Echostar Strikes Again...

[thesatguy]

Echostar has asked Coolsat to turn over the names of everyone who has purchased a Coolsat FTA satellite receiver... you should assume they will ask all the other FTA receiver companies too...



Tuesday, August 19, 2008

EFF Urges Court to Protect Customers' Privacy


San Francisco, CA - iThe Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a federal court Friday to reject efforts by Echostar to get the names and addresses of every customer that purchased a free-to-air satellite receiver. Echostar claims that the receiver can be modified to pirate DISH satellite TV programming. EFF argues that Echostar's demand, which seeks all purchasers regardless of whether they actually pirated DISH TV, would violate user privacy and leave innocent purchasers vulnerable to bogus legal threats.

The demand for customer records came up in a lawsuit between Echostar, the company behind the DISH satellite TV service, and Freetech, Inc., the manufacturer of Coolsat free-to-air satellite receivers. As part of the suit, Echostar subpoenaed 17 distributors of Coolsat receivers, demanding the names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and other information of every person who purchased a Coolsat receiver over the last five years.

"Innocent customers should not be dragged into federal litigation just because they bought a product that other, less scrupulous purchasers may be hacking for unlawful purposes," said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "The court should recognize the privacy interests of these customers, especially since Echostar does not need these customer lists in order to have its day in court against Freetech."

In recent years, satellite TV companies, record labels, and movie studios have all engaged in dragnet litigation tactics that threaten individuals with costly lawsuits unless they pay significant financial sums to "settle" the dispute. These mass litigation campaigns leave innocent consumers trapped between paying a "settlement" for something they did not do or facing even higher legal costs to prove their innocence. Satellite TV provider DirecTV pioneered this approach in 2001, threatening more than 120,000 individuals with legal action and commencing more than 24,000 federal lawsuits, often with no evidence other than the fact that the individual purchased multi-purpose devices that could be used for piracy.

"Once the names of Freetech customers are disclosed to Echostar, there may be little that any court can do to protect these people from harassment, settlement demands, and legal expenses," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "This may be the last chance the court has to protect the privacy of these individuals."

[zebra20zebra20]

I was just going to call charlie and get Hi-Def, NOT NOW!!!!!!!

[A-33]

FTA= FREE to Air , I can do whatever i want with this receiver.

[aamert]

Originally Posted by A-33

FTA= FREE to Air , I can do whatever i want with this receiver.

not exactly

[CMDKLT]

It is illegal to modify ANYTHING for the purposes of commiting fraud and obtaining services unlawfully. The blue boxes used by phone phreakers back in the 60s and 70s were called 'toll fraud devices'. With a FTA receiver you can watch programming legally that is in the clear like NASA. However if you modify that receiver to steal commercial services it doesnt matter if you own the hardware. It's just like identity theft,is it OKAY to modify a photocopier so it is capable of copying a SSN card or drivers license? That photocopier becomes a device for commiting fraud.

So anyone know when the bins are coming out? Burn notice is on tonight.

[sexocista]

yes but u could be using your fta to get real fta channels at not be stealing the signal the courts dont no that... they will have to raid everyones house and confiscate their boxes to see if they have alter it in any way sound like a huge proccess i think is more hot hair by the providers to keep u in line and somehow slow down the fta sales that are killing their proffet$
$$

[Jasonds1974]

the first major fta company that gives names no one eles will buy from them
that will put them out of bussiness. so they would have to be forced to do so. any good lawyer will stop this BS if they can. then people will just buy boxes off dealers (cash) or some 2nd party person.

[main]

y do u thin they will get around to others, an do u think they started with cools$t because they think they are a good weak link to start with.

[main]

Originally Posted by sexocista

yes but u could be using your fta to get real fta channels at not be stealing the signal the courts dont no that... they will have to raid everyones house and confiscate their boxes to see if they have alter it in any way sound like a huge proccess i think is more hot hair by the providers to keep u in line and somehow slow down the fta sales that are killing their proffet$
$$

yep, but keep your remote close to do a quik factoy reset, no dn, or bev channels an back to true fta bin.

[vampire_lestat]

Originally Posted by sexocista

yes but u could be using your fta to get real fta channels at not be stealing the signal the courts dont no that... they will have to raid everyones house and confiscate their boxes to see if they have alter it in any way sound like a huge proccess i think is more hot hair by the providers to keep u in line and somehow slow down the fta sales that are killing their proffet$
$$

There is a lot of if's here but IMO- hypothetically...

I would not think the police would raid someones house as much as charlie would make it a civil issue more than a criminal issue.

now lets say one of the web sites that dish managed to shut down such as snaggletooth’s old site - now lets say snags settled out of court and one of the provisions was to give up his members list to charlie-
Now Charlie matches one of the names on snags list with one of the names on the list that coolsat provides - (this is not enough proof yet - IMO)
Now they look at all the posts that this person made and look for incriminating evidence – someone posts “is dish up or down?” and the suspect posted that it is down! This is what I mean by incriminating

Not trying to start mass hysteria and I am no lawyer but IMO this is a possibility and this kind of evidence would be very incriminating!

[atty]

I wouldn't get too excited just yet. Coolsat is a named party in one particular lawsuit, hence they are subject to subpoena. Doesn't mean the court won't issue a Protective Order limiting the scope of the records, or even quash it altogether. It also doesn't mean, at this point, that all other FTA manufacturers are subject to a blanket Request for Production in this particular proceeding. Never mind that before all this occurs, someone is going to have to get past the central legal question of whether mere possession of an FTA capable receiver is sufficient to support a civil claim of signal theft.

I realize that, all the legal academics aside, Charlie is still free to launch an intimidation campaign. But....that has always been one of the risks.

[witchdocto]

Smart words to live by........................... ALWAYS PAY CASH.............

[Alman]

Originally Posted by main

yep, but keep your remote close to do a quik factoy reset, no dn, or bev channels an back to true fta bin.

Nope, that is not quite correct. If you have the latest bin loaded, and have scanned in all the channels, performing a factory reset at that point only resets the settings back to factory defaults and clears the channel list. The actual bin file is still loaded complete with the image of a nag2 card embedded in it, you know, 3rd party software. The way to prove I am right, is to go ahead and do the factory reset as described above, voila, no provider channels, but at that point there, all one has to do is rescan the channels again and watch TV - no bin loading required!

In other words, if the feds were knocking at your door, you would have to factory reset AND load the factory bin file (e.g. 101 for the SV8K) in order to have a "clean" system for the feds to see.......

[george burns]

I don't think the feds are going to be knocking on anyones door to check their reciever. They are a little busy these days

[Paramount]

Consider this...
Dave sent 120,000 letters, if 24,000 ended up in court, you can bet probably even more ended up settling. If 24,000 settled at the rate Dave was offering, thats $84 million, with barely any legal fees paid out by Directv to obtain those settlements in comparison. $84 million is a lot considering dishs last earnings report was under $60 million total. They need a way to pay for Nagra 3. Bell already sent some letters, I wouldn't be surprised if Dish started as well. We know the providers love to go fishing! Just make sure the sites you frequent are offshore, like HashHU!