Court refuses to expose sat-receiver owners to Echostar's vengeful rage
Ars Technica's Julian Sanchez sez, "Just wrote up a piece on a pretty fascinating case, in which EFF filed an amicus brief, brought by Echostar under the DMCA against a maker of satellite receivers. Since DMCA makes liability turn on whether a device has a 'significant commercial purpose' that doesn't involve IP violation, Echostar had wanted to get the names of hundreds of thousands of people who'd bought receiver boxes. Also raises the troubling question of whether making an open/hackable device exposes you to liability if enough people misuse that device."
Privacy interests are typically afforded deference only to the extent that they implicate some tangible harm. The same standard generally obtains in privacy tort law, Lohmann told Ars, but here the court was prepared to afford the privacy claim added weight, because it was being invoked "as a shield, not a sword"—that is, to block future disclosure, not to win damages for past disclosure—on behalf of third parties not directly involved in the lawsuit.Court: Echostar can't get Coolsat customer data in DMCA case (Thanks, Julian!)Moreover, EFF's brief argued, Echostar's subpoenas were "especially troubling in light of past litigation" where another satellite TV provider, DirecTV, had similarly obtained customer information in the course of a civil suit against a device manufacturer. The company then sent out 170,000 letters pressuring customers to agree to a $3,500 "settlement" or face litigation. Attorneys for Echostar dismissed this as mere speculation, averring that the company had "no present intent to initiate additional lawsuits," but adding that "customers that are found to be engaged in satellite piracy should not be permitted to use so-called 'privacy rights' as a shield to avoid detection and civil liability."
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If they're "so-called 'privacy rights'", then it should also be "so-called 'piracy'".
I just wanted to throw in that the truly hackable FTA receiver is the Dreambox, which runs Linux in the good way (not in the way TiVo takes advantage of).
And yes, there are also extension modules to plug in Nagravision keys into the Dreambox, just as there are for the other de rigueur hackable FTA receivers such as the Viewsat and Coolsat.
But mostly the point is to be able to DVR your favorite satellite shows to a normal unencumbered hard drive, without all the TiVo proprietary DRM crap. Every cable / satellite provided receiver limits you to the pitiful quantity of storage built-in to the box and takes pains to prevent you from offloading it to another storage medium. (Drive full? Tough luck!)
Not to mention how cable and satellite companies make a killing on the side business of renting rather than selling the receivers (and all the legal powers conferred to the company by end-user non-ownership of the box).
Finally, free-to-air satellite is really cool. It's like the perspective of shortwave radio but for television. Check out what's on IA5 / Galaxy 25. Plus, GlobeCast World is the only way to catch al-Jazeera English in the USA besides the tiny resolution YouTube videos online, and I need my fix of People and Power, Afshin Rattansi, and Max Keiser. Galaxy 25 also hosts MHZ Worldview, for Deutsche-Welle English, EuroNews, etc.
That would be like the police getting a lit of all cigarette buyers so they could start asking each and every one if they then pass them on to minors.
Or sending all car owners a fine for speeding on the theory that everyone does it.
There's a reason you need to be caught in the act. if they can't figure out a way to do that, then it's their problem.