Stephen Downes

The lesson here isn't just another case of a company suing its customers, nor is it the new judicial system under which you are guilty if you could illegally access a file. No, while these cases show that the illogic of the music industry debate is spreading to other industries, that's not the story. In fact, the lesson is this: smart cards can be hacked. In fact, smart cards are so easy to hack that the defendants in this story, 22,000 in all (the number of people who didn't settle with Direct TV), are from all walks of life. "We've talked to people who are on welfare, in trailer parks. We talked to one guy whose wife was sued while she was in a coma in the hospital." And the thing is, how are you going to tell? How does a consumer tell that a smart card is legal? How does the producer tell the hack isn't legitimate. "They get caught and they're going to come up with fifteen different stories about how they were conducting field research in smart-card technology or trying to fix their garage-door opener," they say. Well maybe. But conducting research or fixing your garage are legal activities. If the everyday becomes suspicious because the technology is the online equivalent of a free flow lane, how do any of us escape scrutiny and apparantly random prosecutions? My goodness, doesn't anyone over there on the Other Side know where they're taking us?