I had to buy a VCRS to continue receiving TV.

DTV might be in for a similar situation. If the hacker abuse continues and grows too large, DTV will either go out of business or force everyone to upgrade to new more secure hardware. If this happens, the hardware upgrades for legal subscribers will probably be "free" but future service will get more expensive to pay for the upgrades.

My computers are the reason for my TV viewing going down the can. I can count the number of hours I've watched TV in the last 6 months on ONE HAND. :o)

--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.

Well I can make 5 easily distinguishable signs with each finger and three with my thumb giving 5^4 * 3 - 1 = 1874 potential hours or just over 10 hours a day over that six month period. Well aren't you just the mould breaker. ;-|

IANLAH (I Am No Longer a Hacker), mainly because I don't have time any more. I remember in my youger days the joy of taking apart a piece of electronics just and trying to figure out how it works. I love technology for techology's sake. Why is it wrong to hack for hacking's sake? DirecTV is broadcasting their programming to EVERYONE in America. Is it wrong if you simply figure out how to listen in?

"Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"
--Minsc

But stealing services that cost huge $$$ to provide is cracking, not hacking.

IMHO, hacking for hacking's sake would end with publishing all the details on your web site (soon to be taken down by your nervous ISP, of course), but I digress. I'll agree that the hackers in question didn't have motives most pure.

But I disagree that this is stealing. Today, Hughes and DirecTV are spending "huge $$$" to send their signals to my house, even though I'm without one of their receivers. Tomorrow they will be doing the same thing at the same cost. If tomorrow I have a hacked receiver, how am I stealing from them? They aren't out any more money from my deeds, and (unlike one of the reputed costs of stealing cable) my neighbors' DTV feeds are unaffected. They will send me the exact same bits (well, hopefully not the exact same bits :) as the day before, so their costs haven't changed one iota. DTV has no less property (intellectual or otherwise) as a result of my actions than they did before, so while my actions are certainly something, they are not stealing.

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I'm curious as to how this is really a theft of service. When that term is applied to spam, for instance, the theft occurs when spammers use up the bandwidth of their relays and the time and hardware of the targeted ISPs. In that case you can point to the extra costs that were required based on the actions of the thieves.

However, this satellite broadcast is streaming through all of us all the time. Does just possessing the knowledge to decode these ambient bits somehow make a person a thief? I'll agree that it's unfair to the legit DirecTV subscribers to have to pay for a service that some are getting for free, but I don't agree that decoding bits that are normally present in the environment is theft.

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In fact since most of us DONT get DirectTV and are STILL constantly bathed in its RF emissions Hughes is in the wrong, if anyone is. Mind you, I don't have a problem with them sending the bits to their own subscribers. The fact they they chose a CHEAPER method of distribution to increase their own profits opens them up to this.

Anything being broadcast non-interactively(not two-way like say, a cordless phone), whether tv, radio, or otherwise, is like air as far as I'm concerned. i.e. Not any company's but the peoples.

If the company doesn't like that, make their own customers use over priced less effective measures, like cable, spread spectrum, or other methods.

If the cost of that makes it unprofitable, so be it. The Constitution (Sorry, US centric) gives the right to the PURSUIT of happiness, not the right to it. THere is a difference. Similarly, Hughes can try to make money by giving a service worth paying for. They're not entitled to just because they spent a lot of money.

Think about it. If I fire radiation at your home 24/7 without you asking for it (paying subscribing whatever, and that IS what radio/broadcast energy is) you should have the ability to do whatever you want with it.

They are NOT STEALING. Stealing implies taking something away from someone else. As in they no longer have an object they previously did. These peeople went out and bought their own satellites, smartcards and gizmos. They can fdo anything they want with them.

Xerox did not have to pay all the scribes who were put out of work by copiers, nor did the guy who came up with carbon paper. Just because you used to be able to make money doing something once does not mean you are entitled to keep making money off it forever.

If I had moderation points and could use 'em on this article, I'd mod this up, because you made the point much more eloquently than I did.

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"Right to the airwaves" my ass.

So you don't have a right to use the airwaves where you are? Sure, transmission capability is regulated, since the RF band is a scarce public resource, but by the same token everyone does have a right to make use of it since it is a public resource.

What kind of idiotic argument is "it doesn't cost them anything" - do you think Hughes is getting these commercial fees for free?

To be more correct, it doesn't cost them anything more, since they already have to blanket the country with bits anyway. The decoding of some of the bits by non-paying customers doesn't require them to install any more capacity in order to serve their subscriber base. The price that DirecTV pays for the content is an issue between DirecTV and its' suppliers; hopefully they've reached an agreement that they both are happy with.

As far as I'm concerned, the more outsmarting there is on both sides, the better. It's fun to watch and, like cockroaches after a nuclear war, it's breeding some stellar hw/sw hackers. Go Hughes! Go hackers!

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The Constitution (Sorry, US centric) gives the right to the PURSUIT of happiness, not the right to it.
'persuit of happiness' is in the Declaration of Independance, but thanks for playing. The sad part is I'm Canadian.

"I feel... funky."

Gaddis' Law: In any sufficiently extraordinary situation, one's propensity for getting screwed is inversely proportio

So what about the folks in Canada who were also decoding the broadcasts? Apparently it isn't illegal there.

In addition, I would say that the argument "it's illegal 'cause it's illegal and unauthorized" isn't much of an argument. If there isn't a good reason for such a law, then it is the right and the responsibility of a citizen to break such a law. In this case, since the bits are on my own property, given freely to me by DirecTV, I would assert that a law restricting my use of those bits would be a bad law, since by my use of those bits I hurt neither my neighbor, my self, my community, or DirecTV. Sure, DirecTV doesn't get as much money as they would have otherwise, but things are still exactly the same for them as if those bits had passed through me undecoded.

I would also argue that any law regarding decryption of freely available RF signaling is flawed, because it's always going to be possible to do such a thing in an undetectable manner. The law gives the appearance of privacy without really providing privacy, since there's no physical way to track down those who are breaking the law.

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There is a difference. In documentation anyway. The Constitution says nothing about happiness. There is no "right" to happiness or even the pursuit thereof. You are thinking of the Declaration of Independence. A lovely document but of no legal signifigance.

It's true that DirecTV doesn't have as much money as they otherwise would; but it does not necessarily follow that anything has been stolen from them. Many other events could result in them not getting as much money - an economic slowdown, a competitor with a better product, or even a nasty rumor that their satellites are really being used to track people for the sinister purposes of Major League Baseball. Just the fact that they don't have as much money doesn't make it stealing.

In the normal understanding of a "theft of service", somebody is still out of some physical quantity that they would otherwise have charged for and that they do not just hand out to all and sundry. Theft of cable TV service, for example (and according to the TV industry at least) steals from your neighbors by degrading their picture quality (a measurable, quantifiable thing). Spam is a theft of network resources and hardware resources on a mail server that your ISP charges you to maintain. Trojans or worms are thefts of service in almost the same way, by consuming network bandwidth and host processing power which somebody paid for and somebody else is getting charged for.

But receiving unauthorized satellite broadcasts doesn't deprive anyone of something they are being charged for. Your neighbor's signal is not any more degraded, DirecTV doesn't have to spend any more money than they would have otherwise to achieve national coverage, and the producers of the TV content are already getting paid by DirecTV under terms that were mutually agreeable to both of them. From all of these people's perspective, things are just the same as if you didn't have a DirecTV at all.

This doesn't mean that I disapprove of Hughes' actions in this case - I think they are entirely within their rights to police their hardware under any means that are permissible under the contracts they have with DirecTV subscribers, assuming that they have such contracts (although I don't think they have the right to modify the customer's lawfully purchased software or hardware without the customer's permission in the absence of a contract allowing it). I just don't think Hughes should be surprised when other individuals make use of the bits that DirecTV is flinging around so profligately, considering that those bits would just "go to waste" anyway.

I have to add, though, that it's nice to see a company whose initial response was not "send in the lawyers". Duking it out hacker a hacker is the way to go on this, and so much more entertaining for the rest of us without DirecTV or the inclination to hack one.

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I love this sort of logic.

Does just possessing the knowledge to decode these ambient bits somehow make a person a thief?

Yes, I am sure that the 100,000 people with hacked H cards were all brilliant hackers, forced by the cruel fate of their genius to compulsively decode all encrypted bits vibrating through the ether around them. No, the majority of these chuckleheads are people who just want something for nothing and wouldn't know a smart card from a vacuum tube.

The real crime the DirecTV hackers have committed is not theivery, but whoring themselves out to the "I seen it in the Penny-Pincher so it gotta be legal" descrambler market. These freedom-loving hackers you so defend are just greedy slimeballs looking to make a quick buck.

Oh loneliness and cheeseburgers are a deadly combination. -Comic Book Guy

No, the majority of these chuckleheads are people who just want something for nothing and wouldn't know a smart card from a vacuum tube.

I wouldn't disagree with that - such has been the case with other famous "hack", like the i-opener, the TiVo, etc. There's always a few smart people who figure out how to do it, and a bunch of other folks who just follow the trail that was blazed.

But to really answer the issue, even if it does take hardware to decode the bits, does that really change the issue? The bits are present inside your home (or at least outside at your satellite dish) 24 hours a day, whether you want them or not. DirecTV is constantly bombarding you with them, on the theory that you'll be too lazy or stupid to decode them. Sure, you're getting something for nothing (or at least much cheaper) if you decode them, but I still haven't heard a good argument for how this constitutes stealing from DirecTV, whether you're a master hacker or just saw the plans in an electronics magazine.

A relevant example: if Digital Convergence sends you a CueCat on your next issue of Wired, is it stealing to open it up, figure out how it works, and use it for non-Digital Convergence-approved uses? As far as I can tell, the analogy is exact - a company pays to saturate the country with something, said company makes it somewhat difficult to use this thing for uses that don't make it money, but somebody with too much time on their hands hacks it anyway. The only difference is that Digital Convergence sent you plastic, wire, and silicon (with information encoded), and DirecTV sent you modulated electromagnetic waves (with information encoded). The personal use of either free gifts is entirely ethical IMHO.

The real crime the DirecTV hackers have committed is not theivery, but whoring themselves out to the "I seen it in the Penny-Pincher so it gotta be legal" descrambler market. These freedom-loving hackers you so defend are just greedy slimeballs looking to make a quick buck.

True, it's not what I would have done. But to the hacker belong the spoils , and sooner or later information on how to do this for only the cost of materials will get out, and then anybody can do it given enough time. I wouldn't characterize the current set of DirecTV hackers as particularly freedom-loving, simply because if they really believed in free speech rather than just free beer, they would publish their plans on the 'net.

But ideological differences aside, I do defend the right of the average citizen to decode any stray RF that wonders across or through their property or person (in fact, my neurons are probably soaking up DirecTV as I type) with whatever legally-obtained hardware or software they need. And if that runs up against the DMCA, well, the more civil disobedience in that regard, the better!

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Ah, that's a good one. But in that case such a transformer is a theft of electricity, because it saps energy off of the power company's lines. The mere fact that they could detect it indicates that something really was stolen from them (although I'm amazed that he could draw enough from such a system that they would notice it above normal transmission losses). If it were just EM losses into the environment, I assume that their detectors wouldn't have seen anything.

In the case of DirecTV, there is no way for them to detect any energy losses from their system, because the impact of having a receiver pointed at their satellite would be just the same as if their satellite was pointed at the metal side of somebody's house, a garbage can lid, something like that. After all, if DTV could tell where the pirate receivers really were, wouldn't they just send out the lawyers to that location? DirecTV isn't out any energy, your neighbors' DTV broadcast isn't affected, nothing is any different. So I would still contend that it isn't stealing.

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Hmmm, I think we are bothered by different facets of the spam problem, then. Most people that I've talked to are unhappy that they have to pay their ISPs more to receive junk email that they don't want. Sure, there's also a time cost in deleting it, but it seems like the money bugs most people, and is the issue on which most anti-spam laws and lawsuits have proceeded.

If bandwidth were free, spam would be just like getting junk snail mail. It sounds like this bugs you more than me; I just toss it in the recycling on my way to the couch. It takes me maybe 10 seconds a day to deal with junk email, so I don't consider it a great loss.

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What would have happenned if this hacker kept the secret for him and his small group of underground friends? DirecTV would have never found out about it, and never fixed the problem, and never been able to fight back.

Let me get this straight, you're suggesting that the continual hacks of DirecTV's technology and their widespread dissemination was done to help DirecTV in some way?

Next you will be suggesting that it's OK to go around stealing cars because, without car crime, vehicle owners would buy fewer new vehicles.

1) This wasn't hacking for hacking's sake. This was hacking for greed. People who gained unauthorised access to the signals being broadcast knew they were getting something for nothing and breaking the law. They knew the risks and they took them.

2) Satellite television companies don't get the channels and/or programming that they broadcast for free. It costs them money. They then take what they buy, create some "value-add", package it, and sell it on - just like McDonalds, the NFL or Apple Computer.

3) The "if I had to pay for the service then I wouldn't use it" argument doesn't work here for two reasons:

Firstly, the magnitude of the abuse is the crux of the problem. If someone steals a nickel from you, then it's not going to hurt you too much - you're a victim but you'll survive. But when half the country is stealing from you, those nickels soon add up. Before you know it, that $20,000 dollars that you had saved up for the car of your dreams is gone.

Secondly, almost everyone who has been cut off by Hughes' action invested a significant amount of time and money to get their product at minimal cost. You don't invest that amount of time taking something that's not yours again and again and again, unless your a hope to benefit from your efforts.

Want to see what makes the box tick? Fine, go ahead. But don't equate "just wanting to know" with "I'm just going to take what I want because I can". The difference between unlocking someone's front door and stealing all their furniture begins at the threshold, when you cross the line.

Let me get this straight, you're suggesting that the continual hacks of DirecTV's technology and their widespread dissemination was done to help DirecTV in some way? Next you will be suggesting that it's OK to go around stealing cars because, without car crime, vehicle owners would buy fewer new vehicles.

"DirecTV is simply bombarding MY air waves with this encrypted content, so I'm listening in."

Yes, perhaps but the US government has given them the right to operate in this way, just as they have given similar rights to other users who use the airwaves, such as radio broadcasters, wireless communications companies (and their users), etc. But just because something is transmitted over the airwaves, it doesn't make it public domain. Otherwise, what's to stop you stealing any wireless broadcast and/or communication, selling it on as you own, etc?

And just because you intercepting their signal, decrypting it and using it for your personal benefit doesn't physically interfere with DirecTV's relationship with their legitimate customers, don't kid yourself into thinking that no one's getting hurt.

Think about this for a minute: if you and your fellow pirates were to stop taking something that you hadn't paid for and put your hand in your pocket and paid for DirecTV's services honestly, don't you think that the company, it's shareholders and perhaps even it's customers would benefit?

If every pirate (hacker is the wrong word as someone else pointed out in another thread) did this, Hughes service would generate more income and running costs per customer would decrease (basic economics: the more you sell, the cheaper it becomes to sell it). With this greater cash flow, they could do various things. They could increase their dividends to their shareholders, invest in new technology, broaden their range of services, and/or reduce their prices (see, you are hurting the average Joe).

And that's assuming you ante-up and buy their services. You don't have to of course. You could go elsewhere (eg, cable) or forget about TV altogether (the real world is outside your window, not on MTV). Even if every pirate just stopped stealing DirecTV's services (yes, they might be "your" airwaves but I bet they are not your patented encryption and decryption algorithms), the company would benefit immensely. It would no longer have to pump it's resources into fighting the theft of it's services, and the money constantly spent on newer, more secure encryption, educating their markets, legal actions, etc could be better spent elsewhere.

Kid yourself all you like that your actions aren't hurting anyone else but, morally and legally, what your doing is plain wrong.

Do you honestly think that there are enough people out there that have the time, knowledge, or money to keep up with this? Those cards go for $400-$600 on ebay! It takes a lot of work to keeping it running. It also takes technical knowledge, which is frowned upon in our society.

I do not do any of this, but I would had I the time to invest, because it's interesting and educational. Knowing more about cryptology helps me in my profession, and in my personal exploits as a free software developer for the GNU project and the KDE project.

Again, DirecTV has EVERY right to defeat the hackers at thier own game. In fact, hats off to them. They totally rock. The logic bomb they set up was brilliant, and masterfully done. I believe hackers should be allowed to do anything they want with anything someone broadcasts to them. I also believe that the sender should be able to do anything they want with the data stream they are sending, and the hardware they own (the H cards). To disallow either side from doing what they need to, you tip the balance in thier favor.

If DirecTV and other companies stop taking such measures, seedier users will milk it for everything they are worth, and the content providers will simply stop offering service.

If, on the other hand, hackers are stopped from learning what they are learning now, we will walk right into the hands of the MPAA and RIAA. We will become a pay-per-play society. We won't be able to buy any content for unlimited use, such as CD's. They might charge us 10 cents each time we play a song. $10 each time we watch a movie.

Niether situation is good. What we need is a balance like we have now, before our world is able to accept a new market driven by service, where scarcity is no longer an economic principal, and where intellectual property is an antiquated concept.

And there will be ways to "steal" DirecTV in a couple months, I'm sure. It's just a matter of time. And then, it's a simple matter of time before DirecTV figures out how to block unsubscribed viewers.

And the whole thing is going to be a blast to watch from my console.

"Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"
--Minsc

Gross. That's the only word i have for that attitude. Since when is theft a right?

C
--
Democracy would work just fine if people weren't so goddamned stupid.

You have no right to make a profit.

Nobody can steal that which you have given them for free.

Just because you came up with some "clever" business model that involves charging people money for services, that does not entitle you to compensation from people who figure out how to provide this service for themselves.

I am deeply disturbed to see this bullshit perpetuated by someone outside the US. Previously, I had been operating on the assumption (obviously false) that "the right of a business to make money" was confined to the US.

Once again, for the slow ones: you do not have a right to make a profit, no matter how clever you may think you are, and no matter how long you've been making a profit in the past. If someone out there catches on to your scheme and bypasses it, you lose.

(With all that said, I have to applaud the hackers who work for DirecTV. Unlike certain other industries, they didn't resort to dirty tricks or underhanded legislation -- they simply used what they had, and ingeniously too. I'm not ranting against DirecTV here -- I'm ranting against all those who thought that the H-card hackers were "stealing".)

Fewer people buying and using mobile phones.
Fewer people driving with mobile phones.
Fewer people shouting into mobile phones at the restaurant.

Is this not a good thing?

Edward Burr
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown

I'm not aware of any prosecutions, but the law is on the books - the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (EPCA) makes it criminal to listen to cellular phone calls.

No. The ECPA makes it illegal to tell anyone of what you heard while listening to communications on certain frequencies, including the 46-49MHz band (I think that's it), which was used by old portable phones, and the 800somethingMHz frequencies used by cellular phones. However, the 1900MHz "PCS" band isn't included in that, nor is the band used by Nextel.

On the other hand, it _IS_ illegal to sell a scanner which will recieve the bands which the ECPA pertains to. It isn't, however, illegal to modify one for your own use.

Some states may have different laws, but that's how it is in most that I'm aware of...

-Nathan

You realise, of course, that that would be the equivalent of tapping into the cable feeding the transmitting antenna on their satellite. What's going on here is more like you arguing with your wife at the top of your lungs and then complaining because your next door neighbor can stick a microphone out his window and feed the resulting signal to a machine that translates the obscure language that you're shouting in into something that he can understand. If you don't want your neighbor to know what you're arguing about, don't let the sound waves propagate across your yard and into his.

I'm not advocating "theft of service" here, just pointing out the flaw in your analogy.

The real unitron has Slashdot ID 5733, but doesn't rate an impostor.

There is no real skill involved in what the Canadian hackers are doing. DirecTV was just toying with the hackers, inconvienencing them with looping the cards while they devised the latest scheme.

Hughes are the real hackers ... they were sending packets you couldn't figure out until the damage was done ... and they did it right before the biggest viewing time of the year. Bravo to Hughes ... they beat the "hackers" at thier own game.

You can justify your acts anyway you want, I suppose. But calling yourself "hackers" is an insult to those that truly do possess the skills. Just because I can take someone else's code and write it onto a CD doesn't make me a hacker. Just because you can take someone else's code and write it onto an H-Card doesn't make you a hacker either.

I know there's a distinction between hacking an electronic device you've purchased and sneaking into a jewelry store in the middle of the night, but COME ON.

-Poot

Crackers are not always script kiddies
Hackers are never script kiddies
Hackers are not Crackers

Hackers have my respect. The hacking involved in duping an entire community of crackers (no matter how intelligent they are) for long enough to build a program in their machines, little piece by little piece, then pull the trigger, whilst having the flair and style to leave the message "GAMEOVER" in the first 8 bytes of the code is fantastic, and the credit goes to directv.

Of course, since I pay for services and end up subsidising people who think they've a right to the same services for free because they happen to have the skills necessary to steal them probably makes me a little biased.

it certainly does. and they're paid to do it.

We need to strongly promote a word or phrase that implies that that person is not one that hacks to undermine a system, but to learn and possibly improve a product. "White hat hacker" I've heard used, but it still has some negative connetation. Of course, even if we come up with such a word, we need to inject it into the mainstream press somehow, and that can only be done by groups that are leading the hacking effect, include Linus, Red Hat, and other distros.

"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - The Brain

Does Science really support evolution?

It's in the books, and I'm trying to find the applicable law, but google is a harsh mistress today. There is a lot of rumor that states that it's a grey market, or perfectly legal, but it ISN'T.

That said, I'm not saying I wouldn't install one in order to get HBO; I'm just stating that the assumption that it's perfectly legal is misguided.

Hughes is sending the signal to [everyone]

...illegal to read billboards...

If a communication is privileged...

I don't see how it's Hughes' business what's done with it.

The second best way is to heavily encrypt it...

And furthermore, in Canada...

If they don't want me to receive the signal, don't broadcast it into my yard. PERIOD.

You wouldn't care if I set up a listening post to hear any wireless stuff going on in your house, right?

There's a big difference between snooping and listening. What the satellite companies do is send *everybody* the content. It's not like you're intercepting it; it's being beamed straight into your backyard.

Imagine if you lived between two neighbors. Every day, each neighbor would go to his fence that borders on your property and shout to the other one over your backyard. Are you at fault if you listen to these conversations? I don't think so. If they want to shout right over your head, then they should deal with the fact that you might actually hear them.

Hughes should be allowed to encrypt the signal to protect it. In this sense, what Hughes sells is a decryption service: they provide the broadcast to everyone for free, but only allow people who pay to have the keys.

If the pirates can decrypt the signal, power to them; they've managed to do the work of decrypting by themselves for free. Of course, if Hughes can create a piece of dynamic code that thwarts them, power to THEM.

that's a good analogy, but a bit simplified. With this situation, it'd be more like the following:

Imagine if you lived between two neighbors. Every day, each neighbor would go to his fence that borders on your property and shout to the other one in Russian Pig-Latin over your backyard. Are you at fault if you go out to the library, rent a buch of books and learn Russian Pig-Latin specifically to listen to these conversations?

IMHO, I think it would still be justified, since, hell, its still in my yard. Then again, I'm a jerk.

---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!

"Just like 'fair use' laws and copyright... see... what they've done is, insetad of making any and all copyign illegal, they simply said 'it's still legal'"

I'm not looking to start any trouble but I'd be careful when putting words into others' mouth. They simply made use of their technology to make it more difficult to make use of their services at no cost. Sure it's possible "they" might be thinking what you've just stated; but they obviously discovered the economic advantage of putting their technology to work without hunting down and prosecuting violators.

O'Really[?].Net

broadcast something on public airwaves

Then why do companies bid on chunks of the spectrum in government auctions when they become available? If they were all sold outright, those would be private sales.

So what? Whether what you're saying has a shred of truth or not doesn't make it legal. Which is what we're discussing.

You keep repeating this, but it's not that cut and dried. The word "reasonable" is used an awful lot in law. And even where it's not, judges have a lot of leeway if how they follow the law. This is if the law doesn't get ruled unconstitutional. So it matters a lot if a law makes sense and is consistent. You have an expectation of privacy if you've taken reasonable steps to ensure privacy. Shouting, even encrypted data, is never private. If it is with cellular phones that's only because nobody has challenged the law yet. Assuming you don't get bribery or corrupt judges (like Kaplan) insane laws like that have a reasonable chance of being overturned.

To *some* degree. There are a lot of international agreements regarding copyright and other relevant laws...

That's not US law. And copyright only prevents copies and public displays.

If I write an essay, you're allowed to read it, to mark it up, etc. You're not allowed to perform it (which only applies if it's a dramatic work or musical recording) or make copies for other people.

Hmm. Not an area of law that I have much knowledge in, but I'm fairly certain that US law allows for some degree of an implicit nature to contracts -- when you buy a book, you don't buy the right to make copies of it. You buy some physical paper and and the right to own a single copy of the book.

That's not part of the sales contract, that's copyright law.

The implicit contract of sale is about getting a product that does what was advertised, etc.

You're still in legal trouble if you're violating copyright on the code.

Yup. If you print off a hex dump of the code, that's a copyright violation. If you do it and sell it, you're liable for damages.

Errata, though, is not a copyright violation. I can reference a copyrighted book and say "Page 34, line 12, the fourth word should be 'Llama'" and that is not a copyright violation. I can also say "Change all references of 'Crocodile' to 'Alligator'" and "Replace page 37 with '...'".

I would not have copyright on the completed work, but I would on my changes (if my changes were a large enough body of work on their own to warrant copyright). In this manner, you can use something that is copyrighted by someone else, and you can modify it, as well as distributing those modifications (as a patch, not as the modified whole).

*Maybe*. IANAL, and I really think YANAL either -- that you're pulling this out of your ass. When you buy a CD with software on it, EULAs often forbid modification of the code.

Shrink-wrap licenses have no force, except where given so by another law. Currently the only law (worldwide) that I know of is the UCITA in some US states. It is widely held to be unconstitutional, unjust, incompatible with other law, and unjurisdictional.

Its very existance also proves that shrink-wrap licenses are unenforcable or the industries lobbying for it wouldn't have bothered since its prime purpose is to allow in a hidden contract those restrictions which until now always took an explicit before sale contract.

Because these licenses aren't valid, the customer owns the card regardless of what the company says. And they are allowed to use the dish and related products in any way they see fit that is still in accordance with federal law. (They can modify the smart-card code as I said earlier, but they can't distribute copies.)

Wrong. Clean room implementation gets around copyright issues. Reverse engineering is, in the US, generally illegal.

Reverse Engineering isn't illegal. Shrink-wrap licenses all forbid it, but they aren't binding.

And all a clean-room implementation does is provide you with really strong evidence that you reverse engineered and didn't copy. Really any rewrite will do. The only problem might come in proving that you wrote similar code yourself instead of copying it.

Interesting argument. Are the crackers really clean-room reimplementing the code, or looking at what's there, though?

Doesn't matter for these purposes. Rewriting the code to avoid copyright would only be necessary if the crackers were distributing all the code necessary to write onto a blank smart-card. As is, they are probably distributing binary patches (just because it's easier - I'm sure they don't care about the technicalities).

Well, perhaps those subject to them? Maybe?

Ok, I was refering to the Canadians viewing this programming. They really only need to avoid international law like copyright. The only time American law is an issue for them is if the companies bribe local law enforcement or catch these people in the states...

And do you really feel compelled to follow bad law? Except in front of authority, I mean... Laws created or enforced by bribery (UCITA, DMCA, etc) are so obviously unjust that many people I know not only intentionally break them, but they make tools for others to break them as a protest. It's somewhat like prohibition.

True. So? It's hardly as if the same behavior doesn't happen in countries around the world. Money has always talked in politics. If you don't like it, you're still subject to the laws.

So, if nobody respects a law they tend to get pissed off when that law is enforced. And having unjust, unenforcable laws on the books just reduces people's respect for the whole system of laws.

Are you advocating ignoring them?

Yes. Following unjust laws only serves the dishonest who made those laws. Civil disobedience is basically the responsibility of everyone in the face of unjust law. So I'm not just advocating ignoring the law, I'm advocating making it as hard to enforce as possible by sabotaging any efforts by the courts or police to enforce those laws. Mirror deCSS, flaunt the shrink-wrap license, etc. If the law is still too powerful to challenge directly then undermine it so later generations can challenge it.

Only through outrage and action will anything change. Fighting it may not make it go away, but it will certainly get worse if you just roll over and take it.

I claim that US law, despite any imperfections, still beats the snot out of US anarchy. And that's what you'd be for -- you'd be a criminal unless you totally overthrew the government.

It's not an all or nothing situation. Some laws I morally support and some I disagree with but agree that they help keep society (as I see that it needs to be) running. Then some laws are bought and paid for by special interest groups and help them to the detriment of all others. So I support some laws and challenge others in any way I can.

Some laws like the UCITA and DMCA don't directly affect me now, so my fighting against them is limited to mirroring deCSS (etc) and informing the people who are affected by them, of the truth.

People feel free to violate the laws of some nations. When China forbids internet usage, people import high-quality crypto (even though any crypto is forbidden) and packet radio for internet links. Why are China's unjust laws different from the USA's unjust laws in anything but scale?

[...] I really think YANAL either [...]

Correct. But I've studied the law enough to know the basics. About consumer rights (what is implicit in a purchase) and contracts (what is and what isn't a valid contract). IMHO if the law gets to the point where a non-lawyer doesn't understand what a contract is, that law is wrong. We're not to that point yet, but laws like the UCITA are definately a push in that direction.

Well, technically, it's not public airwaves. Hughes/DirecTV/et.al. own a chunk of of the US RF spectrum (in the 30GHz range as I recall.)

Um, no. No single entity "owns" any RF spectrum in the U.S. The RF spectrum is a public resource (like a national park) that is administered by the government because it's a scarce resource and because (although I don't totally buy this) if you let everybody transmit wherever they want, the spectrum will be useful to no one. The portion of the spectrum that DirecTV uses is leased to it by the FCC and gives DirecTV broadcast rights on that band. As far as I know there is no regulation of who can receive on what band, because unlike multiple transmitters, multiple receivers can't really hose the public RF spectrum for everyone else.

True, there are laws about decrypting phone calls but other than that receiving is legal. I don't believe the phone laws apply to DirecTV, unless you know for sure that they do?

As an aside, I don't agree with laws against phone decryption because whether or not there is a law, anyone who is sufficiently motivated can monitor your transmissions. The law provides only the appearance of safety; it doesn't really give you any privacy. Plus of course you sent me those signals onto my property, but that topic's been covered already :)

Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

If the signal wasn't encrypted, I would argue that watching it should be legal. As it is encrypted, I can only possibly fathom that it should be legal if one were to develop all of the technology to receive and unencrypt the signal in a clean-room enviornment. Fat chance.
-bugg

file: .signature not found

No I wouldn't care about the wireless listening on my house. If you can cut through the noise and get some signal out of it, your method could make you some bucks.

Echelon? email sniffers? Why should I care so long as good ol' ROT13's around? :P

And yes, feel free to manipulate the DirectTV signal however you want. But by reprogramming the decoder box you're violating service agreements.. now it's no longer a matter of free reception of broadcast signals, it's contract violation. I hear a pack of lawyers barking in the not-so-distance..

Cryptomancer, whom applauds the hacks and counter-hacks for advancing the art if not the philosophy

Note that the only reason it's protected is because it is encrypted AND because it is a conversation. Satellite broadcast is not the same thing.

Work is for people who lack the imagination to play.

So are you saying that you have the absolute right to listen to my cellphone (assuming I had one) conversations?

Yes. And how would you stop someone from doing that, anyway? If you're crazy enough to send private/sensitive information over a public phone line (let alone a cellular phone!), you're likely to get a rude surprise one day.

Take photographs of me through my windows? (My image is traveling onto your property....)

Oh, this one's the killer. You see, this already happens all the time. There was a famous case a few years ago (which, regrettably, I cannot find now) in which a Florida couple were arrested for having sex in their own home with the blinds closed. Apparently, someone snuck up to their window and videotaped them through a hole in the blinds. Because their home was within a certain distance of a public school, it was felt that the children at the school could have seen them. (And that somehow, seeing people having sex is wrong... but that's a different rant.)

Use shotgun mikes to record everything that goes on in my house?

I don't feel qualified to answer that one, as I don't know anything about these "shotgun mikes". Is their use permitted by law? If so, then I'd say yes.

why should descrambling (stealing) unpaid-for content be any different?

Suppose I hand you a piece of paper on which there is some writing (6 paragraphs). I tell you, "You are allowed to read the first two paragraphs, but not the third paragraph. You are also allowed to read the fourth paragraph and the last paragraph, but not the fifth paragraph."

Do you really think I have a right to tell you which paragraphs may read, and which you may not? Do you really think that, if I learned you had read one of the "forbidden" paragraphs, I could win a lawsuit against you?

If I don't want you to read something, I'd better not hand you a paper with those words on it.

If I don't want you to watch a video stream, I'd better not broadcast that video stream into your house.

THe airwaves are PUBLIC.

...and by this same reasoning, DirecTV has every right to send signals that will disable Hughes chips. If you don't want to receive these signals, you shouldn't be listening for them in the first place. It isn't DirecTV's fault if your self-hacked hardware doesn't react properly to their signal.

The airwaves are public, after all.

information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
--Brand

and by this same reasoning, DirecTV has every right to send signals that will disable Hughes chips. If you don't want to receive these signals, you shouldn't be listening for them in the first place. It isn't DirecTV's fault if your self-hacked hardware doesn't react properly to their signal.

The airwaves are public, after all.

Playing devil's advocate, why is this argument any different than, "That guy in the park who shot you, had every right to shoot you. If you didn't want to get shot, you shouldn't have been standing where you were. It was a public park, after all."

I'm not convinced by your argument that Hughes has the right to destroy your property. Either they are responsible for what happens to the stuff that goes into your yard or they aren't. They can't have it both ways.

Once Hughes broadcasts their signal into your yard, they release control over it. Which means that they can't control what you do with it, which in turn, releases them from responsibility for what you do with it. If Hughes still retains control of the stuff the send into your yard, what would happen if they sent a book on how to build bombs into your yard? If you took that and then built a bomb and used it to kill someone, would Hughes then be responsible for the deaths?

If on the other hand Hughes is saying that they retain the control over the data that they, against your will, thrust into your yard. Then don't they also have to retain responsibility for what you do with it?

It seems to me that they want the responsibilty if what you do with it is crack their code. But they don't want the responsibility if they send you some data which you could argue led directly to some criminal act.

How do they get to have it both ways?

1) A online company has a privacy policy saying that they won't share user information with other people

2) They have a network.

3) The charge a fee for other companies to be connected to this network.

4) The other companies can snoop the traffic on the line and gain customer information.

The online company hasn't violated the privacy policy. It is perfectly legal to snoop traffic on the network (receive broadcast signals).

You're damned wrong. Stating that you won't share information means that you will do your best to protect it. That's like me saying I won't give out your SSN - and then I leave it stuck on a post-it note attached to a payphone. Isn't that violation? If you agree not to share something, then you make sure that nobody gets it. If the other companies find out, then the provider is indeed responsible.

Now, as you've said - and you're right - it's perfectly legal to snoop traffic on the network. That doesn't mean it's legal for the online company to make it possible. That's neglect.

Ergo, it's perfectly legal (or at least it should be :) to recieve the DirecTV signal. Whatever they want to do to it doesn't matter - it's their signal. Whatever you want to do doesn't matter either because they've given you access to it whether or not they want to.

Make sense?

My karma's bigger than yours!
SIG: HUP

Unlike the broadcast medium, the signal belongs to DirecTV. They do have the right to control how it is used, if they can. Just like the signal going over your phone line belongs to you.

The airwaves are public, yes, but that doesn't give you the "absolute right" to do whatever you want with the signal. Roads are public but there are limits on their use. BTW, IIRC, you do not own the airspace above your property. Further, if powerlines or water mains go through your backyard, that doesn't make them yours. Just because it's _within_ your property doesn't make it yours.

"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."

If your neighborhood has Cable TV, the cable running to your neighbor probably runs through your yard. Does that give you the right to tap into the cable and receive free service? What about the underground phone lines - just because your neighbor's phone line runs through your yard, does that mean you can tap in and get free phone service? Same for water. Water's a renewable resource so why should you have to pay for it when it's running through a pipe right beneath your back yard?

By the reasoning here, you should have an absolute right to go to government (read PUBLIC) buildings and use any resources or facilities you may find there *however you want*

Or go to a public bank, and draw all the money you can put in your pockets... :)

--
If you think my post is senseless, try reading it backwards.

You shouldn't do drugs, because you might go to prison, and drugs are expensive in prison.

And I don't think they should....

However, I do think that the story is funny, even more so than the battle between the robotic arms in the tape backup closet from "Hackers."

Software designers are so infatuated with the fact that they can, that they don't stop to think if they should.

but stealing tv is wrong

I am so sick of this attitude! It is not "stealing TV". When you steal something, the person that you stole it from no longer possesses it. An example of stealing TV would be smashing a shop window, grabbing a television set under your arm, and running. This is by no means the same thing.

DirecTV are broadcasting their signal over satellite. Whether you pay for their service or not, it gets beamed into your property. If you have a dish, you will pick up the signal. If you happen to have the means of decoding this signal, you can watch their TV shows. How is this stealing? This is no more stealing that watching the Superbowl at a friend's place because he has DirecTV and you don't. Are you "stealing TV is wrong" advocates suggesting that DirecTV should send agents round to their subscribers houses to issue them with an extra pay-per-view bill for any of their friends who happen to be parked on the couch with a bag of doritos watching the game?

No, this is an outrageous abuse. If DirecTV don't have a business model which can earn them a profit as they beam their signal into EVERYONE'S airspace, then they shouldn't be in business, end of story. Or, as they would say, "game over".

If you subscribe to thier service, they know what channels you are capable of watching, and can tell the actual HBO people (for instance) that they have 18 million viewers and want to be billed as such

So if they increase thier profits by having more subscribers, you *are* stealing from them, in a very real sense.

I have to disagree here.

While I do maintain that using their signal for its intended purpose without paying for it is morally reprehensible, it is clearly not stealing. For example:

Suppose that DirectTV makes $100 million dollars a year from subscriptions. Suppose that I then start using their signal to watch TV. Guess what? They still make $100 million dollars a year. I have not decreased their revenue by a single penny. Furthermore, I have not increased their broadcast, marketing, or any other expenses.

Since their situation is unchanged, then I have not stolen from them.

But my situation is changed. I now have a service that I did not have before. Where did I get it? The answer is that I literally pulled it out of the air!

Actually, their situation is slightly changed. By using their service without paying for it I have removed myself from the pool of potential paying customers, and thus their potential income is lowered.

However, I strongly disagree with your final statement. There was nothing in their signal that forced me to pay attention to it or to obey it. If someone had rigged their system to obey the signals and didn't work with DirecTV to ensure they would not be harmed by doing so, it is their own problem. The signal DirectTV sent out would not harm anyone who worked with DirecTV (i.e. a payine customer); it only harmed those who continued to obey the signal even though they knew DirectTV was sending updates that they couldn't figure out.

Edward Burr
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown

Is there a way to direct the signal only to the homes that have valid DirecTV smart cards?

If you don't want to pay for it, then why should you have it?

Both the hackers and DirecTV seem to be on sound ethical footing in this particular case. I salute the ingenuity of both sides.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
U.S. Gov't-in-Exile: http://www.USGovernment-in-Exile.org

When you lessen the value of something you are likewise stealing.

When Ford Motor Company started to mass-produce cars, they lessened the value of horse-drawn carriages and accessories. This was not stealing.

We are a consumer based society, and while I will scream about corporate abuse as much as anyone, in this instance we have to protect the rights of the company [...]

This is one of the most depressing things I've read so far this millennium.

A company has no right to make a profit. They especially don't have the right to make a profit by requiring people to pay them money for things that they're giving away to those people.

I know it's fairly common for people to make money this way. In NYC, at least according to some TV shows I've seen, people on the street will wash your car's windshield while you're stopped at a red light, then expect you to tip them. Human nature is such that we will feel some obligation to give these people money (for various reasons which I won't go into here). But there is no legal obligation to pay for this service, because you did not ask for it ("enter into a contract").

Now, to the best of my knowledge, DirecTV hasn't done anything wrong. But neither did the H-card hackers. Nobody was stealing here, and nobody has broken any laws that I know of (apart from the DMCA, but that's not Constitutional... it's an abomination).

The phone line question may be different because long distance is a service that is provided by a company on the other end of the line.

But as far as cell phones go, yes you can. And (in the US anyway) it's perfectly legal. You can go to an electronics store, buy a radio scanner, and listen in on cell phone conversations and your neighbors' cordless phones. IIRC, the only legal restriction is that you can't record someone else's conversation, or use what you hear for extortion...

The old school scanners don't work with newer digital phones, but I'm pretty sure decoders are readily available.

Stealing and Invading Privacy are two different things.

You should also note that until just a few years ago, it was indeed perfectly legal to listen to any radio transmission you could receive, as long as you didn't divulge the contents. That meant that, yes, you COULD listen to cellphone calls. You just couldn't tell anybody else about the contents. Then, one of the first content-protection laws, ECMA, was passed making it illegal to listen to cell phones. This was a law passed purely for the convenience of the cell-phone companies, so they could say "Yes, we're secure - it's against the law to listen in." It was and is still technically feasible, however. Even old televisions that went above channel 70 could hear cellphone calls. (Note: this law is rapidly becoming moot, since most cell companies are switching to digital as fast as then can go. You could still scan the digital cellphone bands, but it's much harder to listen in. )

I have phone lines that cross my propery, does that mean I can hook into them and get free long distance?

No, because now you're not passively intercepting the radio waves. You're taking active steps to steal service.

You're letting your indignation take over your higher thought processes, plus you have forgotten recent history. Calm down.

As far as I know, according to the law you can still listen to cordless phones, which is nearly as entertaining. And, for a really good time, try scanning baby monitors.


...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."

It is not "stealing TV". When you steal something, the person that you stole it from no longer possesses it.

Consider the infrastructure. Those satellites are expensive. If you are grabbing the service for free, who's paying for the infrastructure and operating costs? Hughes is not the bad guy here. They don't circumvent fair use rights in any way, they provide better service, pricing, and quality than local cable providers and their pay per view is cheaper than (and higher quality than VHS) video rental. Their business practices are not monopolistic (in fact, they have several competitors)

The manual that came with my reciever even listed details of channel allocation, packet format, etc.

This is no more stealing that watching the Superbowl at a friend's place because he has DirecTV and you don't.

That's not stealing because they contracted with your friend to provide the service in exchange for a fee (which was presumably paid). They got theirs and your friend got his. If they decided to bill by the eyeball as you suggest, I would switch to another service immediatly. If they took steps to make sure there wasn't another provider, then I would agree with you.

Punishing the bad guy like the MPAA and RIAA who circumvent fair use rights and play dirty games to kill off competition won't work if they know they'll be punished even if they play the good guy.

If DirecTV don't have a business model which can earn them a profit as they beam their signal into EVERYONE'S airspace, then they shouldn't be in business, end of story. Or, as they would say, "game over".

O.K. they and the regular cable operators should shut down immediatly. You can go back to a glorious 3 channels of $hit mixed with snow to choose from.

It is not "stealing TV". When you steal something, the person that you stole it from no longer possesses it.

Consider the infrastructure. Those satellites are expensive. If you are grabbing the service for free, who's paying for the infrastructure and operating costs? Hughes is not the bad guy here. They don't circumvent fair use rights in any way, they provide better service, pricing, and quality than local cable providers and their pay per view is cheaper than (and higher quality than VHS) video rental. Their business practices are not monopolistic (in fact, they have several competitors)

Now wait a minute, I agree it is immoral. But you have to keep in mind the legal aspect attempting to push a piracy charge.

The reason you have never seen an individual (someone not reselling their copied/"stolen" material) is because of the need to prove a loss. This is a major issue surrounding MP3's and the like. Just because a person has copied/decoded/viewed commercial data, it does NOT mean they would have ever paid for it. You can NOT prove a loss of profit, because you can't prove that the person would have ever paid for it at all.

Until mind-reader machines become (a) a reality and (b) legal testimony, this won't happen =).

Ad addendum: Such bastardized pieces of legislation as the DMCA appearently could allow prosecution for this. I think the DMCA though, if it ever reaches high courts, will probably crumble.

The reason you have never seen an individual (someone not reselling their copied/"stolen" material) is because of the need to prove a loss. This is a major issue surrounding MP3's and the like. Just because a person has copied/decoded/viewed commercial data, it does NOT mean they would have ever paid for it. You can NOT prove a loss of profit, because you can't prove that the person would have ever paid for it at all.

That is true for content protection. However, DTV is a service and so the laws are a bit different.

That is true for content protection. However, DTV is a service and so the laws are a bit different.

They are running a commercial enterprise, it's the responsibility of them to come up with a business model which at least covers their costs... It's certainly not the responsibility of any other party to support anyone's business model.

They do that by charging for the service (which wouldn't exist at all if they couldn't charge for it). They also accomplish it by things like the subject of this story. It's not like they're trying to get a TV or VCR tax like some cartels we know. Or like they're trying to sue competing technology into the dirt. They also don't try to squeeze out more than their due by circumventing fair use rights. If they were, I would agree that they failed in their responsability to have a profitable business model.

Imagine you had a really good idea at work for improving some process. You tell your coworker about it. He goes and tells the boss. Boss likes the idea and gives the coworker a promotion. You still have your idea. You can still use it. But I bet you'd be pretty ticked off.

True, but then, isn't DirecTV also entitled to broadcast whatever they want? If you just happen to be foolish/1337 enough to be running a hacked card, well, thanks for coming out, better luck next time.

I don't know how it applies to a satilite broadcast, but isn't there an FCC rule along the lines of:

This device complies with part 15 of the FCC rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) This device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) This device must accept any intereference received, including intereference that may cause undesired operation.

Certainly their transmission counts as harmful.

DirecTV didn't physically destroy the cards, so I don't think the hackers have any grievance in that respect...

I believe the article clearly states that the cards themselves were likely permanently destroyed

It sounds like a pretty cool escalating technology war though. Reminds me of the thumb in the Hitchhikers Guide.

see this

They won't try and engage hackers in a technical bottom-kicking competition any more than most hackers was to battle them in a lawsuit bottom-kicking competition. Home advantage plays so much, and neither can see the point of competing with the other in something they'll lose when they're confident they can win in others.

Do you think that people who put razor bars around their stereo equipment can be sued by the theif who loses a finger?

Actually, in most countries in Europe, yes. There have been many cases of thieves sueing because they cut their hands on razor wire on a wall they were trying to climb over. Theives regularly take action if beaten up in someone elses home. It's all down to "necessary force" - you cartainly can't kill a thief (someone did recently, and went to prison) but you can incapacitate him; whatever that means.

What do you think is cheaper: letting people take $30 or $40 per month out of Hughes' pocket by not paying for the service, or replacing a single smart card.

Yes, but you're making a few ASSumptions here...

You also assume that stealing the signal is "of cost" to Hughes. If your cable carrier inadvertantly gives you HBO, even though you didn't order it, but you watch it anyway, you're stealing. I agree with that. However, since you'd never pay for HBO anyway, even though you watch it frequently, you aren't "costing" them anything.

What WOULD be costly is if they contacted you, a good subscriber, and said that you've failed to inform them of your free cable channels, and that they expect back payment for the 12 months you've been watching it. It would be costly to you, and likely costly to them because you would leave their service.

I really don't see a net gain for Hughes here. They've potentially lost customers by accidentally frying their cards, meanwhile, people who are "stealing" their service are going to have to wait a week before they can steal the service again.

I believe that a certain amount of theft of this type of service is of NO cost, because those parties would never subscribe in the first place.

I really don't see a net gain for Hughes here. They've potentially lost customers by accidentally frying their cards, meanwhile, people who are "stealing" their service are going to have to wait a week before they can steal the service again.

I don't know that they're really going to lose too many legitimate customers.

Say you're an average user who didn't tamper with your hardware, and for some reason your dish stops working. You call up DirecTV customer service and complain that your TV isn't receiving anymore.

They send someone out to look at the problem. The repairman notices there's no apparent tampering with the equipment, and surmises that you're one of those rare people who got accidentally fried along with all the crackers. He replaces the card, charges you $40 for a new card, $75 for the labor, and then blames it all on "hackers messing around with the satellite system."

Which is half-true, but conveniently leaves out the fact that the hackers didn't actually cause the damage, that they weren't doing anything malicious to anyone's equipment but that which was in their own homes, and that the damage was caused by DirecTV's countermeasures. He'll probably even be persuaded to spend another $20/month on "hacker insurance" so that he doesn't have to pay another high repair bill if his equipment gets fried again, even though the odds are good that it'll never happen again.

Now the good paying customer has learned that hackers are bad and not to trust them, and if anyone ever tries to sell him on piracy he won't trust them. It's a pretty good strategy, because most customers will trust the information they're given by the "authority figure" of the repair technician.

I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
Heat up my email address to foil spam.

The real unitron has Slashdot ID 5733, but doesn't rate an impostor.

Sorry, but you're wrong. Do you think a bank robber can sue a bank who puts a dye pack in his bag of money to render the money useless? Do you think that people who put razor bars around their stereo equipment can be sued by the theif who loses a finger?

You used a very poor example. The H-card crackers aren't stealing anything as far as I'm concerned. They are listening to something that is braodcast to them. They aren't breaking into a bank or running over an ATM for its cash. You sending me data. If you don't want me to do anything with that data, don't send it to me!

--
If knowledge is power, and power is sexy, then why am I still single??

Whether the usage was correct, I don't know.

The cost for a new smart card comes out of the customer's pocket, not DirecTV's. DirecTV charges $40-50 for a new smart card, which probably costs $1-2 to make. The number on the card is used once, never repeated on a different card, and is non-transferrable, just like a credit card number. If you sell (or even give) a receiver to someone else and want to subscribe, you have to order a new card. If last Sunday's "magic bullet" suddenly gave a lot of bootleggers a conscience and they all started ordering legit cards, DirecTV is going to make a killing. I can hear it now. Joe Blow: "I just bought my receiver at a flea market and want to activate it." DirecTV representative: "Yeah. Right. Suuure. Send us 50 bucks and we'll send you a new card. Then call us back to get it activated."

not much grounds/damages to sue over.

they probably sent the code bit by bit to throw the hacking comunity off and to annoy their patrons, sure they probably could have sent one update, but seeing as they managed to come up with such a clever scheme, dont you think they thought of that?

lastly, if your subscribing to DirecTV, you wouldnt have to worry about losing your signal, for a number of reasons. First being that your supposed to have your box hooked to a phone line, second you will have an account with DirecTV (eliminating the "but my card was legit!" arguments) and third, every customer hase a unique code, allowing DirecTV to discriminate who they kick off they're system.

Atticka
no time for a sig, sorry

Riiiiiiight....

For starters, H cards are damn near indestructible. I've seen one go through a washing machine and still function.

How can a virus wipe out my flash BIOS? After all, it survived a trip through the washing machine! They blew a few fusable links using a charge pump on the chip.

Secondly, even there would be no need to add the offending code bit by bit, you could just send 1 update.

And the pirates would just block it. First, DTV had to get the pirates to accept the updates rather than block them.

Thirdly the destruction of the cards would force Hughes to replace them. Not a cheap move. They'd be opening themselves to a lawsuit from everyone who was willing to say "I hadn't modified my card, honest" otherwise.

And if DTV could prove otherwise (such as the defendant's lack of a DTV account and no history of payments to DTV), the court records will prove that the plaintiff committed a felony. Sort of like the things you see in the dumb crooks shows.

"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
--Publius Terentius Afer

I really don't see anything wrong with DirecTV trying to stop people from accessing channels which normally cost extra for free.

What I really resent, though, is that it is just fine for them (MPAA+RIAA, too) to have baseless lawsuits as a part of their business model. What can be illegal about posting factual information on the web? Yahoo has already buckled under to the French. Let's show a little more support for the first amendment.

Save the ales!

If you subscribe to their service and then hack their system to receive channels that are not on your contract, then that is a theft of services. Even though is does not cost them a dime for you to decode that information, it costs them an awful lot that you're not paying to subscribe to those channels.

I don't see how that's any more theft of service than before - they have already paid for those channels and flung their encoded representation across the aether (I'm getting more poetic as I post more replies to this story, don't ya know). If broadcasting those extra channels wasn't worth it to DTV, then you wouldn't be able to decode them because they wouldn't send them to you. My argument would be that if decoding any channels is OK, then how can paying for some channels and decoding the rest be less OK? At least that way DTV gets some money (not that the goal here is for them to get money (well, that's their goal), but it doesn't hurt).

You may think you can walk the line, but the courts will disagree.

I don't see how you could make a reasonable argument in court that decoding some channels is bad, but decoding all channels is OK. According to other posts, decoding all of them in Canada is OK, so there are apparently some courts which disagree.

Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

Good point, you're probably not within the law on the whole DTV issue if you signed anything. And considering the difficulty of hacking their signal completely from scratch, my claim to the bits that they're sending me will likely remain a hypothetical one.

Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

If you get caught with a radar detector in my state, and it has batteries in it or is plugged in, even if it is not on, you are guilty of a crime. I don't remember the severity off-hand, but it IS a crime.

Just a note:

In my state (NM), last I checked, radar/LIDAR detectors/jammers (yes, jammers), are legal. So, YSMV (your state may vary) :)

THIS is how you defeat crackers - you don't go after them with lawyers, you defeat them at their own game.

Of course, how long again do we have until they repeat the process all over again? :)

If you're interested in actually hacking these boxes as opposed to blatant theft of service (not much of a distinction, but, hey, we all gotta rationalize), then you probably don't have much to worry about. I suspect that the 2% that weren't affected were using emulators of the smartcard, quite likely running their own software that they themselves wrote to hack the dish.

*grin* There's gotta be one helluva pissed pile of pirates out there though. The GAME OVER thing is just classic, too, eh! heh heh.
...don't panic

If you're interested in actually hacking these boxes as opposed to blatant theft of service (not much of a distinction, but, hey, we all gotta rationalize), ...

In this situation, I say more power to DirecTV! Hacking is one thing, but stealing is quite another, and DirecTV has beaten, at least temporarily, the crackers at their own game. This is hysterical.

People who perform blatant theft of service in the name of "freedom" obviously do not understand, nor can they handle, true freedom! Freedom without responsibility cannot exist.

The real "hack" is emulation where the smart card is emulated with a PC, and the actual card is protected from writes and other malicious mischief.

There is a deliberate disinformation campaign being waged along with the electronic counter-measures.

Give free help to pregnant women

Forcing me to uninstall and reinstall the game IS harm. It's a big waste of my time.

Would it be justifiable for this update to take my software out as well?

Yes.

For one, you keep paying money to companies that produce software with CD-checks built in. Put your money where your mouth is and refuse to buy them if it's such a hassle.

Two, since you have the original CDs, you can just reinstall.

Three, if you are using keygenned s3r|a1z, YOU are possibly hurting legitimate customers, who will be unjustly denied service on online services since their key has already been "claimed".

Oh loneliness and cheeseburgers are a deadly combination. -Comic Book Guy

Actually, DirecTV is a service provided all the time to everybody. The only question is whether you feel like paying Hughes to make use of the service, or prefer to put in the time, money, and effort to make use of the service without Hughes' help.

Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

BTW, my card was one that got hit but I'm not trying to defend my actions as right. I was stealing. Congrats to DTV for beating me at my own game.

--

Moof.

Remove AOL from my address - they suck.

If they were truly selling a service I would be better off having it then not having it.

Sure they're selling a service. Apparently there are many people who think that they are better off because they receive this service, that's why so many people are willing to pay for the service. If it didn't make them better off they wouldn't pay for it. The service that cable/sat. TV providers give is access to their really good antennas.

Way back in the beginning that's exactly what the cable TV services provided. The simple fact was that not everyone in town lived on top of a tall hill and had the resources to put up a really tall antenna. So, someone decided to buy some land on top of a high hill and put up a big antenna they then offered the service of being connected to this antenna for a price. Seems like service to me, you pay someone to get something that you wouldn't ordinarily be able to get.

Obviously, things have evolved a bit since then and you can now get much more on pay TV than you'd ever be able to get off of even the best antennas but it doesn't change the fact that you are paying for the service of being able to receive television broadcasts that you would not be able to with rabbit ears on top of your TV. DirectTV works in a little different way now, they aren't offering the service of improving reception (you can receive the signal fine without their help) but rather they are offering the service of providing software to interpret the signal that you receive and possibly the rental service of the reception equipment (not quite sure how their contract is written). If you don't think that this service is worth the price being offered you don't have to buy it. That's your free choice.
_____________
Just Because I Can!

My wife and I are pretty happy with the service (other than rain fade margins-- they don't exist!) and think that we made the right choice over going with TWC. One of her teacher colleagues has TWC digital cable, and the picture is awful compared to DirecTV. (Except in those summer monsoons when DirecTV doesn't work at all!)

I have never been comfortable with people getting these kinds of services without paying for them. That monthly bill not only pays for the programming, but also on infrastructure and maintenance. Hughes played a HUGE gamble by launching its DirecTV bird. Unlike cable, satellite systems must have their entire infrastructure in place before they can sign their first subscriber. Cable systems can roll out a piece at a time, and early adoptors help pay to expand into new areas.

The only thing I'd like Hughes to add is a non-Windows bidirectional link for DirecPC and a dual-subscriber discount like TWC has with RoadRunner.

Jeff

This space for rent!

That other $5 is for recouping the costs of dealing with pirates. In The Hacker Crackdown Bruce Sterling mentions the costs of credit card fraud in higher credit card fees. Certainly the people who figure out how to crack the DirecTV system are hackers. The rest of the people using those hacks, probably the 98% who lost their cards, are just script kiddies. I respect the hackers, have only disdain for the kiddies.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

There may be some ground to say that DirectTV overstepped its bounds to destroy cards that were at one time rightfully sold. I would suspect that their legal department has some sort of "appropriate use" clause. Besides, any one with a functional frontal lobe knows that people were stealing. Those who had their cards fried should think fondly on their time of beating the system, but above all they should respect that DirectTV outsmarted them.

Of course... this assumes that someone isn't right now figuring out a way to reverse the process or come up with a new way of hacking the system. Any way you cut it, this is one of the most interesting and impressive reactions in years. Maybe the cuecat people could take a hint and decide to get smarter instead of making legal threats.

-- Solaris Central - http://www.SolarisCentral.org

There may be some ground to say that DirectTV overstepped its bounds to destroy cards that were at one time rightfully sold.

I imagine that DirecTV's response to a claim would be "Fine, you pay for the service you stole from us, and we'll replace your card". Somehow, I don't think there will be many claimants.

This cat and mouse game will continue just as in Tom & Jerry and the Roadrunner, with a worse chance of wining. In the cartoons its a one to one fight but here we have a score or such against hundreds.

Spice up my life.

First of all, let's point out here that what this little story refers to as "hackers" are actually "pirates".

Secondly, what the Hughes technicians did was far more worthy of the term "hack". It stands out simply because it was the "big nasty corporation" who turned the technical tables on the crackers, and defeated them.

The whole thing smacks of genius - the subtlety, (in sending out the updates in a fragmented manner), the timing (ambushing the pirates a week before one of the biggest US TV events), the technical brilliance - all these are trait too often missing in so-called "hackers".

Respect to the Hughes guys.

D.

That is so cool what the Hughes techies did!

If I was involved in doing that, I would be so proud

Kudos to those people... (I don't believe in free lunches)
-- The universe began. After a few billion years, life started on a billion worlds... -- Except on one where stupidity was there first.

Even a superficial analysis of the issues surrronding intellectual property makes it clear that those issues are far from simple, and that the current attitudes towards IP in the legal and commercial sphere are often hard to justify. In many cases, especially related to patent law, those who benefit from intellectual property law do so at the expense of the public domain, and could just as easily be labeled pirates.

In this specific case, I agree that what Hughes did was perfectly acceptable and well within their moral, ethical, and legal rights. However, so were the actions of the original hackers of the system. Things get a bit more questionable when it comes to people simply buying a hacked chip to avoid service fees, but even there, "piracy" is not the appropriate term.

I <blockquote> in order to maintain a de-militarized zone between my comments and the rest of Slashdot. I'm terrified by the prospect of getting infected by the Stupidity virus (also known as the Troll Syndrome) that seems so prevalent amongst Slashdot posters.

D.

It doesn't matter if there's a computer involved or not, it's still stealing.

Why post a story that sounds like Evil Corporation is battling innocent hackers, when in reality it's a company fighting THEFT of service. If this were on the cable side of things, it'd be illegal. Amazing how people can forget the ethics of things.

Ahh but look at the comments: almost everyone is congradulating DirecTV -- they pulled off a riteous hack and deserve praise here. I'm sorry to say that if I were one of the DTV hackers I would have fallen for this lock stock and barrel too. I'm up in Canada and actually subscribe to Bell ExpressVu (similar, almost identical tech, different satellite and programming) but I know a fair number of people around here who will be bit by this.

Kudos to DTV engineers. Get rid of a few lawyers and give these guys a big raise!

But instead, they chose to play the game on the hacker's terms, and they won.

And in the process, they showed themselves to be a giant with finesse.
--
mandatory char string to be ignored, so my last sentance isn't glossed over

i) "interesting intellectual game" sounds to me like a good enough reason to do it;

ii) "theft of service", or as would rather put it, theft of information (since it does not subtract anything from the guy you're "stealing" it from -- unless, of course you take the position that you'd otherwise have to have bought the service and thus are stealing something from Hughes in the hypothetical realm) --- anyways, whether this theft of service is a crime is a moot point at best, and I don't think that describing it as such is enough reason for not engaging in an interesting intellectual game.

iii) Why does everyone here seem to feel that they have to take sides in this "war"? I can understand why Hughes are doing what they are doing, on the one hand -- and commend them on how they did it; on the other hand, I understand just as well why some people find it an intriguing challenge to hack those cards, and wish them to remain undaunted in the face of this recent turn of events.

After all, isn't better to just watch this fascinating real-life game than to stoop to making judgments?

It was apparent that DirecTV had lost this battle, relegating DirecTV to hunting down websites that discussed their product and using their legal team to sue and intimidate them into submission.

Yeah, they did use a bunch of lawyers to try to achieve their goal of eliminating 'non-paying' customers. But if you ran the company, wouldn't you do everything in your power to stop people from "keeping" money that should belong to you for your service(no matter how much it cost).

No matter whose side you take, directTV or the hackers, One must admit that they did good and damm good to beat the hackers at their own game.

As for Game Over not yet. Let's just call this round as a point for DirectTV.

If only they had been careful in the first place, they would never have needed to do this.

At the end of the day, it boils down to that legitimate DirecTV customers have to pay for the pirates TV, directly through the revenue lost for non-payment for services, and indirectly through the costs of hiring the people to fix it.

The intelligent members of the community did catch this new code in the stream very early on and had been warning the community for months that the only safe way to survive an ECM was to go to emulation.

Kudos to DirecTV...heh if I had a house (or apt with a balcony) and lived in the US, maybe I'd get a dish hehe.

I wonder why the media never gives hackers an even break? All we want is something for nothing.

www.stealthisURL.com

Its time to move on guys-the term "hacker" has taken a derogatory turn, even if it is the media's fault.

I'm sure many years ago there where guys screaming about how they didn't want the term "gay" to lose its "happy" meaning. Too bad, it has Language evolves, just find something better to call yourselves, hack a new term and be ubergeeks, or emailreaders or something...

---There are Karma Whores? Please tell me where I can sell my karma!? Good riddance!---

"Whaaaaah!! all of the evil-hacker-pirates(tm) are putting us out of business. Boo hoo hoo...."

That is just absurd! First thing - movies and music sales are at an all-time high! Nobody is putting these robber-barons out of business anytime soon. Secondly - by convincing the courts to support them, they are stealing your rights!

So, Mr. Anonymous Coward, since you own those DVD's of yours why don't you give us a little demonstration of your "fair-use" rights?

1. Open up that DVD that you own on your Linux system
2. Fast forward past the commercials in the beginning
3. Record a few small (less than 10 second) clips that we could post on a web site that reviews and comments about different movie genres.

What's the matter? Can't do it? But, you *OWN* those DVDs... and it is within fair-use rights and your Freedom of Speech to sample small clips to use for non-commercial purposes.

So! guess who's screwing who? I'll give you a hint - it's not the evil-hacker-pirates(tm).

unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;umount;sleep

this ofcourse kills the card because in the ROM there is a beginning look that looks to the address of the PROM and if it's not equal to 33 then then goes into an infinate loop. I'm sure someone will come of with a way to cloak the Ram section over the PROM so the card will be read as valid.. it will just take some time.

Also for those who think that any sort of satellite hacking is done by kids in basements while mommy and daddy are asleep, well, that's just ridiculous.. this isn't some ddos hack, little bit of code and your linux pc and you are elite haxor. No, to do this you need both money and some brainpower.. there are only a few key people that understand this and supply the community with the software tools and scripts to crack the signal...oh..and you need to drop cash on either a ISO7816 programmer or unlooper just to get started.. after that you can get your hands on a whole array of equipment to work with the data stream.. and it's not cheap.

hacking satellite was a fun game.. looks like i'm going to have to get a new hobby..

-b

ps... no i don't really know how any of the stuff works. i'm the equiv of a script kiddie in the satellite world.

It's a case of the cure being worse than the disease--akin to shooting a petty thief in the back as he's running away, unarmed. I don't think it's ethical to steal cable/satellite, but should Microsoft be able to self-destruct your PC if they discover you stole a copy of Windows? How about the MPAA inserting malicious code in all DVD players that allows them to melt down your DVD and/or the player if they detect you trying to play an illegally copied DVD or just because you tried to by-pass the region encoding?

This sets a dangerous precedence and I hope DirecTV gets their ass sued class-action style.

Shon
www.linuxsucks.org

Couldn't you argue that DirecTV hacked their own subscribers and destroyed their property? Some of these cards were bought and sold on E-Bay, so it's clearly *owned* by the subscriber.

Not too bright today, are ya...

Those cards are property of DirecTV and Huges. Whoever sold them had no right to sell them and whoever bought them bought stolen goods. Last I checked you can't (or at least it hasn't been tested that you can) buy stolen goods and then sue when the rightful owner "reclaims" them, so to speak.

Remember, Huges OWNS those cards. You own the receiver. The receiver's fine; just call Huges and get their defective card replaced.

but should Microsoft be able to self-destruct your PC if they discover you stole a copy of Windows?

Microsoft doesn't own your computer. They could destroy the CD you installed from since that is (supposedly) theirs but the situations are completely different. If Microsoft LEASED the computer to you then they could nuke the hardware at their discretion... If they hosed your data then that's another story.

but should Microsoft be able to self-destruct your PC if they discover you stole a copy of Windows?

Microsoft doesn't own your computer. They could destroy the CD you installed from since that is (supposedly) theirs but the situations are completely different.

The answer to this is still pending. UCITA was an attempt to provude companies like Microsoft with the legal right to remotely disable their software on other people's computers, in the event of lapsed contracts, unregistered copies and the like. At least one state has passed a UCITA-inspired law, but it prohibits the "self-help" (ECM) in the case of "mass-market" software. (You can only use the ECM option if you entered into a contract with the other party.)

So, to the best of my knowledge, Microsoft can't legally destroy your installed copy of Windows ME.

Yet.