Um, so what? Broadcasters don’t have any right to make a profit. They have to have a business model that makes sense.
Not that this is necessarily a stupid model even if you don’t define unauthorized decryption as stealing.
They don’t really need to have everyone who decrypts their signal to pay them in order for them to make a profit. If it is sufficiently expensive to do your own decryption rather than purchase the keys from them, their model still works.
I imagine that DirectTV fits in that category quite well. The existince of other ways of decrypting the signal probably sets an upper limit on what they can charge for their decryption service, but it doesn’t really shut them down.
In a sense, what DirectTV sell is keys, with the satellite and signal acting as a loss leader, in much the same way that ink jet printers take a loss on the printers and make it up on ink even though there exists a 3rd party market in ink
I don’t know what the law says about this, but I really don’t care. If the I sample EM frequencies on my own property, I will do whatever I want to with the resulting data. If DirecTV doesn’t like that - I invite them to stop bathing me with their signal.
Of course they don’t have a right to a profit, but if you don’t make profit POSSIBLE, then they won’t exist at all. The business model doesn’t make sense if there will be legal aftermarket decryption available to everyone. The only reason anyone buys decryption from DirectTV is that the alternative is illegal. The law makes their business model possible in the first place.
BTW, the upper limit on what DirectTV can charge has nothing to do with decryption alternatives, it has everything to do with the cable companies, and what they charge. Illegal decryption is cheaper than buying it through DirectTV, else it wouldn’t exist at all. It’s less expensive even though it’s illegal, it would certainly become even cheaper were it to be legal.
They could function without the law. There are technical measures which would make illegal decryption far less convenient than buying service from DirecTV. People would be willing to pay more for reliable service that didn’t require them to input different codes every day, get their smart cards “fixed” once a month, or whatever.
Please explain why you feel this distinction is necessary; if it is illegal to decrypt the signals, then the devices that enable this are an illegal tool, but if it’s not illegal to decrypt the signals, why should it be illegal to sell some bit of home-brewed electronics?
Mr2001, certainly the satellite companies could wage a war of technology against equipment makers, constantly updating equipment and techniques to make unauthorized decryption inconvenient. Millions of receivers will need to be upgraded on a fairly regular basis, to stay ahead of hackers against whom there is no other defense. This war is guaranteed to be very costly, costs borne by consumers for no reason other than an unwillingness to let the law handle it.
I don’t see how this would work. If decrypting a signal is legal, there would be companies that manufacture unauthorized but legal receivers. Those companies only have to pay for the R&D of breaking the encryption, while the legitimate service provider will have to pay for the R&D of the encryption in addition to the cost of all the content. Do you seriously think the service provider can survive?
There are other ways they could do it without starting an arms race or requiring a law.
A quick example: They could change the keys every week, and connect the satellite receivers to a phone line to download the new keys every Monday at 3:00 AM. The receiver uses a username and password which is given to the customer when he signs up, and can only be used once a week. If you don’t sign up, you don’t have an account, so no keys for you; if you steal someone else’s account info, only one of you will get each week’s key, and the paying customer will notice, call DirecTV, and get a new password.
That example is similar to the way games like Warcraft and The Sims Online prevent nonpaying players from using their servers, without any arms race or need to invoke the DMCA.
I don’t actually believe that. But even if it is true so what? They don’t have a right to profit on a stupid business model. If, as you claim, the need to claim ownership of the EM spectrum within my home then their model is stupid and they deserve to go bankrupt.
Not that I believe that. They will always have an advantage in the key-selling busines because they get to make up the keys. That will gurantee that they can make a profit even if 3rd party key sellers exist.
It is part of an arms race, and it only works because it’s illegal for third parties to crack and distribute the keys. If it were legal, someone will develop an alternative key distribution service and the original company can do nothing to shut it down. As it is now, unauthorized keys cannot be distributed openly and therefore it’s difficult for the average user to get them.
But a lot of people want such services to stay in business. It’s analogous to copyright. If authors and writers couldn’t stay in business without the governmant making it illegal to copy their work, do they deserve to go bankrupt? Do we want that to happen?
Are cell phone providers also claiming ownership of the EM spectrum within your home? (Not that Sprint PCS seems to have much EM to spare for my home…)
Not to my knowledge. Of course, to use a cellphone, you need to broadcast as well as receive, and not just inside your home, but also outside it. It’s certainly proper for the government to require a license to use the public airwaves (i.e. those outside my home).
So I can listen to cell traffic without permission, but I can’t actually use a cellphone without a license. So there’s nothing wrong with the business model of the cellphone companies.
Incidently, If I turn my home into a Faraday cage, I can broadcast inside it only any frequency that I wish without asking permission. (because the cage keeps the broadcast <i>inside</i>)
I happen to know that there was a Laser-tag business that did exactly that back in Texas in the 80’s because they couldn’t get a license to use their radios.
Actually, this is not true. It happens that the current system used by DirecTV is weak enough that the 3rd parties can decrypt without ever actually cracking their keys.
It’s at least theoretically possible for their system to be strong enough that even without legal protections, they would be able to keep ahead of the hackers and make a profit.
It’s also possible that they could rely on copyright to protect their decryption system in such a way that hackers who sold keys would be in violation of copyright law (unless the only sold to other’s who had already licensed the service)
So? If their business model requires that they violate my rights then it doesnt’ matter how many people want them to stay in business.
Why do you feel that you have the right to do whatever you want with the signals coming through your property? There are many things which enter your property but you have limited rights to. The pieces of Space Shuttle Columbia, for example. Or regular TV and radio signals which you’re not allowed to record and sell for profit. You can’t connect multiple decoders to your cable TV without paying for each decoder. Cable modem users can sniff packets and see what their neighbors are doing online, but that’s clearly an invasion of privacy. You can’t shoot down airplanes that fly over your property, and you can’t use induction coils to steal power from nearby high tension wires or nearby broadcast antennas. Do you object to all these as well?
IANAL but … The company generates the signal that goes to the satellite and the pays to have it rebroadcast from the satellite. They own the signal at the beginning and I don’t think it can be treated as abandoned just because it is transmitted onto and into your property.
Selling is taking the home brewed outside the home.
In the battle between A Man’s Home Is His Castle and Property Rights, the man in the privacy of his own home wins, especially if that property is thrown into his home.
Record yes, sell no.
Why not? I thought Nixon settled this question with Ma Bell.
Then why don’t they do it? The answer, I believe, lies in the millions of receivers already in people’s homes. Upgrading to stronger encryption would require an upgrade to all those receivers. Regular upgrades of this technology would be extremely costly, but necessary to stay ahead of legal receiver manufacturers.
Trading one law for another, I don’t particularly see the difference. Unless this is designed to decriminalize the actions of the end user.
That’s a faulty analogy. Shuttle debris is a one time transient event. If I were to wake up with an astronaut’s helmet on my lawn, I could expect timely removal of said item by the proper owner.
If I were to wake up every single morning to find shuttle debris falling on my property, the proper owner saying “I’m sorry there’s nothing we can do, the laws of physics say that it’s going to land there,” and even the experts agree that short of building a (faraday) cage around my land to keep it out, I can’t prevent it from happening, you can be damn sure I’m going to put it to good use by re-tiling my countertop with it.
These have to be some of the most contorted and extreme arguments I can remember, trying to prove the waves inside my house are not fair game…
I can’t shoot down an airplane flying over my house? Of course not, but that airplane is also not within the four walls and roof of my house, rather it’s a couple miles above me. That’s just silly.
The satellite companies can’t make money otherwise? A) Who cares if they can’t, B) I suspect they actually CAN (There are these guys called the big 3 TV networks that have done it for years), and C) in ANY case profit doesn’t give them the right to violate my property. Would you agree that a hospital, if it “needs to” to make money, can come into your home, slit your gut open and take your liver for a transplant? If you don’t, then your argument is spurious.
Space shuttle debris? SC_Wolf debunked this one nicely already.
The bottom line is that there IS not a good, simple, logical argument to be made here for the “it’s wrong” camp. If they’re beaming this crap into my house, I should be able to do whatever I like with it. If they make it too hard to decode (which I believe they HAVE for nearly all folks), then they’ll pay for it if they want it. Period. The alternative is for THEM to keep it out of my house. It’s not incumbent on me to prevent it coming in any more than it’s incumbent on me to prevent toxic waste from a chemical plant coming in.
Those of you who think you have the “right” to do anything with the radio waves - do you take the same view with cable TV (some homes are wired for it even if they haven’t paid for the service) and encrypted cable channels? Should water, gas and electricity companies be responsible for placing the meters outside private properties? Otherwise you could tap into them upstream of the meter and blame the companies for sending unmetered electricity/gas/power into your property.