jd3
September 26th, 2002, 05:37 PM
Found this on a different forum
Customer accused of piracy strikes back with Suit"
Customer accused of piracy strikes back
Cablevision Sued - By Harry Berkowitz - September 26, 2002
A customer lawsuit filed in federal court claims Cablevision Systems Corp. has been forcing some subscribers to pay penalties for stealing cable TV service without the company having proof they were doing so.
Cira Calabrese, the plaintiff named in the lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, says Cablevision demanded $3,000 and threatened to sue her even though she never had the unauthorized cable decoding device the company claimed she used.
The suit against Cablevision, filed Tuesday in Central Islip by attorney Harry Binder of Ronkonkoma, says hundreds and possibly thousands of customers are in the same situation as Calabrese, who is a Cablevision customer living in Tappan, N.Y.
Bethpage-based Cablevision has been among the most aggressive cable operators in cracking down on cable piracy, which the industry says costs companies billions of dollars a year in lost payments.
A Cablevision spokesman declined comment but in the past officials have called cable theft a serious problem.
Cablevision uses investigators and undercover operations to catch businesses that sell "black-box" cable signal converter-decoders used in cable piracy. Through the courts, it makes them pay millions of dollars in damages and penalties and hand over lists of people who bought the devices.
The company uses those lists and it also measures cable "leakage" to try to track down people and businesses, such as bars, that are illegally getting cable service, including premium channels, movies and sporting events, without paying.
While Cablevision "makes sure that it has evidence that a business violated the Communications Act before accusing the business of cable theft, the same is not true when accuses a person of cable theft," the suit states. Cablevision "does not go through the expense of conducting an investigation of an individual subscriber before accusing him or her of cable theft because does not foresee a large payoff coming from such a subscriber."
Cablevision threatens to sue the subscriber for up to $10,000 per violation and to cut off cable service, the suit claims. Many subscribers pay a penalty, even if they did not pirate cable service, to avoid the expenses of a lawsuit, it claims. The suit against Cablevision seeks to recover what it estimates as at least $3 million in damages.
In 2000, Cablevision sent warnings to 5,000 customers it suspected of buying and using the signal decoders, the company has said in the past. It collected between $1,500 and $3,000 from each of 2,000 customers who agreed to settle and surrender the illegal equipment.
Typically, a pirating customer pays for some level of basic cable service and then uses the decoder to unscramble signals for other channels.
In an interview last year, Robert Astarita, senior vice president of corporate security at Cablevision and a former FBI agent, said, "Cable theft represents real monetary losses to legitimate cable customers and to cable providers."
Source: http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-bzcab262940861sep26,0,1433803.story?coll=ny-business-print
Customer accused of piracy strikes back with Suit"
Customer accused of piracy strikes back
Cablevision Sued - By Harry Berkowitz - September 26, 2002
A customer lawsuit filed in federal court claims Cablevision Systems Corp. has been forcing some subscribers to pay penalties for stealing cable TV service without the company having proof they were doing so.
Cira Calabrese, the plaintiff named in the lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, says Cablevision demanded $3,000 and threatened to sue her even though she never had the unauthorized cable decoding device the company claimed she used.
The suit against Cablevision, filed Tuesday in Central Islip by attorney Harry Binder of Ronkonkoma, says hundreds and possibly thousands of customers are in the same situation as Calabrese, who is a Cablevision customer living in Tappan, N.Y.
Bethpage-based Cablevision has been among the most aggressive cable operators in cracking down on cable piracy, which the industry says costs companies billions of dollars a year in lost payments.
A Cablevision spokesman declined comment but in the past officials have called cable theft a serious problem.
Cablevision uses investigators and undercover operations to catch businesses that sell "black-box" cable signal converter-decoders used in cable piracy. Through the courts, it makes them pay millions of dollars in damages and penalties and hand over lists of people who bought the devices.
The company uses those lists and it also measures cable "leakage" to try to track down people and businesses, such as bars, that are illegally getting cable service, including premium channels, movies and sporting events, without paying.
While Cablevision "makes sure that it has evidence that a business violated the Communications Act before accusing the business of cable theft, the same is not true when accuses a person of cable theft," the suit states. Cablevision "does not go through the expense of conducting an investigation of an individual subscriber before accusing him or her of cable theft because does not foresee a large payoff coming from such a subscriber."
Cablevision threatens to sue the subscriber for up to $10,000 per violation and to cut off cable service, the suit claims. Many subscribers pay a penalty, even if they did not pirate cable service, to avoid the expenses of a lawsuit, it claims. The suit against Cablevision seeks to recover what it estimates as at least $3 million in damages.
In 2000, Cablevision sent warnings to 5,000 customers it suspected of buying and using the signal decoders, the company has said in the past. It collected between $1,500 and $3,000 from each of 2,000 customers who agreed to settle and surrender the illegal equipment.
Typically, a pirating customer pays for some level of basic cable service and then uses the decoder to unscramble signals for other channels.
In an interview last year, Robert Astarita, senior vice president of corporate security at Cablevision and a former FBI agent, said, "Cable theft represents real monetary losses to legitimate cable customers and to cable providers."
Source: http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-bzcab262940861sep26,0,1433803.story?coll=ny-business-print