Will Murdoch Drop DirecTV Pirates Overboard?

[Mark Holtz]

From Forbes:

Stealing The Show

On April 30, DirecTV scored what should have been a decisive victory in the company's ongoing war with satellite pirates. An Orlando, Fla., judge granted DirecTV a temporary restraining order (and later a permanent injunction) shutting down 63 hacker Web sites with names like dssbadboys.com and piratesatelitte.net that provided files to break DirecTV's encryption and allow viewers to steal satellite service.

But the company blew it. Instead of quickly sending out a signal to disable priated access cards, DirecTV management waited for the company's weekly disabling blast. When the scramble finally happened, hackers had fixer files available for satellite thieves within 15 minutes.

Given dumb moves like that, Rupert Murdoch might want to reconsider his commitment to keeping most DirecTV's execs in place once his $6.6 billion purchase of a controlling stake in the satellite television company from General Motors closes next year.

Full article here (http://www.forbes.com/2003/05/29/cz_dp_0529directv.html?partner=my_yahoo&referrer=)

[Scott Greczkowski]

BTW for what its worth all those forums just popped up again within days under new domain names.

It's a cat and mouse game. Sad but true :(

[The Big Hacker]

The 5 cent encryption systems used by Dave and Charlie will never be secure. The card based security systems are inherently too easy to crack

[Scott Greczkowski]

The new Echostar Receivers with the smartcard built in may be able to better crack down on pirarcy.

I don't want to turn this info a big pirarcy discussion.

We here at DBSTalk believe in paying for what we watch and we do not condone pirarcy, so for the sake of this getting messy I am going to do something we almost never do here and close this thread.

Thanks