‘I’ve lost a dog named Justice’
p2pnet news view DRM | TV | Freedom | P2P:- DRM, “will never work when the DRM holder can throw a switch at anytime and turn the use of a product off,” says an April 7 post to Public Knowledge (Luaces V. Directv 1997 Miami), continuing »»»
Simply put, Directv can and has turned off the paid for Television programming of consumers. Then, while holding the consumers programming hostage, demanded more money be paid to get the programming back.
For those who used counter measures to stop that theft, Directv successfully sued them in Federal court asserting DRM rights. Laws have got to be in place to protect the consumer from DRM theft. In Luaces V Directv, 31 states attorney generals fined directv 11 million as settlement. The DRM holder`s right cannot extend first to that of theft and then have courts make awards to the DRM holder because consumers tried to prevent that same theft.
Constitutional protections support one`s right to protect there property from theft of any kind.
When a DRM holder decides to steal, courts have decided to ignore the constitutional protections to protect your property from theft.
Switching off
“Ghandi is a great comparison,” says Gene in an email. “Passive resistance is what I am practicing,” he says, referring to a Reader’s Write he posted under Us versus Them.
He’s says he’s a victim of DirecTV DRM and he’s just started a site called Theft by DRM.
In it his p2pnet comment post, “In response to our government having not protected innocent people who were sued, I found that following Gandhi to be useful,” he says, going on, “Ignoring justice to restore justice is a great form of passive resistance.
And in his email, “In my own case, I’ve lost a dog named Justice. Even though sued by attorney general’s from 31 states for the theft of programming and a settlement reached, I was later sued individually in another court for trying to stop that theft.
” Our Justice system has a responsibility to protect the public’s right to property and to investigate those copyright holders who turn our products off through the unlawful use of DRM.
“Our justice system cannot permit corporations to use there intellectual property rights to steal our products where authorization doesn’t exist. Then later use DRM laws to sue individuals under DRM statutes because they
tried to block a theft when a drm holder decided to use there rights unlawfully.”
The Broadcast Flag
The subtitle of Gene’s new site is American’s against Theft by DRM owner. It’s a, “Grass Roots organization to get congress and the Justice system to protect the public from the Digital Rights holder using Digital rights illegally,” it says, pointing out:
“There are embedded chips in many of the things we buy and use every day,” it says.
“These chips can be used to turn on or turn your products off. You can find these chips in your refrigerator, Stove, Television, Automobile, and so on. The only person who can control these chips is the company or individual who has been assigned the right.
“Some of these people who hold this Digital Right have used the right to steal or commit fraud.”
“A broadcast flag is a set of status bits (or a ‘flag’) sent in the data stream of a digital television program that indicates whether or not the data stream can be recorded, or if there are any restrictions on recorded content. Possible restrictions include the inability to save an unencrypted digital program to a hard disk or other non-volatile storage, inability to make secondary copies of recorded content (in order to share or archive), forceful reduction of quality when recording (such as reducing high-definition video to the resolution of standard TVs), and inability to skip over commercials.”
That’s the Wikipedia description and early in 2000, it was THE big point of controversy.
Broadcast Flag was, “about the movie studios demanding unprecedented veto power over digital technology because they believe they can see into the future and have the right to knee-cap technological innovation, free competition, and consumer rights in order to prop up aging business models,” wrote Cory Doctorow when he still worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “They are wrong.”
Then, “the DC Circuit of the US Court of Appeals struck down the loathsome Broadcast Flag, ruling that the FCC does not have the jurisdiction to regulate what people do with TV shows after they’ve received them,” he posted on BoingBoing.
But you know what they say about roses. They smell the same no matter what you call them.
Sneakily following us around online
In a post reporting that web-like behavioral marketing will soon be featured on a TV screen near you, we quoted Search Engine Journal as explaining online, tracking codes are implemented as cookies on a user’s computer as s/he’s, “served ads from various online advertising networks.
“Sites visited, content viewed, and length of visit are then all databased and analyzed to predict an online behavioral pattern for such a user, thereby classifying that user by his/her online demographic. Behavioral ad networks then serve targeted advertising related to that user’s behavioral classification, regardless of where s/he then visit.”
In other words, they’re sneakily following us around online, spying on our every move so they can try and figure out how to Shanghai us somewhere along the way, we said, going on »»»
Verizon will start targeting advertising on a household level by the end of the year, allowing advertisers to target homes, rather than shows, or to buy specific demographics and behaviors via the set-top box, says Advertising Age.
Has anyone asked you if you`re OK with that?
The assumptions and presumptions are: you`ll be sitting there with your tongue hanging out just dying to be `targeted,` which is to say they`ll use anything their tiny, devious minds can come up with to not only try and make you believe whatever it is they`re peddling has value, but to force it in front of you, whether you want to see it or not.
For this to be effective, the adco set-top boxes will have to come complete with some kind of spy technology â TV cookies, in effect that`ll phone home with precise details of what you`re watching, when you`re watching, how long you watch for, and so on.
Then they`ll know how to best improve your television viewing experience.
Online, we can protect ourselves to a very considerable extent with various kinds of ad blockers and cookie killers.
Will we be able to do the same once web-style advertising hits our home TV sets?
But, “It’s already here,” said Maelstorm in a Reader’s Write, stressing »»»
With digital cable, the cable company can read the box and see what channel it`s on. Not only that, they can also see what buttons you are hitting on the remote in real-time. How do I know this? I had a problem with the cable and the support tech on the other end of the call went inside the box and could see exactly what I was doing in regards to what buttons I was pressing on the remote.
The telephone company version of this is that the SERVER sends the feed to you over a VDSL line. The set-top box sends the request to the VDSL modem (If it`s not integrated) and the modem sends it to the network which eventually ends up at the telco`s servers. Every modem has a unique ID and a unique SSL certificate to authenticate it to the server. Since the server does the authentication, it knows which box made which requests, and what streams are being sent to which boxes.
With this, they can gather enough data for a targeted solution. A tomahawk cruise missile coming to a living room near you.
Directv reached into my set top box and turned off my movies
Set-top boxes can, of course, be about more than purloining user data. And Gene knows all about that, as per his time line below.
- 1996- Directv sends employees to Canada to work with Royal Canadian Mounter Police
- 1996- Quoted in the Toronto Star, Judge Craig : http://www.efc.ca/pages/media/toronto.star.22nov96b.html accused the RCMP of working for US corporations such as Directv, instead of working on behalf of Canadians. It was later said that: DirecTV is not a lawful distributor in Canada, since it is not licensed by the CRTC to offer satellite service in Canada. Craig questioned why the RCMP were conducting seizures and raids on behalf of Directv when Directv was not registered by the CRTC. Also the Judge questioned monies exchanged between Directv and the RCMP
- 1997- Class action filed against Directv in Luaces V Directv for having taken programming away from subscribers. Attorneys general from 31 states signed onto this and reached a settlement with Directv paying $11 million.
- 1998- Nov. 24, 1998 a business named Vcipher raided in Canada. It cannot be confirmed, but it was said Directv was present for this raid and shortly thereafter, received data records from the Vcipher business. It was also said, but cannot be confiirmed, that shortly thereafter, Directv received the customer data base from that November 24, 1998 raid. The records were then used till 2005, the next 7 years, to file suits against some 30,000 persons in the US. One of the problems noted was that in most states there is only a two year statute of Limitations once Directv first learned of the individual’s identity but then used this data base from 1998 for 7 years.
- 1998- The November 24, 1998 Vcipher data base was used to sue 70 people in a California court before Judge Manual Real.
- 2001- Around this date Directv decided to step up their lawsuits against people whose names were obtained from Canadian data bases to include the Vcipher 1998 data bases. Directv failed to differentiate between those who were members of the 1997 Class action who had bought an access card to stop or block the 1997 theft, from those intending to steal Directv programming. They simply sued everyone to include those who bought the Canadian access card to prevent the, according to what the Luaces V Directv lawsuit said, Bait and Switch. This was the case where victims of the bait and switch were sued for having defended against it.
- 2005- 2005 or there abouts the 11 circuit appeals court issues a decision regarding the Directv lawsuits. It was shortly there after, Directv discontinued their suits.
“On January 10, 1997 Directv reached into my set top box and turned off my movie channels,” he says. “They did this to 1 million subscribers. Then refused any refund and said they would give back the movie channels if I paid them more.”
The quote at the beginning of this popst refers to counter-measures, and Gene knows about that too.
“Knowing in advance of the planned theft, I bought an an access card from a supplier in Canada,” he says, continuing »»»
The cards were legal to buy in Canada 1997 and paid subscribers are permitted to buy the card was the only way to obtain your programming.
But there is a deeper right.
The right to protect the things you buy when you find someone intends to steal it. I have no problem buying an access card in an effort to protect my programming from theft. I cannot help directv wanted to take consumer programming away via DRM but I have a basic right to defend that which is mine. And that theft did occur as the settlement in Luaces of 11 million was paid class members.
In 2003, the company mailed me a letter. I called them and reminded them I was with in my rights as they were fined 11 million under a 31 state attorney general agreement. A month later they filed suit in Federal court.
They said nothing of there prior theft of my programming. They said nothing of the prior settlement with 31 state attorney general’s. They said nothing that they broke the access cards I had to buy. They said nothing that I bought the access card to stop a theft they committed. Worse, they even said I had not paid for service when I was part of the 31 state attorney general class action.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there are thieves around. Not much I can do about them. But when justice takes the side of thieves and forgets the right of victims, we have a major problem. While DirectTv did what they did, the US government should have stopped any such lawsuit as the later lawsuit settlement now changed the class action settlement.
That’s the reason why two courts should ever be used. Now we have conflicting settlements — one from 1998, and another from 2005 and under different judges and diferent courts.
Which one do we follow? DirectTv attorney’s are just like RIAA attorney’s.
From a fundamental standpoint, our constitution permits people to take passive measures to protect from theft and fraud. The purchase of the access card is permitted under the law under two points. One, subscribers in 1997 bought there own access cards and permitted directv to control the card. But never to control the card to commit theft of programming. Two, Our constitution permits a person to defend against theft. If the DRM rights holder does not want to loose there rights, do not use the rights to commit theft.
Then the DRM statutes permit a rights holder to profit from that prior theft. It forces the victim of theft by DRM to pay the perpetrator. The perpetrator stands to gain from the crime. As a victim of DRM theft, no one recognizes the Victim/whiteness statutes where victims are helped. It has become clear to me that our justice system prefers a DRM rights holder to profit in a civil suitarising out of a theft where digital rights were used to carry out that theft.
I have to say that all this is very backwards. I can no longer stand by a system where the justice system assists the perpetrator in profiting from theft. This is why the next time I am a juror or a whiteness, I have to ignore justice. It was far worse for justice to ignore a victim of crime in my estimation. The only thing which was truthful in that federal lawsuit was I bought one access card and had that one repaired. The entire thing was made up yet people are permitted to lie to courts in order to profit from awards.
I think if you read Luaces V Directv, it becomes clear just what they did.
I think if you read Luaces V DirectTv, (Miami Federal 1997) it becomes clear just what they did. They used their intellectual property rights to reach in and turn off programming. Then as the suit says, tried to get subscribers to pay even more.
Under those circumstances, one has been guaranteed a constitutional right to protect their programming. The purchase of an access card which blocks their unlawful use of the access card (there DRM rights) is how a person would protect from a theft. For the justice system to advocate differently would be to embrace the thought
The DRM rights owner can take away at anytime and you can do nothing but sue. Sue a 6 billion dollar company? I should be so rich. The access card is a double edge sword. When used responsibily, it is of value,when used to take away customer programming, the customer can employ the use of another access card for protection to stop a crime.
The government is on a very slippery slope when they say, no one can use counter measures where an intellectual property owner is involved. This then would provide a license to steal should the rights holder decide. Then in the case where the public uses counter measures to reverse a theft, defend from theft by DRM owner, DRM laws favor the perpetrator suing the victim for not having cooperated during the theft.
When the DRM rights owner sues, the suits end in confidental agreements. The person who defended their peoperty end up having to sign away constitutional rights and liberties while the DRM owner signs away no such rights. These confidental settlement agreements between citizens and private corporations are not good public policy.
In another Reader’s Write, Gene says, “Thoreau declared that, if the government requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
“Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”
April, 2009
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April 20th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Was the broadcast flag to be used on the airwaves? If so, it should be considered theft of public resource.
April 20th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Download the scene releases of TV shows and movies and you’ll never have a problem with DRM. You’ll also giving money to those thieves.
August 27th, 2011 at 7:11 am
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