Does anybody know if it is illegal to have those directv cards with all the channels programmed in them for free. My friend says that it is illegal to buy the card, but if you somehow get a hold of one, it is perfectly legal to use it because the airwaves open to the public.

Better leave that to the lawyers for the real answer, but, DirecTV sends monthly news letters to it's dealers. Many times they remind people of what they refer to as "theft of service" and they even will give names of people they have busted. Most of the time this involves the people making the cards, obtaining their database and busting the users also. They claim they are cracking down on the users with stiffer penalties (sometimes in the thousands of dollars!).

My main point is that they never refer to the act of buying or selling cards, but stealing the service. There have also been cases of people decrypting corporate satellite (private) broadcasts (again, free airwaves) and going to jail for it. Listening in to cell phone calls is illegal as it is considered an invasion of privacy even though these are broadcast to the general airwaves. The bottom line, I wouldn't want to get caught and try to argue the old "radio free America" argument.

randy

Good points, Randy... in another thread in this forum I just asked about cable-box purchases. Several months ago courts of varying levels in Canada held up the ruling that it is acceptable and legal here to get your signals any "legal" way you can. Several retailers, who previously had been busted by the RCMP for doing things like selling DirectTV (which is not "available" in Canada, had their charges dropped and their inventory returned to them. ... Mike

There is do definative answer for this question. The court battles change every week. One thing for sure is that it is illegal to do this in the U.S. since the service is available there. The not so sure is in Canada. Since it is not a legal service in Canada (not allowed due to CRTC regulations and CDN content rules)how can you steal it? That is the thing that has the courts going back and forth. "How can you steal something that is not allowed in the country". If you are in Canada go to your neighbourhood stereo place or buy a new car (a local dealership is giving them away if you buy a new minivan) and you can be up and running that day. If you are in the U.S. go ahead but it is more black and white down there. You are definately on the wrong side of things. Hope this helps!
P.S. I have one and it is the only way to go.

They are not free & from what I've heard they are more of a hassle because they have to be constantly fixed or tinkered with. The guys that do it, do so for a hobby & those that sell them outright (pirates) lie that they'll work for ever. In reality they may only work for a few weeks than your paying again.

You must ask yourself who do you want to pay, the people that pay to put the satellites in orbit & bring you the programing or the pirates who are parasites & do nothing except line their pockets off of someone elses hard work.

Never the less you can find lots of sites on the internet where you can learn how to tinker. The pirate sites offer to sell you everything, the hobbiest sites tell you how to do it yourself.

The local paper interviewed a guy in town who has been doing DirectTV card fixes for years. He bought a simple piece of equipment from www.dssbaron.com that allows anyone at all to download the latest matrix of codes in 30 seconds. Cost $249. The story is intriguing, because it described the legal issues in Canada. There is a court case pending, a civil action, against DirectTV by Canadian "viewers", that could actually see the courts allow RCA to charge in Canada if civilians win... because at 100,000 viewers in this case, it would actually prove there is a market here.

This particular lad runs over to the States a couple of times a week, to Wal-Mart in Ogdensburg, and picks up a couple of DirectTV packages each time. I've seen them on sale there for $49.95. Then he sells them here for between $400 and $1000 Cdn. And he programs the cards. Now he has ten or so units sitting in his house. The bad news is, DirectTV has begun selling their dishes without cards, meaning you have to register and get a serial number before you can get a card, in an effort to cut down on piracy of this sort. So it won't be long before a "patched" card will be useless, because the discovery software the providers use can quickly tell if the card is "legal" or not.

I was over at a friends house that actually had the system working and it was a little more complex than just a hacked card. He had some type of device that plugged into the card slot with a few IC's and 2 LED's on it and a serial port, it then went to a reader/writer with a 'blue' card in it which is the hard thing to find I guess then the serial cable went to a computer running a LINUX program, he says it HAS actually worked for a year now with no interuptions. Supposidly he was able to aquire all of the equipment from E-Bay. Again he said the problem is the two different types of cards a green one and blue, I guess the green is newer and more difficult to hack.

"Soylent Green is people!!!"

What?! Oh, no!! =barf!!=