Three Arrested For Conspiring To Violate the DMCA

jtcm writes "Three men have been charged with conspiring to violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act after federal investigators found that they allegedly offered a cracker more than $250,000 to assist with breaking Dish Network's satellite TV encryption scheme: '[Jung] Kwak had two co-conspirators secure the services of a cracker and allegedly reimbursed the unidentified person about $8,500 to buy a specialized and expensive microscope used for reverse engineering smart cards. He also allegedly offered the cracker more than $250,000 if he successfully secured a Nagra card's EPROM (eraseable programmable read-only memory), the guts of the chip that is needed to reverse-engineer Dish Network's encryption.' Kwak owns a company known as Viewtech, which imports and sells Viewsat satellite receiver boxes. Dish Network's latest encryption scheme, dubbed Nagra 3, has not yet been cracked by satellite TV pirates."

cracker?

[martas]

what a racist article...

CONSPIRACY to violate a law?

[DarrenBaker]

I mean, really... That's like awarding a Nobel Prize for *Attempted* Chemistry!

Re:CONSPIRACY to violate a law?

[martas]

nope, it's like awarding a nobel prize for intending to attempt chemistry.

Oblig,

[cvd6262]

<Sideshow_Bob>Conspiring to violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act... Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for conspiracy chemistry?</Sideshow_Bob>

It was the Villiage People

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fun to violate the DMCA
It's fun to violate the DMCA

What FBI Warning?

[acklenx]

I don't remember in my lifetime watching a video tape that didn't include the FBI copyright warning about this

Clearly you got your video tapes out of the trunk of a car on a different corner than my parents did.

Re:CONSPIRACY to violate a law?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the copyrighted version better.

Re:I agree with the feds on this one

[Snarf You]

So when does a thought experiment/research into something that would be illegal to do become a crime?

When it involves children.

Implications for the numerical system

[Tetsujin]

The implications of this arrest on the numerical system as it applies to mathematics, physics, and other scientific and engineering disciplines cannot be overstated - especially in light of the recent arrest of seven, for the murder and subsequent cannibalization of nine...

For instance, even prior to this arrest, the speed of light (as measured in meters per second) couldn't be represented comfortably in decimal, but it could be rounded up with relatively little precision loss... That is now not possible... The gravitational constant was already problematic due to the arrest of seven - now with the arrest of three, the use of cubic meters is no longer viable, so the gravitational constant is at best represented as 6.66 (rounding down, here) * 10^-8 L / (kg * s^2).

Prior to the arrest of three, pi could still be represented to six digits (in decimal) - but now decimal representations of pi, pi/2, and pi/4 are all compromised... The natural exponent (e), of course, has suffered greatly from the loss of seven - and other numbers such as the Elementary Electric Charge (in Coulombs) and Avogadro's Constant have had to be changed to unconventional representations in scientific notation...

All of this has really made mathematics of any sort a real problem. The scientific community is trying to address this by advocating the use of different numerical bases and a new system of units: but adoption has been slow and difficult. So far, a clear solution has not yet emerged.

Re:I agree with the feds on this one

[katamerry_damatree]

It also depends on the scope of the benefit and harm, respectively. If I decrypt the Pornographic Bodybuilding Channel that's already streaming into my living room, it's tough tits for both me and the satellite company. But if I publish the key on the internet, then tough tits for everyone!

Re:Not wrong, but sloppy with "copyright" word

[ari_j]

The point is that criminal enforcement of a copyright law is not a new thing. The DMCA is, by the way, so unrelated to copyright law that only 25% of its letters stand for the word "copyright."

Re:Three arrested for conspiring to steal cable

[elmarkitse]

A poor, white, rural American FINALLY gets a job in this terrible economy, and we lock him up. A word of warning to all your crackers out there, give up hope now.

Re:Three arrested for conspiring to steal cable

[mwvdlee]

If you want to steal satellite, you'll have to build a spaceship first.