I agree with you, Scott - this is a restraint of trade. Echostar should take appropriate measures against those who are actually violating the law, but should not attempt to hurt legitimate businesses and consumers in the process.

I completely agree. Instead of wasting time and money with this ridiculous lawsuit, maybe they could actually spend some of that money on adding some HD channels becuase I'm really getting tired of hearing about this nonsense.

I completely agree also. I am a small independent satellite dealer and the international FTA community is/was about 25% of my monthly income. To accede to Dish Networks demand means I will go broke. To quit selling Dish Network means I will go broke. Its an extremely depressing situation. Please Dish Network, recind your decision. Let us help fight your piracy war.

The point is moot as the cost of enforcing this directive is FAR less than that of researching and implementing a system-wide encryption system (for the fourth time?) across a multi-billion dollar corporation with 13.6M+ subs. Scott can't win this.

Very well put Scott. Dish needs to realize that they need to look in the mirror and see the issue is them and they're "swiss cheese" encryption. Zero..Since you are a Dish employee I'd expect an answer like that

Maybe Scott can't win this - however, with the support of legal FTA users and Dish network dealers WE can get Charlie's folks to give this a second thought and realize that they have made a mistake. Bob

Will you please check your spelling before submitting anything on your site. It agitates me to see things mispelled all the time! Thanks

Echostar, 2.5% of the people are truely bad people and want to ruin the good for all. Do not punish the 97.5% of the people who are honest and pay for the services they receive. Your knee jerk reaction only affects the honest people who are trying to make a living and those who want to tinker with modern technology. I pay for your services and I have no intention of stealing them. So why restrict others like myself who have no intention of foul play? Look at the real problem and work at finding the solution there. Jim

This is just another reason why Directv is STILL eating Charlie's lunch. He is is OWN worst enemy.

This is like a bank advertising they can't lock the vault.Time to repair the lock.

Dish is not advertising that their signal is easy to steal. This memo went out to retailers, not a public press release ! The only reason it's public is because you posted the info here and at your site. Don't you have a retailer side of your site that's not accessible to the general public ? It should have been posted there and there only.

Dish Network could also be hurting themselves another way with this. If people are no longer able to get FTA equipment in the store because of this, they might opt to purchase the stuff online, and inadvertantly purchase equipment from a shady online dealer who already modified the recievers to decrypt Dish Network's signal.

Just another example of big business trying to bully all the small ones out of business. Charlie it is very simple secure your system you have attempted to do this three or four times and you just keep screwing it up. It is no secret that they have had a piracy problem for years. Dish did not want to admit it because the program providers would threaten to pull their programing or raise the cost because of the theft. Course it may be disclose some day that Charlie did this for the same reason Direct did to increase its subscriber base. Get them hooked and jerk it away?

Scott while you seem to make some valid points blogging here at the home of cable and satellite providers and industry. You miss the fundamental point. They are going against the pansats, viewtechs, (viewsat, buzz, sonicview) coolsat who make and support the illegal files that make their unit illegal. Had you read the information in Calif court against those "FTA" companies you would know that. IF a companies intention is to have a simple unit that receives unscrambled programs like the ones they (Echo) sell and make for Europe they would have not problem. The PROBLEM is that these pirates are adding the extra memory chip in the unit to store dishnet smart card info, that is the only purpose of the extra chip, and they brand it FTA, truth is ANY unit with that extra chip is NOT FTA, it is truly a pirate unit awaiting the missing "stolen" software. You and your friends can go on and on believing what you want, but Echo is in the right here and they should go after those that claim it is a legit thing to sell such a unit. Legit FTA unit mfg.,s should also go after pirate fta unit mfg for ruining their name and or branding (the meaning of the word fta). You are getting hoorays from the uneducated pirating masses here. However anyone who knows anything about technology knows that you can watch whatever you want as long sa it is not scrambled, and dishnet would not care. Just like when EVERYONE was hacking the Directv card and guys like you and your cronies went on and on about how much DirecTV sucks and their tactics to sending out letters demanding money for ripping them off were not to your liking. Dishnet has plenty of learned people and lawyers. My PLEA to DISHNET is : PLEASE SECURE YOUR SYSTEM, sue the PIRATE FTA mfg and get rid of that whole business, then with those proceeds they should LOWER the PRICES and ADD MORE channels. That would be the right thing to do Its also well known and came out in court that Directv has paid to have Dishnet Hacked. Yeah Greg Echo decided to lose allot of money as a marketing gimmick, yeah ok, what drugs are you on? If they wanted to get people hooked all they have to do is offer a 3-6 month free trail, they offer free trails all the time as it is. Direct simply secured its signal because too many idiots treated hacking it as if it was their right to do so and bragged about it, in one case a sports caster bragged on the air! Pirate FTA is going to cause Dishnet to go hardcore on scrambling and heat like DTV and we all lose so that a few Korean idiots can get rich and drive Mercedes.

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