Three Arrested For Conspiring To Violate the DMCA 335
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."
Proprietary algorithms (Score:2, Insightful)
Is there a reason that Dish Network can't use an open algorithm and some open, established encryption 'scheme'? Wouldn't that actually be more secure? And cheaper to develop?
Re:Proprietary algorithms (Score:5, Insightful)
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A satellite broadcaster has, for the most part, a one-way stream. If the encryption was completely open, all you would need to do to pirate the signal is to share a valid key with as many people as you'd like.
Paying customers need to be able to decrypt the stream, but they are not trustworthy credential holders.
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Open encryption does not equal shared key.
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Shared key doesn't have anything to do with this. It doesn't matter if the encryption is symmetric, or asymmetric. I have no idea which they use.
The fact of the matter is that a key which needs to remain secret for the security of the data needs to be provided to the customer in order to decrypt the data. However the customer cannot be trusted to maintain the secrecy of the key. Since the key isn't secret, how the key works is obfuscated.
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I'm sure the key storage chip can be made just as difficult to reverse-engineer as a custom encryption chip.
The chip they're trying to reverse engineer *IS* the key storage chip.
Re:Proprietary algorithms (Score:4, Insightful)
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I get it, so it's about how they secure the key, not really about the algorithm used.
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How on earth was this a Troll?
Wait (Score:3, Interesting)
Why aren't downloaders put in jail then?
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What FBI Warning? (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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Re:Not wrong, but sloppy with "copyright" word (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wait (Score:4, Insightful)
I know this has been used to put serious criminals away, and is probably a great tool in preventing crime, but prosecuting for conspiracy is still a nasty idea. I think that if I had to describe the boundary between acceptable government behavior and police state, it would be right after this.
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Well, I disagree. I believe to prosecute for conspiracy the members of said conspiracy much actually put at least some part of their plan into motion. So you can plot all you want, so long as you never actually perform "step 1."
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Did not cross Menominee River with a drink can (Score:2)
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Becasue downloading isn't a crime, distribution is, and for good reason.
If the company that you got your DVD player from turned out to have broken some contract law, do you want them coming after you?
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Probably satellite based, from Dish Network no less, thus keeping this thread on topic!
Alrighty then (Score:2, Interesting)
So am I supposed to be outraged just because the DMCA was involved?
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cracker? (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't worry, you obviously only made that mistake because you are not a wise latina.
CONSPIRACY to violate a law? (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, really... That's like awarding a Nobel Prize for *Attempted* Chemistry!
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Touché.
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Uh... that is... Touché.
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It just proves that the government is the ultimate conspiracy theorist.
Just for fun: Find how many instances of 'cocaine' and 'conspiracy' show up in Bill Clinton's pardon list. [usdoj.gov]
Re:CONSPIRACY to violate a law? (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was arrested as a juvenile and got charged with 2 moderately serious charges, I had 2 counts of conspiracy, which were also felonies, added for "thinking" about doing it before I actually did it.
Apparently in our justice system unless you just spontaneously do a crime with no premeditation whatsoever you are gonna get slapped with a charge for thinking about it on top of the charge itself. To this day I don't understand it.
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I think the prize for attempted Chemistry is called the Darwin Award~
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I'm thinking... (Score:3, Informative)
...that (a) this is a good thing (commercial operation) but that (b) the DMCA wasn't necessary at all. Aren't there theft of service laws already on the books for receiving private/pay TV services without paying for them? And, since this isn't actually a DMCA violation case, but rather a conspiracy to violate the DMCA, wouldn't it be just as much a conspiracy to illegally receive service?
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I imagine theft of service would only allow them to go after the end users, whereas this allows them to go after the ones developing the product.
Oblig, (Score:4, Funny)
<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>
Sounds like my friend (Score:4, Interesting)
He pirated the service for about two years. Funny thing was, about a year after he stopped he got hit with a lawsuit. He transferred as much stuff as he could out of his own name and braced for the inevitable. He only got away because he had a friend who knew some influential people. Incidentally, my friend his now his friend's personal no-cost 24/7 concierge tech support.
Anyway, he'd get these calls from people and he'd try to deny that he knew what to do. If someone pressed the issue (usually it was his friends or old co-workers telling others who could help) he tried to do the "scared straight" thing. Funny thing is, some of them would get mad at him for not helping. So many people are willing to throw away financial security just so they don't have to pay for the NFL Channel.
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So not only does he run a business based on stealing a service, he's also willing to use personal connections to get special treatment from the legal system.
If we're ever at the same party, please don't introduce us.
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So not only does he run a business based on stealing a service, he's also willing to use personal connections to get special treatment from the legal system.
I do not know where you got that first part at all. No, he did not run a business based on stealing a service. He only named the service after one of the components because he liked the name. It was not implied at all that he assisted others. In fact, my story specifically states the opposite.
As for your second point, if you were in his position, I highly doubt you would be so willing to stick to the ethical high ground and lose everything you have in exchange for a greater sense of self worth.
Good (Score:3, Insightful)
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I would argue that making personal receivers shouldn't be a crime, nor should breaking encryption. Making it a crime to prop up a bad business model isn't a good reason.
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How can you treat the two differently? Whether it is a company or a person, both entities are looking to violate or actually violating something. If you can't treat individuals special or you introduce a loophole for companies to farm out their violations to individuals...actually quite similar to this instance.
Also, what does cracking the encryption have to do with copyright? Cracking it doesn't mean you watched/streamed any channels. Also, to what TV channels does Dish actually own a copyright? How c
probably depends on intent ..... (Score:2)
The guy imports satellite boxes - if his goal was to reverse engineer the cards so that his boxes could work on Dish with a legally obtained card then the DCMA safe harbor for "interoperability" kicks in and he's legally OK. On the other hand if he's trying to obtain satellite service without paying Dish for the service they should throw the book at him.
Think of it from the O/S world - should people be allowed to reverse engineer the cards to allow MythTV to work with a paid for Dish card?
It was the Villiage People (Score:2, Funny)
It's fun to violate the DMCA
It's fun to violate the DMCA
I have mixed feelings about this. (Score:4, Insightful)
I consider the DMCA to be one of the most unjust and cruel laws the USA has. I sympathize with the people doing this to the following limited extent: If you are a subscriber to a service, you should be able to use any compatible QAM enabled equipment you wish.
This is a little different because people who violate the DMCA like this usually are doing so to secure their fair use rights. These people just wanted to outright steal the service. So thats bad. However, two things.
Why are police involved in this sort of thing? Well, really, although in theory, violating the DMCA is a civil action, but around 2003, the government decided that all copyright infringement was criminal. Because the Intellectual property 'scam' is all that the US has against the Chinese, the US has decided to criminalize copyright infringement to create laws to fight the Chinese with.
The DMCA needs to be repealed, but I don't see that happening unless there are large demonstrations. People are generally too stupid to care. (I really would like to see anti-DMCA slogans with people marching by the millions.)
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Insightful? Sorry, copyright infringement was made criminal more than 30 years ago. In the 70s, at least. Which if you check your history, was when China was undergoing the Cultural Revolution, persecuting the intellectuals and idolizing the peasant lifestyle.
So yeah, I don't think it was China that inspired criminalizing copyright infringement.
I don't know why it posted the previous comment anonymously. Here it is again, under my name...
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot... (Score:5, Interesting)
Although it was eliminated by dubious judicial means shortly after becoming law, the DMCA allows for reverse-engineering for the purposes of interoperability. The entire market for these devices is based on non-interoperability. Because if the CAM became truly portable and emulated fully in software, it's a tiny step to a digital video recorder that is completely under user control receiving HDTV. Which is actually the main selling point here. They took our VCRs away, and now we're attacking people who want to get them back the only way possible; At this point it doesn't matter whether his intent was to sell descrambler boxes or not, or anyone's, because that's the only way you're getting that functionality. An irony, really, that you could be paying the same fees as someone with an "approved" box, accessing the same content, and yet wind up in jail because your equipment wasn't up to the provider's specifications... Namely, that you wanted to "time shift" the content.
Damn criminals, flaunting their freedoms in front of us... They get what they deserve, eh?
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You can still get "Tunerless" VCRs and DVD Burners. They take Component and Composite inputs and will record whatever they see onto DVD. But they really aren't able to control the box any.
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You can still get "Tunerless" VCRs and DVD Burners. They take Component and Composite inputs and will record whatever they see onto DVD. But they really aren't able to control the box any.
Component and composite outputs on the back of every descrambler out there will spit it out in standard definition. You can't record HD signals out of them -- many won't even downgrade the signal, it'll just be dead. Getting high definition on any of those requires an HDMI hookup, which is encrypted, and therefore "tunerless" VCRs and DVD burners can't be used. Even getting signals OTA (not scrambled) doesn't do you much good because the tuners are usually integrated into the television. I haven't tuners be
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That's not true in all cases - I get high def out of my components just fine, and for one of my TVs, it has less artifacts than the HDMI does (likely because of a bad connector on the TV).
It really depends on how locked down your boxes are. The ones our cable company provides are Scientific Atlanta(ic?). They really are atrocious in all other ways, but at least they spit out high def on component!
Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot... (Score:5, Informative)
Funny thing is, you can record high-def quite easily, you just need to purchase two legal products.
First, you buy a Hauppage HD-PVR [hauppage.com], about the only consumer-level high-def recording box that handles up to 1080i via component inputs. Hey look, Myth supports it!
Now, for pesky HDMI... you buy a HD Fury 2 [hdfury2.com], which takes HDMI (including HDCP!) and converts it to either RGB or Component outputs, and while it handles 1080p, the HD-PVR only has 1080i.
Now you have a high-def PVR solution, MythTV compatible.
Alternate methods is if your cablebox supports Firewire, and can output the high-def content over it (I've seen 'em where the SD content is output over Firewire, but the HD content isn't), but most satellite boxes don't have this, unfortunately.
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May not work for satellite, but it works fine for cable. Component video outputs HD.
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You can still get "Tunerless" VCRs and DVD Burners. They take Component and Composite inputs and will record whatever they see onto DVD. But they really aren't able to control the box any.
And they will obey macrovision - which all the satellite/set-top boxes output on their component/s-video/composite outputs. Thus requiring one to buy a macrovision stripper aka a copy-control circumvention device - pretty much exactly the same type of thing that these guys were hiring someone else to build for them.
Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not for interoperability. The goal of this operation was to create smart cards that allowed people to view channels they did not pay for and to allow people who do not have an account to view the channels. The goal was to facilitate theft of service, not interoperability.
Group keying and revocation... (Score:5, Interesting)
These days, the model is very much based on some really funky group keying and key revocation, which allows the sattelite provider to revoke individual keys because each receiver has a unique key rather than a group sharing a common key.
Among other things, this makes piracy MUCH harder, because the sattelite providers can buy pirated receivers, take them to the lab, find out the key used, and revoke it, disabling that entire batch of pirated receivers without affecting normal customers.
Re:Group keying and revocation... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah, but isn't said reverse engineering a violation of the DMCA itself? The pirate recievers are electronic gadgets, built by proprietary companies. If the law doesn't cut both ways, it's a bad law and needs to go.
Crime depends on who you are... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thinking that if a security researcher had done the same thing, he would not be in jail. Nor would a large corporation.
But a set top box importer does it, and suddenly it's a federal crime.
The most troublesome part about this is that engineers routinely reverse engineer the work of others for the sake of creating compatible products - an exemption the DMCA explicitly allows. Perhaps the company wanted to offer a cheaper STB to Dish, and undercut the competition. Or perhaps they planned to sell directly to the black market, engaging in fraud. The act of reverse engineering a component tells us nothing about the company's intentions.
I mention this because this very thing was done to Lexmark printers a few years ago. Instead of getting arrested, the manufacturer of competing cartridges was sued under the DMCA; the case went all the way to the SCOTUS, and Lexmark lost. It would appear this would set precedent regarding the legality of reverse engineering for the sake of creating interoperable products, but strangely, the FBI seems not to follow precedent. I find it odd that an activity which was legal and sanctioned by the DMCA - and even supported by the Supreme Court, is now interpreted as being illegal according to the very same law.
If anything, this shows the illegality of an action depends more upon who you are than what you do. Best not to offend our corporate overlords, lest they have the FBI arrest you.
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A) A large corporation would be charged with the same thing.
B) The goal of a security researcher is research. The goal of the people involved in this scheme was to clone desktop boxes and security access cards for profit.
C) The Lexmark case has almost nothing in common with this case. The Lexmark case was about people reverse engineering to compete with an end product. This case is about people reverse engineering to allow access to someone else's end product and information, possibly without paying for the
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Welcome to the police state. This definition, right here, is perfect example of MOST of the laws currently on the books.
We have so many laws on the books, that it is probably virtually impossible to go through a day without violating some law, some where. I call it the IBMing of the Legal System.
This refers to the ol
Why don't the North Koreans and Iranians do this? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know they are generally poor countries and the military advantage of nukes must seem appealing, but they could create WAY, WAY more nuisance for Americans if they would devote those resources to basically Pirate Bay-ing everything copy protected. It'd be hilarious if within hours of a new you-can't-copy-it scheme came out if pirated versions were available along with free tools and FAQs for making your own copies or subversion devices.
IIRC, this idea was also (better?) expressed in some science fiction novel I can't remember -- although it was China that basically ruined IP protections.
FTA (Score:3, Interesting)
Implications for the numerical system (Score:3, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
Serves them right, while I'm against the DMCA trying to profit off of someone else's work is not right. They deserve what they get
Sounds like entrapment to me [wikipedia.org].
(I posted this link because it sounds like the Feds did to the cracker the same thing they did to Mr. DeLorean)
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Oh my bad... Kwak was the one offering the money and not the other way around.
Apparently my dyslexia is bad right now.
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Err, no. The Federal Agents found that the 3 had offered the money. It's a poorly written summary.
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My bad. I read the summary backwards. It sounded like the FBI offered Kwak the money.
But I got modded up so I guess other people read it wrong too.
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I completely support his efforts to reverse engineer the satellite system, and publish his findings. If he goes to jail it better be for piracy. I don't agree that he necessarily deserves what he'll get, he probably deserves a fraction of what he could get.
Re:I agree with the feds on this one (Score:5, Insightful)
Breaking encryption should never be a crime.
The satellite companies ahve a very weak business model. It involves sending information into everyoens house. If consumers find another way to view the data in their house, then tough tits for the satellite company.
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If businesses then go and market that way in the form of hacked decoder boxes... still 'tough tits' for the satellite company? In your legal frame of mind, I mean; it's obviously 'tough tits' for them in practice anyway and they have to introduce the next generation of encoding (or a different key.. whatever).
Re:I agree with the feds on this one (Score:4, Informative)
If businesses then go and market that way in the form of hacked decoder boxes... still 'tough tits' for the satellite company? In your legal frame of mind, I mean; it's obviously 'tough tits' for them in practice anyway and they have to introduce the next generation of encoding (or a different key.. whatever).
It took me a while to understand how the whole business works, but that's basically the way things work now.
Essentially the way you buy a 3rd party satellite receiver out of the box, it can only receive unencrypted satellite streams. But the decoder box manufacturers pay groups of coders to surreptitiously create and release software which allows the box to decrypt encrypted streams. For the last couple years, DirecTV has been on the as of yet uncracked N3, while Dish and Bellvue (Canada's main provider, with a signal that you can get throughout the US) have been on the cracked N2. A few months ago Bellvue switched to N3, and a week or so ago Dish completed its switch to N3.
In the meantime, a couple companies have implemented something they're calling Internet Key Sharing for their receivers - a system that shares decryption information from a paid subscription with that company's unauthorized receivers. I'm not sure of the technical details, but apparently this doesn't work as well as a true crack - and of course requires an internet connection to receive the frequently chancing keys.
Viewsat, who Kwak represents, doesn't currently have an Internet Key Sharing program, so, unless they can get someone to crack N3 - nobody's going to be buying their receivers.
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Re:I agree with the feds on this one (Score:4, Insightful)
That would be true, if they were an idiot. Fortunately I don't think the grandparent poster is an idiot.
Hacking into a wifi signal goes beyond decrypting a data stream. You are at that point sending data with the intention of having a remote computer (for the access point is indeed a little computer) and having it do work for you. You are now making use of someone else's property without their permission. Worse, if they're using even a lame 64-bit WEP, they have clearly indicated that you are not welcome to us it, a sort of digital "No Trespassing" sign, so you can't claim it was accidental.
Cell phones are similar, although with an interesting twist: you're not going to be able to make a phone call without some phone's identity. And whoever paid for that phone's identity is going to get hit with the charges for your calls. In essence, you're engaging in fraud against someone else, making charges in their name. We don't need special phone crime laws to deal with this, basic fraud (specifically identity "theft") covers it fine.
Now, this does suggest that you're free to quietly snoop on other people's wifi and cell phones. One can take an ethical stand that puts the onus of securing one's wireless communications on the transmitter and receiver, not the government and third parties. Or put another way, one might say, "Feel free to snoop on my wifi. I use a secure VPN."
Splicing into the cable companies lines is a different case. If the cable doesn't enter your property, you've engaged in trespass and tampering with someone else's property. But we'll be generous and assume the cable crosses your property; it's common enough. While the land is yours, the physical cable itself is not. In much the same way that if I park in my local grocery store's lot, they have no right to siphon some gas out of my tank, you have no right to cut or otherwise modify their cable.
Now, if you were to engage in some cleverness to read the signal off the cable without harming the cable, I think you'd see some support from those arguing the "tough tits" case.
(In all of these cases I'm ignoring what is actually legal, since I believe the point is to argue what is ethical, and thus what the law should be, not what it is today.)
Re:I agree with the feds on this one (Score:5, Insightful)
>And if I find a way to get into your car that you parked on a public street and drive it away, tough tits for you.
What if I find a way to make use of the constant stream of cars that you put in my living room?
Re:I agree with the feds on this one (Score:4, Interesting)
Uhhmm...Your analogy isn't really "analogous" to the situation.
If you came and parked your car in my front yard, am I at fault if I figure out how to drive it, and do so? Dish network is pumping signal into everybody's house, it isn't as if these people are breaking into their building or something.
I agree that they should be punished, what they were attempting to do was wrong, I just don't think that your analogy holds together.
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Re:I agree with the feds on this one (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad analogy. If I take his car that he parked on a public street, he is out a car. If I decode the signal broadcast into my house and view it, the satellite provider still has just as much signal as before, and their paying customers are not out anything. (I could argue that because I could then join in on water-cooler discussions on our favourite TV shows that it increases the value of the product they're marketing, but that's an extremely weak argument which I won't actually make.)
If you send out floppies with your software to everyone in a neighbourhood, and I reformat my floppy and use it for other purposes, that's tough tits for you. If you send out fliers that I subsequently rip up and make paper mache from, that's tough tits for you. If you broadcast something into my home uninvited, and I find a way to make use of that broadcast, that's tough tits for you.
There has to be a working business model here somewhere. I just don't think the current one is the right one. After all, it's far more trivial for the user to buy the official equipment than to build it themselves. And that's been true for many things: radios, TVs, computers, CB radios, HAM radios (I think - never looked into these). Still is true. Those who want to do it themselves? Cost of doing business, my friend. Compete with them like a grown capitalist.
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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!
Except (Score:3, Insightful)
"If you broadcast something into my home uninvited, and I find a way to make use of that broadcast, that's tough tits for you."
No - by living where you do you accept the law - if you don't you can get out of the country, or they'll throw the book at you - and then its tough tits for you in jail.
Re:I agree with the feds on this one (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's a better one:
If you own a drive in theater, and I live nearby with a direct line of site of the theater, and someone sells me a radio that I use to receive the audio from the movie, and I sit on my porch every night and enjoy a different movie, all for free.... Is this a crime?
Effectively, they are blanketing the country with their signal, and someone else is providing me a tool that allows me to watch and hear this signal. It's not my fault that the drive-in, in this example, doesn't shield their picture or opt to hard wire their speakers so that I cannot watch the movie, and even if they did do these measures, it would not be illegal for me to strategically place mirrors in my yard and use a directional mic to pick up sound from someone's car in order to continue to watch the movie.
So, really, the only issue at stake is the DMCA itself (the breaking of the encryption), and I, for one, do not agree with the premise behind this law.
If you want your content to be unwatchable by others, secure it properly. If others figure out a way to watch it anyways, that's your problem, not the laws (or at least I wish it were this way!).
Re:I agree with the feds on this one (Score:5, Informative)
What's your idea? Other than to let all delivery of TV signals slip into an unsustainable business model of "free for all" ideology, of course.
The right to do math is much more important than the privilege of watching TV. If preserving that right means the death of satellite TV, oh well.
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Must suck for people who streets don't have cable or who aren't close enough to over-the-air broadcast
That's unfortunate, but living in remote areas is a choice that comes with a lot of benefits of its own. If they really need TV, they can move somewhere where they can get OTA broadcasts. I am not willing to give up my right to do math to enable their lifestyle choice.
things they want to pay for just so you can precede their right to buy a service
Buying a service is hardly a right. Companies go in and out
I disagree with the Feds on this one, 100% (Score:5, Insightful)
When you have competitive markets, you see lower costs, and improved technology. Sure, it leads to companies having their encryption broken, and being forced to re-invent the wheel... which they should be doing anyway. In the long run, it drives improvements in the market and technology.
The DMCA is detrimental to the economy. The DMCA works to stifle innovation, in AMERICAN markets and for AMERICAN products.
Protectionist policies, like this one, are seldom a good idea. The free market always did better.
I am not blaming enforcement for enforcing the law, but it's a bad law. A very bad law.
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Satellite TV makes the market more competitive, and, at least in some cases e.g. extremely rural areas, it is an improvement in both market and technology.
Direct TV is also cheaper than most cable services.
This is actually an area where IP law has done better than the so-called free market, where cable companies exist as a natural monopoly.
Re:I disagree with the Feds on this one, 100% (Score:5, Insightful)
That is to say, of course I agree that satellite makes good competition for cable, especially in the rural areas. What I don't agree on is whether the DMCA is or was necessary to keep the satellite companies around.
Back in the day, not so long ago, when it was not very difficult to bypass the scrambling of a satellite signal, only a small fraction of customers were actually doing so. There were even articles in mainstream electronics magazines on how to unscramble satellite... yet the number of people doing it remained at a tiny percentage. Yet even that small percentage made the satellite companies furious.
Yet they continued to grow and be very profitable. Unscrambling did not stop them or even slow them down. Dishes and receivers continued to get cheaper. And satellite programming slowly but steadily continued to get more expensive (just like cable).
I am not convinced that unscramblers harmed the satellite companies in any significant way. Now, they did have to do research... I remember for example when the Videocypher systems were replaced with Videocypher IIs. The satellite companies were trying to beat those darned hackers. And for the most part they kept ahead of the game. The number of people cracking the system were kept small, the satellite companies still continued to profit and grow, and satellite programs still slowly but steadily continued to get more expensive...
Personally, I believe that the reverse-engineers kept the industry on its toes, and HELPED, rather than hindered, its progress.
What has the DMCA done for the consumer? It is just as illegal to unscramble a cable signal as it is to unscramble a satellite signal. Now you are forced to buy equipment that is all "compatible" with a particular version of the satellite company's hardware (your DVR, for instance). You have to pay their prices for it. You do NOT have a choice. Today you can't for example, just get one kind of DVR and use it with either cable or satellite... you need a different one for each. You can't use one kind of unscrambler (adapter box) with either cable or satellite... you should be able to use a satellite receiver, and a separate decoder for both. But no. Duplication of hardware, and replication of similar technologies, all the way around.
How is this efficient? How has that kept prices down? Hint: it hasn't.
So now we have had some perfectly legal and very educational hobbies (building descrambler projects for fun) turned into crimes... and our prices are NOT lower, our products are NOT cheaper, our products do NOT interoperate...
The free market did it better.
Re:I disagree with the Feds on this one, 100% (Score:4, Insightful)
Ummm... 1929? Market failure in farmland ownership/food growth, massive bank failures due to poor loans?
Re:I disagree with the Feds on this one, 100% (Score:5, Informative)
The free market had nothing to do with 1929. You're ignoring the massive government intervention in multiple areas of the market which built and extended an unsustainable boom period leading (inevitably) to the crash, not to mention the continuation of those same policies after the crash, on a grander scale, which ultimately made the correction as long and difficult as it was.
Re:I disagree with the Feds on this one, 100% (Score:4, Insightful)
You clearly have no idea how heavily regulated the banking/finance sector is. The problem is more like the unregulated tidbits swimming among the sea of regulation. Of COURSE those tidbits will get the focus of greedy market manipulators.
The finance sector, if it was actually unregulated, should not be lawless either. Introducing general laws around open disclosure, honest accounting, direct responsibility, etc. would go much further towards fixing out financial system. Unfortunately that means companies would have to be more honest and THAT means less profit. Less profit means shareholders suffer - not the 'i have 50k or 250k invested' people but the 'my 3 portfolios total 350million or we manage 20billion in portfolios' who have direct lines to politicians, lawmakers, judges and so on. It's not tin-hat conspiracy, it's people using the means available to protect their own and not caring who else it hurts.
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Sorry, I don't see anything in the article summary saying that at all. They were simply attempting to reverse-engineer a way to receive and decrypt DishTV's signals, and presumably to sell equipment to do this to other people.
So first, no one is "stealing" anything, as stealing means to deprive someone of something by theft. People watching DishTV aren't stealing anything, though they are violating the DMCA law.
And second, there's no proof these men were going to watch unpaid-for programming themselves; t
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Re:Three arrested for conspiring to steal cable (Score:4, Funny)
If you want to steal satellite, you'll have to build a spaceship first.
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Must be because he was actually stealing satellite?
BTW - Agree. WTF Mods?
Re:Three arrested for conspiring to steal cable (Score:4, Informative)
Wait wait wait...can someone please explain how the first post to the article was modded redundant? That just doesn't make sense to me...
Redundant means "information was already there", not "post has already been made".
I'm not saying I agree with the moderation, I'm just answering your question as to how a first post can be 'redundant'.