EchoStar-DirecTV reach settlement with TV pirates

[Poke]

http://biz.yahoo.com/bizj/061012/1359921.html?.v=1

Thursday October 12, 1:41 pm ET


EchoStar Communications Corp. and DirecTV Inc. have reached a $500,000 settlement in a lawsuit against Canadian Steve Souphanthong and various associates accused of illegally pirating EchoStar's DISH Network and other satellite TV services.
Souphanthong, who operated under the name B-Tech Distribution, was allegedly one of the largest manufacturers of piracy software and devices in North America.

The satellite TV providers filed a civil lawsuit against Souphanthong in Ontario Superior Court, claiming the piracy operation caused "serious damage" to the plaintiffs.

According to a statement released Thursday, Englewood-based EchoStar and El Segundo, Calif.-based DirecTV will "continue to fight those who try to circumvent the security system by illegally intercepting the satellite signal being provided to legitimate customers."

 

[RedWings]

LOL @ "Caused serious damage". There is no way to measure that. Many of those people wouldn't be subscribers anyway.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

If E* got half of the settlement, then they can put it in the bank to eventually pay TIVO. But as this would only be around 1/360th of what they owe TIVO, it won't help much.

 

[Hall]

Many of those people wouldn't be subscribers anyway.

That's very true and it applies to many forms of so-called piracy. A company didn't miss out on "X" dollars of potential revenue because their product was pirated. To say that assumes that the person would have otherwise paid for it. It's like, "sure, I'll take it for free, but otherwise I don't want it".

 

[John Kotches]

That's very true and it applies to many forms of so-called piracy. A company didn't miss out on "X" dollars of potential revenue because their product was pirated. To say that assumes that the person would have otherwise paid for it. It's like, "sure, I'll take it for free, but otherwise I don't want it".

The services were still pirated (aka stolen), so what's your real argument?

 

[Dish-Direc]

My Feeling

The services were still pirated (aka stolen), so what's your real argument?

I think the onus should be on Dish to secure its encryption. That said, it is still wrong to steal (pirate).

 

[Smith P.]

Or invest money in Internet infrastructure and send your signal precisely to that ppl who have right for it, do not broadcast widespread and do not provoke others to have access to "free" TV.
For regular person radio or TV broadcast always was free - see how many radios and TV sets we have. Now imagine all radio/TV station was in scrambled form - only military will have a luxury to receive those signals up today.
Look how low level of pirating on Digital Cable Co.

Sat company purposly choose the way of sending signal to everyone, they calculated risk, they knew the number before business proposal; they was agree with the risk, they include a cost of securing theyr signals and they got an approval of the pirating level from fist day of the business. It's clearly seen from Dish and Kudelski (joint venture - NagraStar) statements about life cycle of each new smart card - 2 years (!) by design.

 

[navychop]

When someone can make money pirating IPTV, they will. The internet is hardly secure.

 

[John Kotches]

When someone can make money pirating IPTV, they will. The internet is hardly secure.

Stealing the IP packets isn't that difficult. Being able to open them to get a usable data stream is another matter entirely.

Cheers,

 

[John Kotches]

I think the onus should be on Dish to secure its encryption. That said, it is still wrong to steal (pirate).

I don't disagree with you on this.

Anyone wanting to pirate will eventually break a cryptography system. The goal of a well designed system is to make it impractical to break the system while the encrypted payload contains data of value.

I don't know enough about the details on Dish signal pirating to speak with any level of authority, but it is likely that the information on the crypto-system was leaked and not actually broken. This is what happened with the "terribly weak" CSS used for DVDs. The methods for reverse encryption of CSS were left in some Linux source code (intentionally or unintentionally).

I'm not an expert on cryptography and crypto-systems, but I do I have to know a little bit about it for my job

Best,

 

[navychop]

"... Stealing the IP packets isn't that difficult. ..."

They could have a few subscriptions that they retransmit to many. Or be even more creative. Spoof the billing system. Steal reception from unknowing subscribers. Or things I couldn't even think of.

 

[John Kotches]

I don't know enough about the IPTV system to know if your plan would work navychop. It holds no interest for me personally, so I haven't really considered it.

If someone's willing, eventually they'll crack it. How soon is a matter for how well the system is designed.