[Attention] More Arrests: FTA Industry Collapsing

[CASPER]

More Arrests: FTA Industry Collapsing

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C / P FROM SKYVIEW...

Seems like theBroken is ratting out everyone to save his own skin. Now that Viewsat, Coolsat, etc., have been connected to the coder behind the scripts, expect the FTA players to hand over ALL buyer info and expect to get a $20,000 US or more demand letter in the mail, courtesy of Charlie.

Buying a cheap, Korean/Chinese made STB will probably turn out to be the most EXPENSIVE purchase anyone in the US ever made.

Good luck guys, but it looks real bad down in the US. It seems like Dish has the upperhand now. Utlimately, Dish wanted the customer info and was denied by the courts up until now, but now that they got theBroken admitting his connection to all the FTA suppliers, Dish will be getting those customer lists in a hurry!

The coder who was making the files for Captain, Coolsat & Viewsat became known to everyone... Phillip Allison of Seminole, Florida... and in the court documents he has admitted making and selling the bin files to Freetech aka Coolsat and Viewtech aka Viewsat.

Echostar needed to prove a connection between the receiver makers and the pirate bin files and they have so its all downhill for Freetech & Viewrech from this point on. They will be making whatever settlement arrangements they can work out and they will be gone. No way to get out when somebody gives you up.

They also have proof this guy was sending the files to completefta.com and f2fta.com with instructions to post them. Anybody that can be tied to this guy is done for because he has given up everyone it looks like.

The current documents don't show any other websites but DISH may be keeping some of their investigations secret and we may find out some more names as time goes on.

The only surprise in the documents was that Allison stated in a communication that they had a software method to make Viewsat receivers work on Nagra's new system - it is not indicated if this was the add-on dongle for iks or the 'card' fix but most likely this guy would have gotten something to work.

So much for 'his' Nagra 3 fix.

UPDATE: Information is now available that a Neosat/K-Box coder has also been arrested - which makes sense as there is a connection to Coolsat and this investigation has been on-going for more than a year - however I haven't been able to confirm if this is true yet.



The court already was presented with a link between the coders and the FTA industry when they denied the subpoena requesting customer lists. Explain your legal theory on how will this will change the court's previous decision.

Well the guy is basically admitting to coding for Viewsat, Coolsat, etc. He must also be cooperating with Dish, so what else does the court want? If there was a wire transfer from Viewsat to this guy's account, or a check or any payment paper trail, Dish has proven beyond a doubt the merits of their case.

Basically, Viewsat/Coolsat will be settling now cause they have no chance in hell of winning, and as part of that settlement, Dish will demand customer records. They won't need a court order for those records.

Have a look at the Coolsat site - all their STBs have been discontinued.

 

[CASPER]

Dish network tells court News Corp unit hacked it

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By Tori Richards

SANTA ANA, Calif., April 9 (Reuters) - Hackers hired by a News Corp NWS.N unit stole and posted data that allowed free access to DN (DISH.O) satellite television service, the company said, in a corporate spying trial against its rival that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Dubbed the "Black Hat Team," the computer whizzes flooded the market with smart cards that allowed free satellite TV access, a lawyer for Dish said on Wednesday. The suit was brought by Echo*Communications which later split into two companies, Dish and Echo* Corp.

A lawyer for News Corps's NDS Group NNDS.O denied that the company engaged in spying, saying during opening statements in the trial that it was instead engaged in reverse engineering by obtaining the codes and were monitoring piracy.

"Because this is a competitive business, NDS also monitors competitors," NDS attorney Richard Stone told jurors. "NDS has done nothing to illegally harm or damage EchoStar. All NDS has done is compete hard and fair in the marketplace."

Dish is suing NDS and NDS Americas in a corporate espionage trial that U.S. District Judge David Carter said could bring an award of "hundreds of millions or perhaps billions."

The potential damages are based on claims of lost revenue and the cost of fixing the compromised system.

"(NDS) came up with a plan - take these hackers off the streets and turn them on the competitors," Dish's lead attorney, Wade Welch, told the jury. "They called it the Black Hat Team."

NDS, which provides encryption technology to a global satellite empire that includes News Corp's DTV in the United States, "made the calculated decision to hire the worst and most well-known satellite pirates and hackers in the world in an effort to establish and maintain control ... over its competitors' technology" EchoStar claims in its lawsuit.

The spying allegedly began in 1998 when DTV was constantly getting hacked and was debating whether to leave NDS and sign on with Echo*'s superior system, Welch said.

The covert operation was shut down in 2001 when federal authorities visited the California home of NDS' primary hacker, Chris Tarnovsky. The primary location where the cards were created was NDS' research facility in Haifa, Israel, according to the suit.

Dish is claiming copyright violation, conspiracy, and piracy in a case that is expected to last a month and produce testimony from hackers and top company officials from as far away as Israel, Europe, Switzerland and Canada.

Stone admitted that NDS worked with Tarnovsky but the goal was to shut down major piracy networks and aid law enforcement in prosecutions. NDS has been extremely proactive in working with police and prosecutors, Stone said.

But Echo* claims Tarnovsky's real role was to cause their undoing and posted Echo*'s access codes on piracy web sites, causing uncontrollable damage.

"We tried to plug up the hole," Welch said. "But it was hopelessly cracked." As a result, Echo*had to replace each subscriber's smart card that goes inside the black box at a cost of $90 million.

Stone said Tarnovsky wasn't the hacker who posted the code on the Internet and they've found the real culprits to be several other individuals. (Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Louise Heavens)