DirecTV pursues alleged signal thefts

Bangor News ^ | 12/27/03 | Judy Harrison

[GregoryFul]

Who can know whether or not you have violated a law? Our legislatures and their agencies have established more laws than any human can begin to know. But since a powerful interest would like to protect their property, they probably have gotten legislation passed in order to threaten anyone who might happen upon it in any way - the public be damned!

[Wil H]

So by your argument it is ok to steal off the shelf at Barnes and Noble any book that you could otherwise borrow from a lending library. That makes perfect sense to me.

The lending libary didn't cost anything?

Well I pay plenty for mine, it's called TAXES.

You think the city built it up for free, that the staff are volunteers, and the books were all donated?

Your taxes give you the right to BORROW (limited use) from a library, not KEEP the contents, and if you make your own copies of that which you borrow then you are again breaking copyright laws.

[hotshot]

My neighbor in Florida has lots of trees that hang over onto my property. I do not complain, I like the shade. All of the trees(lemon, orange, tangerine etc.)drop fruit on my property. Bushel baskets full twice a year. So I have no right to that fruit? Or can my neighbor bill me or sue me for the fruit dropped on my property? Is it stealing if I eat one single fruit? (By the way I eat a lot of fruits) If signal falls in my yard and it costs nothing to the company who drops it, it isn't stealing.
What has it cost Direct TV to provide a signal to me for the last ten years? $0.00. I have never subscribed at that property. So it cost Direct TV $0.00 if I watched for the last ten years. Period.

[Lucky Lyn]

The latest round of lawsuits filed in Bangor stemmed from a raid on the California-based Computer Shanty two years ago.

So now the hardware is going to be raided and my name will come up because I bought a pipe wench?

[Wil H]

That's right it would have cost DirectTV $0.00 to generate that signal

The signal occurs by magic and the satellites are naturally occuring phenomena that floating around in space and just happen to reflect TV signals that cost DirectTV nothing so go ahead, use their signal all you want. They don't invest in transmission facilities or maintain any equipment so it should be free to everyone.

I have not cost Ferrari a penny over the last ten years so if I see one parked outside my house I think I'll just steal it.

Geez ! I don't know where you get your logic !

I'd cut back on that fruit eating if I were you.

[hotshot]

The subscribers are paying to have unwanted Direct TV signal fall in my backyard. If Direct TV has 10 subscribers paying $50.00 each then they bill out $500.00 and if they have 2 people watching by a cloned card who would never pay a cent to Direct TV, then it does not cost Direct TV a cent out of pocket for the 2 cloned watchers. Direct is making the only profit it will make on the 50 who paid for "service". Remember the word private property along with the concept of private property.

[Wil H]

If you steal DirectTV 's product then you are a common thief. It does not matter what their cost was.

If I inherit a work of art (no cost to me) and you steal it - you are a common thief.

And as to signals "dropping" in your yard - don't make me laugh.

The atmosphere is full of broadcast transmissions - satellite TV, Broadcast feeds, Thousands of cell phone calls, Metropolitan Area Network transmissions, Wireless LANs Satellite internet connections, private wireless networks, emeregency services, government networks - and you claim that anything you can intercept on your property is yours by right?

I don't think so.

Besides, you don't own the air above your property, if you do, then I hope the government fines you the next time the air in your neighborhood fails to meet pollution standards, after all, with ownership comes responsibility.

And just how much air do you think you own?

If a plane crosses your property at 10,000 feet is he trespassing, do you own that plane because it's on your property? No? well if you don't own the air at 10,000 feet where does the boundary lie? 9000? 1000? 1 foot? 1 inch?
Please tell me where your legal ownership is defined and and where it says you own the transmissions in your "owned airspace".

Even DirectTV customers do not "own" the transmissions they recieve, they have a license to have use of them, but they do not own them.

[Wil H]

This is nothing but extortion.

Oh PLEASE. It's theft of their product just as surely as if you walked into Wal-Mart,..

Actually, you are both right.

It is theft pure and simple. But the methods used to correct the problem are extortion.

Direct TV is making threats based on unprovable allegations against anyone and everyone that they think could possibly have stolen their product.

If you get robbed, you can't go demanding compensation from everyone that you suspect without any proof.

[hotshot]

Again property rights. The police according to you can hover a camera inside your property on a remote controlled copter and take pictures at will, right?

What if I have a crane in the street, located 100 foot from your property, but hang on the cable peeking in your windows? I don't touch your property so I have the right to just hang there correct?

The receiving dish is secured to earth not air. If you put a paper plate on my Florida Room breakfast table, inside my house, direct tv signal will fall on the plate. Once it touches the paper plate inside my house, who does it belong to?

[Wil H]

Your argument is totally moronic but....

The police according to you can hover a camera inside your property on a remote controlled copter and take pictures at will, right?

I'm not surehow they would get a remote camera INSIDE a property while attached to a helicopter .... but then you are confusing property rights with privacy rights and your argument has no merit.

What if I have a crane in the street, located 100 foot from your property, but hang on the cable peeking in your windows? I don't touch your property so I have the right to just hang there correct?

I suspect you would be obstructing traffic... and again you are confusing property rights with privacy issues. BTW if I owned property that overlooked yours and I could get the same vantage point from it as your hypothetical crane hanger who'd you suppose would be in the right...:-)

The receiving dish is secured to earth not air. If you put a paper plate on my Florida Room breakfast table, inside my house, direct tv signal will fall on the plate. Once it touches the paper plate inside my house, who does it belong to?

Not sure of your point here,

1. signals don't "fall" , they have no mass.

2. The signal would still be the propertiy of DirecTV if you were a subscriber or not.

3 You can't pick up satellite transmissions with a paper plate.

4 The only equipment that you CAN pick up transmissions from DirecTV is licensed and provided by them and it is illegal to to manufacture your own.

Your cell phone transmission to your therapist might pass through my house, does that mean I have rights to it?

[Arthalion]

Hey clamper, are you actually being sued or did you just receive "The Letter"? I bought a pair of programmers from a company in Jersey in 2001 and received a $3,500 demand for settlement from DirecTV in February of last year. Thinking that it was a mistake, I ignored it. I received a second letter last July that essentially gave me 90 days to pay up or prepared to be sued. I had my lawyer draft a nice response which pointed out that I'm a degreed computer scientist and that I'd bought perfectly legal smartcard programming equipment from a legally operating dealer, and that I looked forward to defending myself from their frivolous claims in court.

I think it was just a fishing expedition on DirecTV's part because I haven't heard anything back since :\

[clamper1797]

I received my second letter in Augest. I too am a degreed Electrical engineer I worked for 4 years as a smart card ASIC designer until I was laid off. I am presently using smart card technology in my own business to design systems that open/activate a wide variety of security devices. I have NEVER used smart card technology in anything even remotely related to decoding DAVEs' signal. BUT they are still harassing me for using a technology that they don't own.

[piasa]

I wish DirectTV would quit stealing all of my answering machine time. Their freaking truck "has been in my area," according to their freaking automated telennoyers now for three years and it's high time they go pester someone else, like maybe a New York homeless shelter.

[hotshot]

You have quite a liberal mindset there. You said that I do not own the air above my land. Can't answer the question by asking if the crane is blocking traffic. If a hundred dollar bill fell out of my pocket while I was hanging from a legally parked crane over your property, could I legally reach down and retrieve it? At what point does something in, touching, covering, etc your property become yours?

By the way, you have no privacy rights unless you have property rights.

[Wil H]

Liberal? Hardly!

If you hang from a crane in the street (a bizarre construct in the first place) then you are likely causing a public nuisance and should be removed.

I live on a hill, the house above me can look down into my property, So what are my "Property rights" if I choose to walk around naked in view of my neighbors? After all they are on their property and I am on mine and we both (by your definition ) free to do whatever we like.

As for electromagnetic transmissions "touching" your property, your premise is bizarre. In fact, once they "touch" your property, they are useless, they are distorted and no longer useable. You have to intercept them in mid air with equipment that is designed to do so, and, in the case of DirectTV, or any other subscription service, you need that provider's equipment to do so legally.

What is it that you don't understand about this?

There are thousands of Radio, TV, Telephone, radar, data, and lord knows what else, transmissions passing through the air over your property all the time. Most of these you have no rights to whatsoever, and in fact, can be prosecuted for INTERCEPTING them.

You bought a property, a building(s) and a parcel of land. You have limited use of that property based on the local zoning ordinances and possibly your financing of it, You don't own the atmosphere above it or any part of it, and you likely don't own the rights to the minerals in the ground underneath it either.

And as to dropping a hundred dollar bill, no, it is NOT yours because it lands on your property, either by gravitational force or by wind current. If you don't understand this then maybe that's why we are having this conversation in the first place.

By your theory, a friend could come visit and park in your drive, then, when it was time to leave, you could turn to him and say, "I'm sorry, you have to walk home, that car is now mine"...

[sauropod]

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