DrLizardo, you’re right, we should deny millions of people the opportunity to have satellite TV because the EM radiation is violating you. That EM radiation probably raises your exposure by a full hundreth of a percent, it’s practically criminal! Sure, some people might argue that you got more radiation from your PC while posting that one reply than you’d get from those satellites in a year, but that is irrelevant, right?
Grow up and enter the real world. These laws exist for the same reason that Patent and Copyright laws exist. They give innovators the ability to profit from their efforts, thereby insuring innovation. Eliminate the profit potential, and there would be NO satellite TV, period. You may think that’s ok, but millions of others don’t.
I think, Cheesesteak, that you’re putting the cart before the horse. If a fair law makes DirectTV’s business model untenable, the solution isn’t to make unfair laws: the solution is for DirectTV to alter their business model. Any argument that they need the laws in order to make money falls flat.
I, for example, would like to be able to deliver muffins to everyone in my neighborhood for a living. I’ll just drop a muffin off at everyone’s doorstep. They’re free to throw the muffin away, but if they eat it, they have to pay me two dollars. In order for my busines model to work, we must make it illegal for anyone to eat a muffin that’s been left on their doorstep and not send me payment.
Currently, it’s perfectly legal for someone to eat that muffin. Can I get the law changed just so my business model will work?
Certainly there are folks out there who would love a home-delivered muffin every morning. Do their preferences for my business outweigh the wisdom of the existing law?
This is not comparable to cable TV: if I pay for any cable television at all, I’m entering a contract with the cable company, in which we can each spell out our rights and obligations. Same thing with any other utility that gets hooked up to my home.
With satellites, either the company maintains ownership of the signal as it passes through my house (in which case I ought to be able to forbid them entry into my house), or they do not maintain ownership (in which case I ought to be able to do what I want with their signal).
Maybe they could have a working business model by releasing the signal for free and charging folks for decryption services. If they can’t get that to work, however, it’s no skin off my back.
Yes, if you can convince the government that this method of muffin sales is better for both the baker and the consumers. Of course it isn’t - it’s an insanely expensive and wasteful way of selling muffins. However, with satellite TV the current method is more convenient and affordable for both the provider and the consumer. Because the alternative is an arms race between the legitimate provider and makers of unauthorized decoders.
I don’t think I can get the law changed, issues of efficiency aside. This is similar to the fact that I can’t send you a magazine subscription without your requesting it and then insist that you either return it to me or pay me for it.
The basic principle is that if I place something in your property without gaining your permission to do so, you cannot control what I do with that item. DirectTV has come up with a business model that relies on changing that basic principle, and I think that the principle is stronger than their business model.
Technology changes those “basic principles.” People used to think that when you owned land, you had the right to do anything above and below their land. Nowadays nobody complains that an airliner is trespassing on your property 30,000 ft above, because making overflights illegal will benefit very few people and inconvenience many. Now satellite broadcast and encryption technology makes it convenient to limit our rights to the radio waves.
The laws make it cheap and easy for millions of people to get access to this entertainment, changing that law will make it expensive and inconvenient to get that signal, with no benefit to anyone except hackers trying to get something for nothing.
Changing the law results in ZERO benefit to anyone. How is the world improved if DirectTV has to spend millions on strong encryption? What benefit is there to a never ending technological war of encryption? Even if (and it’s a BIG if) DirectTV could still operate profitably with no law, you still won’t get the signal for free (strong encryption), and the signal will still be on your property. How have you benefited?
If DirectTV goes under, you won’t get the signal, and neither will anyone else, of what benefit is that? Sure, there isn’t a “signal” passing over your property, but there are still a thousand other signals passing through all the time… big deal.
Changing that law is a lose-lose situation, nobody’s life is made better, and millions may have choices taken from them. Unless the point of changing the law is to make it easy for people to steal DirectTV…
Cable -yes- but you can’t tap into a cable line you’re not paying for however if they send scrambled signals into my home along with basic service then they’re mine to do with as I please.
Meters -no- I’ve asked to have the utility so tapping in front of the meter is stealing. Now running lines through my property with eminent domain is another matter.
Do you think you should have to pay for an extenstion phone? 'Cause you used to have to do that. If you had more phones in your home than were leased from Ma Bell the Phone Police would come into your home and thrash you with the phone cord.
Cable TV, Water, Gas, Electric etc. all are entirely different from Satellite signals.
I have REQUESTED that these services be provided to me. In the case of metered service, check the service agreement: you not only request them, but agree to let them put the meter on your property while allowing them to retain ownership/control of it. It’s all AGREED TO.
If I choose to NOT receive them, they will be shut off at the source and NOT enter my home for me to “tap into” them at all. Case in point is the example above of moving into a house that’s already wired for cable. The cable won’t be “live” unless I ask for it to become so, and I actually CAN call up and insist they remove their service & equipment from my property entirely. I can’t do that with DirectTV signals…
What about regular radio and TV signals that come into my home of their own volition? Guess what, I’m free to make use of them without obligation to the sender…
It’s very simple. Either I should be able to make use of what enters my clear and unquestioned private property – my home (stop with the airliners at 30,000 feet and other nonsensical extreme points already… Someone wants ME to ‘grow up’ and live in the real world? Why don’t you just wiggle your fingers in your ears and say ‘neener, neener’ – it’s about as “grown up” as what you’re doing already), OR I should be able to not have it enter my home. Period.
Please note that I recommend and think the former is the far better option for everyone concerned and avoids the nonsense argument about “ruining it for everyone…”
You know what… I should be able to make as many copies of Windows as I like, and as many copies of CDs as I like, as many copies of a book or movie as I like. Who are these companies to say what I can and cannot do with a CD or DVD or software that I purchased? I mean, I bought it, it’s MY property, right? I can do whatever I want with it!
Well, it doesn’t work that way, to make copying that stuff legal would royally screw with the industry. There would be NO reason to make new software, or new music, or movies on DVD, because there would be no profit in it. So too with DirectTV, make unauthorized decryption legal, and it’s tantamount to making software/CD/DVD copying legal, it would flat out destroy the industry as we know it.
Cheesesteak: There you go again with the non-comparable comparisons:
In all cases you mentioned, you INITIATED the transaction. You purchased software, or a book or a movie. You AGREED to it. These are not situations where someone deposited something into your home without your consent.
In the case of Windows, it is in fact NOT your property. You have licensed the use of it. That is the user agreement. Having said that, even the user agreement must bow to copyright law and so outlines situations where you can copy (e.g. for backup) and/or make multiple uses of the software. You can’t sell it or give it to other people, but in your home, you can make various uses of it.
AND, regarding the items you mention which are simply covered by copyright law, it happens that you are flat out wrong. You CAN legally make copies of CD’s and DVDs and Books which you have purchased – for your own private use in your home. No problem. NOT illegal. If I have four stereos with CD changers and I want a copy of The Wall in each one, I don’t have to buy four copies; I can buy one and make three copies… (why I’d want to have it on every stereo is another whole thread)… Yes, you can’t give them to other people, you can’t sell them, you can’t post 'em on the Web for distribution, etc., but nobody’s suggesting that one should be able to do so with Satellite TV either.
Not true… the service contract could easily include a clause prohibiting customers from distributing the keys. Also, the alternate service would require modified receivers, which many customers aren’t willing to get (inconvenient, costly, voids the warranty).
DirectTV and other satellite companies aren’t sending the “EM spectrum.” They are transmitting a particular set of frequencies of EM energy generated at their expense. It is modulated in a particular fashion also at their expense. They have paid for the programming that is represented by that modulation. They have not abandoned it and in fact, by coding have made an attempt to protect it from theft and so can’t by any stretch be considered to have merely thrown it on the waters for anyone to use free of charge.
Whether or not their method of protecting their property is a reasonable attempt at doing so is debatable but the attempt at protection does exist and, I think, means that if you take it without paying, it’s stealing.
In so-called “intrusion” of their EM energy onto your property is merely a result of the physics of the process and I don’t see how it can be construed as giving you permission to use it free of charge. And I don’t know, but can you get a useable satellite signal without putting up an outside antenna? If not, then the signal isn’t in useable form inside you home. Of course, the presence of the signal in you home merely results from the physics and I don’t see how it can implied from it that you can overcome their protective coding and use the signal free of charge.
The various sophistical arguments that “they put it out so I can take it” in this thread are probably why the companies felt a need to lobby for and get the passage of a law to nail it down. As others have pointed out, it the signal could be legimately used for nothing, there wouldn’t be any signal to use free of charge.
Being able to wirelessly transmit (securely) over 100 channels of digital quality TV nationwide is admittedly a daunting, expensive and difficult task. However, it is my opinion that it is a very bad idea to sacrifice certain principles just to make it easier or less expensive.
The satellite signal is transmitted to your house whether you ask for it or not. And it is not a ‘consumable’, i.e. I’m not in any way making it un or less available to others by taking it, even without paying for it. The dish and receiver are not ‘restricted’ items. You can buy them at any electronics store just like a TV or toaster. You (now) must subscribe in order to get an access card but access cards are still not ‘contraband’ items. Yes, eBay won’t let you sell one without an accompanying receiver, but the police can’t arrest you for having one in your pocket (unmodified anyway) just because you can’t produce a DTV subscription contract.
My point is that if I (or others) can figure out a way to unscramble the picture merely by reverse engineering items which are freely & legally available (in other words nobody broke into DirecTV tech labs and stole information or hardware) then the burden is on the company to improve their security not to prosecute those who violate this quasi-honor system!
As long as I don’t sell hacked cards or charge admission to watch my TV there is nothing unethical with watching TV that was decrypted without stealing information or hardware but thru your own (and other’s) technical skill & intelligence. This is still freakin’ America.
OK, so how about a scrambled mural I put up on the side of my skyscraper (at my expense), expecting to sell special glasses to view the hidden picture? Is it “stealing” if someone makes his own glasses?
Does it matter where the EM energy originates? I could put up lights at my own expense… does that change anything?
Actually DirecTV services are offered in other countries too, but anyway…
Where exactly do you propose to draw the line? Say it’s OK for individuals to develop and use a decryption device. If it’s legal, then wouldn’t it also be legal to share that information (plans and source code) on the Internet? If something is legal to own and use, is it possible and practical to restrict its sales?
This is the same old argument used against copyright. It’s no more valid when applied to encrypted transmissions.
Of course it’s stealing. But the service provider has a responsibility to make theft reasonably difficult, in the same way that home owners have a responsibility not to leave stacks of $100 bills on their front lawn. If decoding the mural is sufficiently difficult so that you need to make some effort to develop the special glasses then yes, I think the mural painter has every right to sue bootleg glasses maker.
I guess I should have said: “I think the mural painter should have every right to sue the bootleg glasses maker.” I’m not sure he has under current laws.
hansel, your example is distinguishable from mine. I have no claim to merchandise left at the end of a street. I do have a claim to something in my house. That claim is even stronger when my claiming possession doesn’t deprive anyone else of the item (in this case, the electromagnetic waves).
Well, the EM energy that you use to see the picture didn’t originate at your expense. Just the same, I’m not sure that there is a hard and fast answer and if there is I con’t know it.
I think the difficulties that you and others point out are the reason that the satellite people wanted to settle it once and for all with a law and avoid the uncertainties of a common law argument.