Legal Issues

Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick





DirecTV Charged With Racketeering For Forcing Innocent Techies To Pay

from the fight-back dept

A few months ago we had the story of how DirecTV was harassing innocent techies who happened to buy smart card readers. Clearly, many of the people who buy those readers were using them for illegal purposes (such as pirating signals), but there are legitimate uses for them as well. DirecTV was of the opinion that if you bought such a smartcard reader you were guilty by association - and got their hands on some customer lists of some websites that had been selling those readers. They then sent threatening legal letters to all those customers, telling them to pay $3,500 or face legal consequences. Many of the accused techies fought back and a confused judge ruled against them and even made them pay DirecTV's legal fees. Now, however, those techies are fighting back again, and are accusing DirecTV of violating racketeering laws normally used to put organized criminals in jail. They claim that DirecTV was basically using extortion (and fraud) to force them to pay $3,500 or face a costly lawsuit. DirecTV points to the earlier lawsuit and say they expect this one will turn out the same way.

5 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 

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  1. No Subject Given

    by Ed Halley - Sep 4th, 2003 @ 6:18am

    Now if only the SCO debacle would reach the courts...

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  2. Re: No Subject Given

    by bastard sam - Sep 4th, 2003 @ 6:49am

    Patience young grass hopper. The courts usually end up making the correct assesment. But only after years of bad ones.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  3. May I ask your zipcode please ?

    by George Orwell - Sep 4th, 2003 @ 8:44am

    See what happens when you blindly allow every corporation on the planet to have your social security # , address , telephone number , zip code , income range , etc ... ?
    And people wonder why I'm concerned about privacy ?
    Might a suggest a click away to www.nocards.org for those that want to learn how to begin to protect your 4th Amendment ?

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  4. Re: May I ask your zipcode please ?

    by Anonymous Coward - Sep 4th, 2003 @ 5:00pm

    See what happens when you let any yahoo post on sites? They start promoting whatever wacked out pet peeve they have.
    And some people wonder why I'm concerned about spam.
    Might I suggest a click away to one of a variety of sites for those specifically provided to those who want to rant about...well, whatever they want to rant about

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  5. Re: May I ask your zipcode please ?

    by Anonymous Coward - Sep 5th, 2003 @ 7:18am

    and your point is ?

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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