# illegal dish network rececption; FTA



## brant

We have a handful of people here selling FTA systems w/ dish network programming.

basically the pitch is, "its in the air, it crosses your property, you have every right to receive and watch the channels without paying for them."

i have some customers who use these systems and have tried unsuccessfully to convince them its illegal.

the video distribution system i'm working on right now was supposed to be served by directv, but now someone is selling them on the fta dish network system. 

i do my best to talk them out of it, citing the reprogramming the boxes need periodically and other things. but its hard to convince them its illegal when they've been told otherwise. for some reason, it just "makes sense" to people that a signal crossing their domain is rightfully theirs for the taking.

are there any articles for dish press releases that plainly say "this is illegal"?

thanks


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## Davenlr

Federal law says its illegal to unscramble encoded transmissions, period. Call Dish and report them. Let Dish contact the Feds.


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## kenglish

As long as they keep the dish mounted next to the still, they'll prob'ly be OK .


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## FTAluvr

kenglish said:


> As long as they keep the dish mounted next to the still, they'll prob'ly be OK .


Or on the greenhouse for the -ahem- medicinal plants.:grin:


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## willc

With all the new ads on the site looks like there are lots of ways to steal Dish Network.


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## Grentz

I didnt realize that Dish had been hacked again.

Nothing good ever comes from it though, eventually they catch up and those involved in it get either in big trouble, or users get cheated on services they paid for that just stop working.


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## bruin95

Grentz said:


> I didnt realize that Dish had been hacked again.


What do mean "again"?


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## Grentz

I mean back in the late 90s/early 00s it was popular hacking DirecTV and Dish, then they did upgrades that pretty much kicked them all out I thought (at least I know they did on the Directv side).


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## FTA Michael

willc said:


> With all the new ads on the site looks like there are lots of ways to steal Dish Network.


If you see an ad for pirate equipment sales, take a screenshot or make a note of the seller's domain name, then let us know. On FTAList.com, I've got Google ads, and several pirates tried to advertise through Google before I blacklisted them.


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## BattleZone

Grentz said:


> I didnt realize that Dish had been hacked again.


Incredibly, Nagra sent the Nagra v2 code to an employee of NDS (DirecTV's security provider), who apparently released it. This resulted in a big lawsuit where Dish did such a bad job that despite winning, they were awarded a big $1500.00.

Anyway, as a result of that code getting out, people have been using FTA boxes with illegal ROMs to hack Dish signals for years. It's rampent, which is why Dish is issuing the new purple access cards and about to switch everything over to Nagra v3 in the next month or two.

As for the morons buying FTA systems to get Dish; they'll be locked out very soon, and without the source code for Nagra3, they'll find that hacking the system will be a whole lot more difficult, and most of those FTA boxes will effectively be bricks (to the people looking for free mainstream programming).


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## Grentz

IIP said:


> Incredibly, Nagra sent the Nagra v2 code to an employee of NDS (DirecTV's security provider), who apparently released it. This resulted in a big lawsuit where Dish did such a bad job that despite winning, they were awarded a big $1500.00.
> 
> Anyway, as a result of that code getting out, people have been using FTA boxes with illegal ROMs to hack Dish signals for years. It's rampent, which is why Dish is issuing the new purple access cards and about to switch everything over to Nagra v3 in the next month or two.
> 
> As for the morons buying FTA systems to get Dish; they'll be locked out very soon, and without the source code for Nagra3, they'll find that hacking the system will be a whole lot more difficult, and most of those FTA boxes will effectively be bricks (to the people looking for free mainstream programming).


Gotcha, now that you mention it I remember parts of that story but didn't know the whole thing.


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## brant

Grentz said:


> I didnt realize that Dish had been hacked again.


i know several people who've been watching dish illegally for years. i know of at least two "companies" here that sell illegal dish programming. they require you to purchase your own equipment elsewhere, but provide you with the codes by e-mail to put on a flash drive in the receiver.


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## BattleZone

brant said:


> i know several people who've been watching dish illegally for years. i know of at least two "companies" here that sell illegal dish programming. they require you to purchase your own equipment elsewhere, but provide you with the codes by e-mail to put on a flash drive in the receiver.


Yeah. In other words, they are charging people for something that they don't make and that any of their customers could get themselves for free, by going to the same hacker sites that these guys go to.

Anyway, they'll be out of "business" soon. Nagra 3 is going to make a whole lot of "FTA receiver" owners very unhappy.


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## brant

IIP said:


> Yeah. In other words, they are charging people for something that they don't make and that any of their customers could get themselves for free, by going to the same hacker sites that these guys go to.
> 
> Anyway, they'll be out of "business" soon. Nagra 3 is going to make a whole lot of "FTA receiver" owners very unhappy.


i just went in search of articles about this i could send to some folks to persuade them to not steal.

unfortunately, what i found was people already saying they've cracked Nagra 3 or developed some type of workarounds.

I was reading on some of those FTA sites; Its amazing, yet completely disappointing, just how proud those people are to be thieves.


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## FTA Michael

brant said:


> i just went in search of articles about this i could send to some folks to persuade them to not steal.


Sorry, I didn't realize that you were really having trouble finding such stuff. A quick Google on "Dish sues pirate" yields:

NC Cable operator gets 14 months in federal prison: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/nov/15/dish-goes-after-signal-pirates/

Dish sues FTA receiver distributor: http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6462380.html

NY man gets 18 months, $308,000 bill: http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6286421.html

Dig around further and you'll hear about satellite operators who nailed distributors, then took their customer lists and sent quiet "Send us a few $thousand or we'll sue it out of you" letters to everyone on the list. Ditto for pirate sites and their active members.

Not only is piracy bad karma, it carries a real chance of getting slapped hard. Life is a lot simpler if you pay for what you want.


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## BenJF3

Truth is you could probably all but kill off most piracy if the programming fees were more reasonable or people could truly just buy the channels they wanted.. I agree it's not worth it to hack/steal the signal, but if there was no market for it then it wouldn't exist. Sure, you'd still have some, but not on a grand scale. Also, alot of these so called free TVer's are selling bogus stuff and ripping people off. To my knowledge, D* has been secure since about 05' and yet there are still thieves selling hacks and equipment online.


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## brant

BenJF3 said:


> Truth is you could probably all but kill off most piracy if the programming fees were more reasonable or people could truly just buy the channels they wanted.. I agree it's not worth it to hack/steal the signal, but if there was no market for it then it wouldn't exist. Sure, you'd still have some, but not on a grand scale. Also, alot of these so called free TVer's are selling bogus stuff and ripping people off. To my knowledge, D* has been secure since about 05' and yet there are still thieves selling hacks and equipment online.


The cost of programming isn't that unreasonable. The problem is, people want what they cannot afford (hey, where've we seen that before?  ) and if they can't afford it, its obviously too expensive for everyone else also. Right?

A la carte programming sounds nice, but I'm not sure it would be feasible for the cable and satellite companies. If we all only paid a few bucks a month (less than $10) for just the couple of channels we want, that wouldn't be enough money for the cable/sat co's to operate.


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## ChrisPC

IIP said:


> As for the morons buying FTA systems to get Dish; they'll be locked out very soon, and without the source code for Nagra3, they'll find that hacking the system will be a whole lot more difficult, and most of those FTA boxes will effectively be bricks (to the people looking for free mainstream programming).


I'm glad to see it. I remember when D* did that; I was glad then, too. I was about the only one I knew that actually paid for it. I knew installers and even law enforcement officers who had hacked cards. Of course, after D* fixed that, most of them went to hacked E* systems.


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## Kheldar

brant said:


> A la carte programming sounds nice, but I'm not sure it would be feasible for the cable and satellite companies. If we all only paid a few bucks a month (less than $10) for just the couple of channels we want, that wouldn't be enough money for the cable/sat co's to operate.


And since the companies would never recover the up-front equipment costs from customers paying "less than $10" per month, you could say goodbye to all of the free equipment deals. Part of the equipment cost is subsidized by the programming packages.


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## BattleZone

brant said:


> unfortunately, what i found was people already saying they've cracked Nagra 3 or developed some type of workarounds.


That's BS, actually. What you're hearing is rumors coming around full-circle, based on people who don't know the difference. Nagra 2 wouldn't have been hacked except that the source code got released into the wild. And even then, the bi-weekly ROM updates haven't been exactly reliable, if you read all the posts from people about various things not working.

It cost Nagravision (and Dish) BIG money to be hacked, so it isn't likely that they'll make the same collossally stupid mistake again.


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## paulman182

Acutally, it cost DirecTV big money when Dish was compromised, too.

An illegal "free" subscriber would be just as likely to pay for Direct as Dish, if he could not pirate either system. They pirate Dish by default.


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## BattleZone

True that. But, naturally, Dish "feels" like it is the one primarily being harmed, since it is there signal being pirated. I agree with your point completely, but it's more of a theoretical revenue loss rather than a direct, provable one.

DirecTV used to be widely pirated in the early part of the decade, and believe me, they know it isn't in their best interest for either system to be compromised. Note that the person who released the Nagra code doesn't work for DirecTV, but for DirecTV's encryption provider. I'm sure DirecTV wasn't very pleased at the whole situation either.


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## brant

friday, i went on a service call at a home theater.

the problem was related to the electrical system feeding the a/v gear; the customer had a nFusion HD fta satellite receiver, and was receiving illegal dish programming. 

Since we'd just discussed this on here, I asked them what their plans were for the nagra3 encryption. The receiver was connected to the internet through the home network, and the customer said all encryption hacking is taken care of by the company he bought the receiver from through that internet connection. He said they assured him there would be no interruptions once the nagra3 encryption was enabled. apparently he'd already heard about it to have the conversation with whoever is doing the hacking. He didn't specifically say it was the manufacturer doing it, but for some reason the way he worded it made it sound like the manufacturer was providing the illegal programming cracks.

this customer is someone i do business with on a regular basis, so once the change is made, i'll make sure to ask them if they're still receiving channels. 

is it really that hard for dish to track the people doing this? it seems like they could have all the websites providing the codes shut down. why haven't they?


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## PTown

brant said:


> this customer is someone i do business with on a regular basis, so once the change is made, i'll make sure to ask them if they're still receiving channels.


That customer will.
Through my reading rounds I've discovered it's already being done with the Canadian equivalent provider, which is full blown N3.

By no means is it safe or guaranteed however. Sounds like they bought into the hype.


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## James Long

brant said:


> are there any articles for dish press releases that plainly say "this is illegal"?


DISH had a PirateTV channel for a while (it is probably on YouTube) with a video loop aimed at people who were receiving programming illegally. It was a nice warm "come in from the cold" type message that seemed to address those who bought "commercially sold" systems such as the ones discussed in this thread (people who may not have known they was receiving stolen content since they paid someone for the service.

If you dig up the law be prepared for a surprise. The way the law is worded a service is protected and it can be considered theft even if the signal is unscrambled. All the provider has to do is offer it as part of a subscription service. (Don't flame me, look it up.)

Of course we're more tolerant here at DBSTalk ... unscrambled is OK. We don't split hairs over whether it should be subscription or not.


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## BattleZone

brant said:


> The receiver was connected to the internet through the home network, and the customer said all encryption hacking is taken care of by the company he bought the receiver from through that internet connection.


This is common. Most people who buy these things aren't "geeks" who understand how it works, so there are plenty of websites that sell monthly subscriptions for updated ROMs, and more advanced ones that run their own servers (usually hosted overseas, where it's harder for US LE to get to) and set the receivers to check there for updates. While this is obviously illegal, you can imagine it's pretty easy to sell someone a box and a continuing monthly fee to keep it alive.



> He said they assured him there would be no interruptions once the nagra3 encryption was enabled.


They pretty much have to tell customers that, whether it's true or not. But if Nagra 3 really is hacked, Dish is screwed, and if Nagra 3 will still work on all the existing FTA boxes, they are screwed BAD. Dish is spending many millions on the card swap to switch to Nagra 3, and if that doesn't shut those boxes off, it's completely wasted money.



> is it really that hard for dish to track the people doing this? it seems like they could have all the websites providing the codes shut down. why haven't they?


Dish does what it can, but there are a ton of people doing this, and Dish mostly goes after the low-hanging fruit: people who are stupid, leave a trail everywhere, and have no resources to fight them. The people who are more advanced are also more experienced, and take measures to insulate themselves, such as off-shore servers.

Going after individual users is a losing position financially; litigation costs much more than they'll ever collect from an end-user. The only time it's really worth it is to catch one of the bigger "providers".


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## brant

IIP said:


> Going after individual users is a losing position financially; litigation costs much more than they'll ever collect from an end-user. The only time it's really worth it is to catch one of the bigger "providers".


I didn't mean to say individual users; i was referring to the internet sites and such that provide the hacks.

seems like you could get some kind of 'cease and desist' against them; but i guess if they're in another country that really wouldn't be much of a possibility.


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## BNUMM

I believe most of them are outside of the country.


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## MentalMidget

IIP said:


> Going after individual users is a losing position financially;


Kinda reminds me of the war on drugs...


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## S.C. Am

> But if Nagra 3 really is hacked, Dish is screwed, and if Nagra 3 will still work on all the existing FTA boxes, they are screwed BAD. Dish is spending many millions on the card swap to switch to Nagra 3, and if that doesn't shut those boxes off, it's completely wasted money.


Bell is wide open with IKS except for PPV and a few porn channels. It will be interesting to see if the NFL cuts Bell off Sunday Ticket this season.

Nagra 3 is a total waste of money. Why Dish and Bell spent 1 cent on N3 is beyond me, considering that IKS has been up & running for Europe for 18 months.


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## Mertzen

People ask me plenty about 'hot boxes' but I walways tell them: Not worth it. With the weekly or even more frequent down time you're going to be pisse dall the time.


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## brant

has Nagra 3 been implemented yet? I know three people who's illegal dish network boxes are still working just fine; one of them is an HD receiver and he gets every HD channel perfectly.


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## Mertzen

brant said:


> has Nagra 3 been implemented yet? I know three people who's illegal dish network boxes are still working just fine; one of them is an HD receiver and he gets every HD channel perfectly.


Partially. Canada's Bell has been completely switched over. On the dish side all programming from AnikF3 at 118.75 has been switched to N3. That is mainly international programming. There is word of delays to the rest of the switch.


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## brant

Mertzen said:


> Partially. Canada's Bell has been completely switched over. On the dish side all programming from AnikF3 at 118.75 has been switched to N3. That is mainly international programming. There is word of delays to the rest of the switch.


I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but two of those guys I know w/ the illegal boxes get that canadian programming.

The guy w/ the HD box has it connected to the internet, and all codes are automatically downloaded. He said on the site that he gets the code subscription from, they said not to worry because N3 won't be a problem for them.


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## Mertzen

brant said:


> they said not to worry because N3 won't be a problem for them.


Well if it wasn't a problem then why are people with illegal boxes repointing their dishes to E* birds ?


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## brant

Mertzen said:


> Well if it wasn't a problem then why are people with illegal boxes repointing their dishes to E* birds ?


i don't know.

i'm just relaying the information. maybe this guy has something not everyone else does?

i'm not really up to speed on hacks and such.


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## James Long

brant said:


> i'm not really up to speed on hacks and such.


That is good. We really don't want our members to be up to speed on hacking. Just know enough to see it as wrong and walk away.


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## Richard King

Treading too close to being too "instructional". Closed.


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