guilt by gear association
directv has an interesting approach to piracy… a short interview with “enforcement chief” lucas graves in wired sheds a bit of light…
wiredThe company has filed about 10, 000 lawsuits and mailed more than 100, 000 “demand letters” giving suspected pirates a brutal choice: Pay $3,500 to settle or go to court. Problem is, the campaign targets anyone who bought smartcard programming gear from certain merchants; officials just assume it’s used for hacking.
[wired] Your letters don’t distinguish between pirates and people who program smartcards for legitimate reasons, like security systems. Why not?
[graves] If an individual claims to have a legitimate use, he or she can furnish information – a business plan, maybe schematics – and our staff will evaluate it. In at least 20 cases, DirecTV chose not to pursue the matter after the individual provided background.
i’m just not comfortable with the idea of providing a “business plan” or “schematics” to prove i’m innocent.
are any tech-legal groups stepping up to defend anyone yet? 100,000 letters is a wide enough net that there should be more noise on this.