DirecTV Suing Consumers Directly

[John Corn]

Thousands of satellite television "pirates" in Florida and across North America are under attack by lawyers for DirecTV who have filed hundreds of federal lawsuits against consumers who allegedly bought mail-order decoders enabling them to steal the company's digital programming.

In U.S. District Court in South Florida, more than 300 suits were filed in May alone against consumers in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. And many more actions are on the way -- both locally and elsewhere, according to a spokesman for DirecTV.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1055463653964

[Mike123abc]

8700 suits so far. Or $3,500 to avoid the suit... This will be interesting to see how many they can nab.

[Jacob S]

For each one they collect on they would get just as much as they would off of about 8 customers in a year's time. If all of them paid thats just like collecting off of around 65,000-70,000 customers in a year's time in which they will not collect off of nearly that many people. Most do not have that kind of money to shell out all at once but may be able to get a loan to pay it off. I wonder if they are accepting payments or if it has to be a lump sum. I heard that if you turn down a payment that the bill is automatically paid, at least thats what I heard when it came to hospital bills.

[Zach2]

I live in Anchorage, Alaska and in Anchorage we have to have a 6' dish for each satellite Directv has (i.e one on 101, 119, 110 would be needed if you wanted everything). Which cost about $1000 bucks each installed not to mention the eye sore it is and the fact the rain still will nock out reception. Maybe I'm just bitter but I don't think it's fair that I have to pay all that money to watch my NFL Sunday Ticket.

[George Lezotte]

I wonder if they are suing some guy who lives in South Africa who might have bought one of these cards out of curiosity just to "see how things work" or to "tinker" with it. Despite being out of line of sight and footprint of any of D*'s satellites. The suits should be thrown out en mass by the court if D* can't prove that there is not one iota of possibility that anyone would want one of these things for ANY possible reason other than to steal their programming. What if someone bought one so he could put it in a display case labeled "Rogues Gallery of Electronic Devices" on the wall even after having disabled its functionality? Just like collecting firearms, knives, or implements of medical quackery.

What a dirty trick to play on someone. Have one of these things sent to someone you dont like (paying with a money order) so they can get sued for thousands of dollars. That's one of the inherent dangers in being able to nail peple for the mere "possession" of something. The authorities have done this for years against political dissidents in the USA by planting drugs in their homes or cars or pockets saying "look at what I just found!".

[Scott Greczkowski]

Last I knew it is not against the law to own a card programmer.

Infact at my office we have two of them which is used to program our security system.

While I am totally against pirarcy, I think these lawsuits should all be thrown out, you have a big powerful company with lots lawyers forcing people to spend money to defend themselves when many of these people may not have even done anything wrong.

[Cyclone]

If they are stealing the satellite service, are they really consumers?

[Scott Greczkowski]

Who says they are stealing anything? People reading messages about pirating are not all pirates (hell I bet lots of folks from both companies spend a good part of the day reading those boards, are they pirates?) And not all people that own card writers are pirates.

Again we use card readers in our shop for the security system, does that make us pirates?

If they are going to accuse people of stealing at least have some valid proof that they are indeed stealing.

[Jacob S]

I used to read about piracy to find out what was going on and some of their termonology so that way when someone comes up to me asking for certain things I will know why and it has worked. When they start asking I say 'I know why you want it, you are not going to subscribe to service are you'? And by that time they usually admit it.

Isn't it illegal to try to sell something illegal to catch them? That would be like me trying to sell someone something that was stolen then turn them in saying that they stole the item in a way.

Maybe DirecTv is just threatening to sue just to see how many they can get to pay.

[waydwolf]

Who says they are stealing anything? People reading messages about pirating are not all pirates (hell I bet lots of folks from both companies spend a good part of the day reading those boards, are they pirates?) And not all people that own card writers are pirates.

Again we use card readers in our shop for the security system, does that make us pirates?

If they are going to accuse people of stealing at least have some valid proof that they are indeed stealing.

We're not talking the kind of simple card programmers you use at work which have other uses. These devices are designed and built with a single two-fold purpose: to activate a DirecTV or Dish Network compatible receiver and allow viewing up all received programming, and to intercept and filter out any and all ECMs(Electronic Counter Measures) sent in the signal stream to shut off unauthorized receivers.

Current estimates range as high as three out of every four dishes mounted in the US are connected to a receiver with a pirate card/unlooper. This may be a little high, but not far off.

HBO, Food Network, CNN, etc., all keep track of the piracy rates of cable and satellite carriers. They DO figure those rates as part of their calculations towards pricing their content to DTV, E*, and cable.

The carriers themselves of course figure them out again for themselves. The content provider price increases are first passed along, then an increase to cover their own calculated piracy losses. Cable simply does the economically smart thing and passes the cost and steps up their audit and interdiction operations.

DBS on the other hand is still trying to start from square one against cable and is taking the unwise tack of keeping prices artificially low and their profit margin(if any) creeps lower and lower.

Piracy will kill DBS faster than their marketing stupidity so hence the lawsuits as a way of trying to give a very bold and brutal statement to the pirates to knock it off and to the industry at large that they take the losses seriously.

[Mike123abc]

Cable can fight piracy much easier than DBS. Cable can look for taps off the line when they audit. DBS has no real way to prove you are stealing unless they trace payments from you to firms that specialized in piracy. Cable can go house to house looking at the cable (well from the box in the right of way), DBS cannot.

Digital cable is very helpful for fighting piracy too. With two way communication the cable boxes are much harder to hack.

[jeslevine]

All they need to do to prevent pirates is to require a phone line in the back of the receiver, to allow two way communications. Both dish and dtv should be able to modify the software to do that

[Mike123abc]

All they need to do to prevent pirates is to require a phone line in the back of the receiver, to allow two way communications. Both dish and dtv should be able to modify the software to do that

If they were to do that, they might suffer some losses to people that do not have phones. But, if they were to do something like drop the extra reciever fees in exchange, I bet people would go along with it.

[jeslevine]

If they were to do that, they might suffer some losses to people that do not have phones. But, if they were to do something like drop the extra reciever fees in exchange, I bet people would go along with it.

I wonder if there are that many people who do not have phones?

In order to watch PPV you currently need a phone line, so they are almost there...

[Jacob S]

A lot more people are getting cell phones to replace their telephone service because they do not want to have to pay two phone bills. Its like having DirecTv and Dish Network both paying a bill for each in a sense, or to have cable and satellite. Some refuse to have phone lines hooked up because they are afraid someone is going to be monitering their home by voice or video from the receivers while others cannot run a phone line to the receiver or take them travelling and camping with them or have a second home that does not have a phone line. Some do not want to pay the extra cost of having a phone line run or do not want that phone line run all over the phone and go through the hassle but will sign up with cable instead if they have to go through with that.

[rbonzer]

But if piracy is 3 out of 4 dishes, wouldn't Dish/Direct come out ahead if they lose some people due to phone line restrictions? How many people would they lose?

[Jacob S]

Well I think its because they would lose that many more to piraters and they would figure a way around the phone line requirement to fool the receiver to thinking its getting a phone line connection. It does not require a hard wired connection like cable does to receiver a signal and that is why it is so much different than how cable deals with piraters.

[scooper]

I find it difficult to beleive that piracy is 3 out of 4 dishes.

[Mike123abc]

3/4 being pirates is pretty much impossible. They have over 20 million paying subs. That means that there would have to be 60 million households being pirates. That makes a total of 80 million households watching DBS. Numbers like that suggest that close to ALL of the US is watching DBS. Last I looked most Americans still had cable. The industry loves to throw out numbers that make a problem look bad. Now I know there are a lot of pirates who are also subscribers, but still 3/4 is a huge number. Probably closer to 1/4.

If they required a phone line they could have the reciever call in and 2 way authenticate once a week. They would make it pretty hard to pirate then because they could add additional access codes in addition to the ones they send over the air. The code could be unique to each reciever. With caller ID you would have to call from the right phone line that was registered to the account.

If they piracy numbers are really so huge then it would be better to just dump the few subs that do not have a phone line.

[Lyle_JP]

They probably came to that 3/4 number by comparing the total number of DirecTV boxes from all manufacturers sold to the number that are actually active on someone's account in their database.

Their numbers are probably completely ignoring older models stacked in the closet or thrown away.

[Jacob S]

I doubt they made that many receivers in the first place. That would mean that they would have had to make 4 times the receivers they have on the market today in which I doubt.

[beegfoot]

The majority of my customers refuse to hook up to phone lines. So the company would have to set iron-clad rules requiring phone connections.

Dish Network is trying to force dealers to run telephone wire at no extra pay. DirecTV actually has backed off of requiring phone hookups.

One way piracy could be fought is by not selling receivers to the customer. As long as the receiver is leased to the customer, the company would know if it's active or not. If it becomes inactive, it must be returned. If it's not returned, it's stolen, and you have something substantial to file against the thief.

[James_F]

Well Cox here in Phoenix, I just got a notice that they are going to stop leasing HD units and make people buy them. I think leasing is on its way out.

[Jacob S]

I agree 100% with Beegfoot and this is what I have thought of long ago. The receivers should be leased to the customers instead of sold to them in which would prevent a lot of the piracy. Some would still have the receivers hacked anyways or say that it was stolen or something and pay for it if it was hacked and they shut it off. This is what they should do if they change to a new standard requiring new receivers and just lease it to all the customers in which would make up for a lot of the cost. The customers would not be happy though because of the extra charge each month and not being able to use the receivers they had before in which they paid an x amount for. Perhaps they would just lease for free and just say its the property of Dish Network/DirecTv and must be returned like DirecTv wants to do with the cards sometimes.

[James_F]

Lease the receivers? Why would Dish or DirecTV want to hold that inventory? Its a headache they don't need. The business model works well the way it is.... People steal cable even though boxes are leased. It wouldn't stop any of them...

[gary s]

Please DishNetwork, no phone lines required!!!
We origionally went with dishnetwork over directv because they told us we didn't need to have phone lines hooked up and directv said we did.
We have six, yes we are the ones that have six receivers, and it would really be a pain to run phone lines to all of them.
Also, we order PPV movies all the time without having phone lines hooked up. We call in on the automated phone ordering number and the movies can be watched on any or all of our receivers. There is a $1 fee for using the automated system for a total of $4.99 per movie, I think it is. You just have to call in from the phone listed on the account to order.

[Jacob S]

If they had all of those receivers in inventory then they could take it off of their taxes just as they do with DHP (Digital Home Plan).

[Orcatek]

If the filed against me, I would file for a change of venue forcing them to come to my city, there is a good chance the court would do this.

Next I would go to trial, as the burden of proof is still on their part even in a civil case. True the rules are not as strick as in criminal cases, but still worth.

Next counter sue for wrongful litigation (there is a legal term for this) but in general, someone can't sue you just because they think you did something.

Now of course, this all assumes you are innocent.

And make sure you get lots of press about them suing someone who has not committed a crime or violation of the rules. Should really help the local cable companies.

It's like owning a car and buying beer. Does that make you a drunk driver? This can set an ugly trend in law suits.

Hey want some fun. Buy some card programmers for you congressmen, mayor or other elected official. Send it with a message that they need to see the equipment so they can understand the issue. I wonder how long it will take them to get sued too. OK, DON'T DO IT, but I think I make my point.

I agree the stealing DBS is wrong, but suing consumers is not the solution.