If we do nothing now more buisiness will......, page 1

I wasnt real sure which forum to post this in but this one seem the most plausable. Allthough the subject matter may not seem very important to some it may become important to you in the future as other buisiness may travel down this road.

Directv has in the past 2 and a half years ran a campaign which it calls it anti piracy campaign. The campaign began when directv raided some facilities which sold various devices through the internet which some could be used to steal directv's signal if the devices where modified. A good percentage of these devices where nothing more then playstation mod chips which have nothing to with directv. Rather then investigating directv began to send out demand letters to each and every address listed in the raided companys database. Each letter stated that you where a thief and directv planned on suieng you for 10,000 per device and 100,000 per offense if you did not settle now for 3,500 out of court. Many people allthough innocent settled becuase it would be cheaper then attempting to provide innocence. If you called the number listed on the extortion letter and really had evidence you did nothing wrong they would still insist you where a thief and that you need to pay up or be sued. Over 150,000 of these letters where sent out all over the country and not one cent spent on investigating the alledged theft. Then days before the statute of limitations ran out on these raided companies records Directv began filing suit on every one who had not allready settled. At this stage directV would tell you that unless you gave them 4,500 and signed up for a years worth of service that you would loose in court and directv would be awarded 100,000 for the offense and 10,000 for each device.

One of the collection agents/ alledged investigators hired to help out with this extortion campaign began to ask questions after he noticed one of the individuals he was harrassing had only bought a plastic case. He was told it didnt matter what he bought , it was from where he bought it that made him guilty of sattelite signal theft. The investigator didnt like this aswer so he did some actual investigating into the list of devices Directv alledged to be illegal and only useful to steal sattelite signals. At that point the investigator learned that every device directv claimed to be used only for sattelite signal theft infact had many legitimate uses and that the places raided actually sold these devices at less then half of what other websites sold them at. Even though some people wouldnt care this guy did and began to question directv's practices and he also didnt quite have the heart to continue to threaten innocent people so his settlement ratio went down and he was fired. The investigator turned the tables on directv and filed a wrongful termination suit which has not been ruled on yet but directv did somewhat manage to get the investigators declaration sealed by the court system, however it is still available online at:

www.wumarkus.com...

The declaration details Directv's extortion campaign and how employees where given bonuses for how many people they got to settle no matter if they where guilty or innocent. It goes on to state how this investigator pointed out the innocence of these people to his supervisors and how this led to his dismissal. Now directv is desperately trying to get this document out of the publics hands and sealed so tight no one will be able to open it again!

Now allthough this may not affect you now it might in the near future as many other companies are watching directv's extortion racket. Perhaps the recording companies will step thier campaign and start filing suit against anyone who has ever used any file sharing software no matter if you downloaded music or not. The whole process can continue until just for owning a computer you could be sued becuase you have the tools needed to hack another computer. This extoriton campaign like mentality needs to stop and stop now, innocent people are being sued left and right, in my state alone over 150 case have been filed each listing over 20 defendants that equals 3000 people in my state alone being sued. In each of the cases the 20 people dont know each other nor are they even within 50 miles of each other but in order to save on the 150 dollar filing fee per case they lumped 20 people together per case. In one particuliar case a lady was working at the front desk of a large company and she signed for a UPS shipment like she always did however one of the companies that directv had raided apparently had shipped something to that compy on that day so since she signed for it she has to be a sattelite hacker and she is being sued. How would/will you feel when you get a letter telling you that you are about to be sued for over 100,000 dollars by a multibillion dollar company unless you give them a couple grand now?