Man Ordered to Pay $180M for Satellite Piracy

[Rick_EE]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030628/ap_on_re_us/satellite_pirate_6

[Mark Holtz]

But, don't worry. He opted for the E-Z installment plan which has him paying $500 a month for the next 30,000 years.

[Scott Greczkowski]

Actually the accused hacker has already said how he is going to pay this heavy fine, he will pay the entire fine off in CLUB DISH Credits. :D

It's just a joke

[Richard King]

I heard he was going to use PayPal. :D

[Mike123abc]

Next they will probably go after the 5000 "customers" he was "helping" with DBS reception. I doubt they will get fined $180million, but I bet they go for $10-20k range...

[Jacob S]

Perhaps they will get their 180 million that way, from those 5000 customers, and make them pay so much a month for the rest of their lives.

[waydwolf]

One down, 4329 pirate device designers to go...

This won't remotely do a thing to stop or even slow the piracy. Not the slightest.

The proper thing is to change the technology to invalidate the old equipment, upgrade the legitimate customers, and shut out the illegitimate. The new equipment should be restricted in sale to and through authorized DTV and E* dealers, and NOT the small Internet ones either. They should go through a larger and more trustworthy corporation which is constantly audited and checked.

Addressable switches and LNB circuits should also be used and these should be dead paperweights unless they receive their specific matching hardwired keycode through the satellite signal. Pirates would have to invent signal generating devices to routinely inject activation signals to keep the LNBs and switches alive on top of figuring out the encryption.

The harder it is to make the piracy work, the less likely people are to go for it.

In cable, many systems have made the insane mistake of leaving lockboxes broken despite their status and a repair request being made known years earlier. Many places have removed addressable taps due to technician mistakes rather than fixing the problem with better training and proceedures. The cable world is losing money due to piracy as well, but a simple cutting of the feed line at the tap and proper physical security of neighboring active lines saves huge amounts.

Until DBS does more to cut the line between the dish and the receiver, pirates will have as easy a time as people used to have doing mods on their Jerrold and Pioneer analog boxes years ago.

[Jacob S]

If piracy is knocked way back down then they would not lose nearly as much money therefore not stricking against it as bad in which just leaves it up to the hardcore satellite hobbyists that do it for fun or have a lot of money keeping it very limited.

If it is manmade then it can and will be broken eventually, it is just a matter of time.

[Sherlock]

...and how much are we willing to see our bills go up by the DBS providers spending a mint on the sooper-dooper Ft. Knox CAS system?

[Jacob S]

The encryption that they use is cheap enough for them to afford without increasing our bills an extreme amount but only good enough to last only so long. Here is another way of looking at it, if they do get a super-duper Ft. Knox CAS system it may last 5 years costing 5 times as much whereas a lot cheaper CAS system may last a few years. They could replace it 5 times for the cost of the other in which is 10 years worth. This is just an example.

[Mark Holtz]

Remember, I pay for all my programming (despite my complaints for having to pay for E$PN), so take my comments for what they are.

One of Dish's security weaknesses is that they didn't put in a expiration date on the receivers, and instead rely on a periodic kill code. So, conceivably, someone could take a receiver "offline", cancel the account, and then months later reconnect the receiver and have it work properly.

In addition, both Dish and DirecTV have older cards that have since been cracked. These cards should be replaced immediately and the data stream deactivated.

If you want to stop signal piracy, IMHO, you need to make as difficult as possible so that the time and effort expended on "stealing the signal" exceeds the cost of being a legitimate subscriber.

[Jacob S]

Agreed with Z'Loth, although if you have the receiver in the stream long enough it will get the deactivation code to shut the receiver's programming off.

Making it more expensive than the actual programming and agitating the hackers to where they have to reprogram a card every day or several times a day would make it such a pain that they would give up.

Some will still do it even if it is more expensive to do it this way because of the fact that they do it as a hobby or some of the channels they cannot subscribe to such as network channels. Perhaps offering the locals to most of the markets would help.