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According to the telco, the service, which is part of a joint venture between AT&T and Raysat Broadcasting, includes content from USA, CNN Mobile, SciFi, Adult Swim, Discovery, Lifetime, Animal Planet, ESPN and others and costs $28 per month. The hardware itself retails for $1,299 and includes an antenna and an in-car “set-top box” device.

So far, about 600 retailers have signed on to to carry the CruiseCast hardware and sell subscriptions, and car makers are reportedly considering offering the system as a factory installed option on some new vehicles.

A DDoS attack attempts to flood the server hosting the site with junk requests, forcing the server to become overwhelmed and freeze up.

The source of the attack is usually a botnet of compromised computers known as zombie PC’s.

Techwatch itself was targeted repeatedly, experiencing spikes of over 2GB per second, before a solution was put in place.

Other major satellite forums have also apparently been targeted with denial of service floods over recent weeks.

S*tellites.co.uk, als*t.co.uk, and s*tpimps.com are other major satellite forums that were reported to have been attacked over March, as well as smaller boards such as s*t-haven, and d*nktenk.com.

When Techwatch was first attacked by repeated DDoS floods in February, messages posted to the forums from anonymous proxies suggested that extortion was the primary motivation.

However, there have been no such demands with the more recent wave of attacks over March.

This and the fact that it appears to be satellite forums specifically targeted has led some to suggest that one or more companies within the satellite industry itself may be responsible, even though DDoS attacks are considered a criminal offence in the UK.

In the meantime, all of the larger forums including Techwatch have taken different steps to minimise disruption caused by the DDoS attacks, and so far each appears to be staying online.

It remains to be seen if any identifying information on the attackers can be traced through continued monitoring of the situation.

The marketing calls were made to some consumers who signed up for the Federal Trade Commission’s national do-not-call registry to fend off unwanted sales pitches, the agency said.

“Because a few bad actors still don’t get it, we want to make it crystal clear. If you call consumers whose numbers are on the Do Not Call Registry, you’re breaking the law,” said Eileen Harrington, acting director of the FTC’s consumer protection unit.

Dish Network said the company obeyed the law and should not be held responsible for violations by independent retailers.

“An independent audit demonstrates that DISH Network is in compliance with ‘do-not-call’ laws, has proper controls in place, and is well within the safe-harbor provisions of the law,” the Englewood, Colorado-based company said in a statement.

“We also believe that the FTC is equating merely doing business with an independent retailer to ‘causing’ or ‘assisting and facilitating’ violations by that retailer,” Dish Network said. “We look forward to resolving these differences of opinion through the judicial process.”

The FTC said the lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Springfield, Illinois and was joined by state attorneys general from California, Illinois, Ohio and North Carolina.

The federal lawsuit seeks to stop Dish from making the calls either directly or indirectly through its dealers, asks for unspecified civil penalties and asks that the company be required to enforce compliance with the do-not-call registry regulations. Two other related lawsuits were also filed against two of Dish Network’s authorized dealers, the agency said.

The FTC’s do-not-call registry became effective in 1995, allowing consumers to register their telephone numbers without charge. Telemarketers can access the registry via the Internet but are prohibited from calling the phone numbers.

Dish provides service to more than 13.7 million satellite television customers.

Federal Trade Commission v Dish Network, U.S. District Court, Central District of Illinois, No. 09-03073.

His weapon of choice is an unassuming, pizza-sized satellite dish that can literally harpoon signals from space – and provide lucrative and illicit profit.

And it’s happening across the country. The Canadian Motion Pictures Distribution Association estimates that the total loss to the industry from satellite piracy in 2001 alone was about $1 billion – and that number is likely far higher today.

But lately, satellite companies, including Bell ExpressVu and U.S.-based DISH Network have been fighting back. The companies are switching to a tough new encryption system while using the threat of court action to target end users.

“We take this very seriously and we have taken a number of actions to counter signal theft,” Bell spokesperson Julie Smithers said. Satellite companies like to remind users that theft of signal not only means less subscription revenue for providers, but a fall in ratings for stations which translates into lost advertising revenue, and for artists who are given a portion of profits from subscriptions through the Canadian Television Fund.

Los Angeles-based media analysts The Carmel Group estimates there are at least two million illegal television households in the U.S. and Canada, out of a universe of about 15 million legal households. And the number is growing exponentially.

In the digital age, pirates are likely to look a lot like James, a middle- aged Toronto engineer with two children who happens to enjoy watching the Tennis Channel.

“I can’t believe I was actually paying for cable before,” he enthuses. James has access to a universe of more than 200 channels, including current pay-per-view movies that are only available at the video store for a cost. Last summer he put up a second satellite at his cottage, with a dish and receiver from a computer store in downtown Toronto that he purchased for less than $200.

James is currently watching a live tennis match in his living room which is decorated with trophies from his local club. Flipping through channels on a black set-top box reveals that he has fully unscrambled access to dozens of Hollywood movies (currently playing are The Dark Knight and Milk) for which legitimate subscribers have to pay up to $5.99 each.

At the heart of the problem are “Free To Air” satellite receivers that are widely available throughout Canada. While the possession of the equipment is not a crime, modifying it to access subscription signals is.

Free to Air is a system widely available in Europe, where television and radio broadcasts are typically sent unencrypted. There are some 250 Free to Air channels in North America, typically for ethnic programming.

“The way piracy works in North America is when consumers turn their Free to Air receivers into Free to Air units that steal,” says a Carmel Group report.

A USB port on the system allows consumers to change the internal programming of the module after downloading software from the Internet.

“What the manufacturers and retailers are doing may not be illegal, but it is wilful blindness,” argues Luc Perrault, co-chair of the Coalition Against Satellite Signal Theft and a vice-president of the Weather Network. “These things are being imported by the container load into Canada and it’s a serious issue.”

The coalition, which represents Canadian cable and satellite providers is lobbying government to toughen laws against piracy, including harsher sentences for pirates.

There have been some charges, but they aren’t coming quickly enough for the industry. Chris Frank, vice-president of programming for Bell ExpressVu, says the company has “done everything to ensure the integrity of our platform. Secret services around the world spend billions of dollars upgrading encryption systems to make sure their data is secure,” he told the Star’s Chris Sorensen last year. “We are a commercial company, we can’t spend billions, but we spend what it takes within reasonable bounds.”

Frank would not say how many people steal from Bell only that it was “speculative to try and figure it out. But the illegal reception is well within industry bounds.”

So far, Bell’s electronic countermeasures with a new encryption route introduced last November, seem to be working, blocking access to many channels. DISH Network is also in the process of migrating to the new system.

But hackers have been here before. Hacker groups are currently working on the new system, and some feel it is only a matter of time before the code is broken.

Meanwhile, one final route that would have a powerful deterrent effect is to go after consumers who steal signal.

In a get-tough policy, Bell has targeted end users by threatening legal action against customers who have been sold FTA receivers and are registered members of websites that promote piracy.

“We are contacting you because the operation or possession of illegal signal theft equipment to access Bell ExpressVu’s programming constitutes a violation,” says a letter sent to customers of a distributor selling satellite equipment.

The letter states that Bell is willing to drop legal proceedings if the user pays a $1,000 fine and hands over the equipment to Bell.

But the new tactics aren’t scaring some pirates.

“They’ll have to pry the remote control out of my hands before I give it up,” says James.

Lawmakers are debating whether to renew a law that gives the two national satellite television companies the right to carry and retransmit broadcast television content.

Some in Congress say any renewed law should require companies to provide local service in all of the nation’s 210 designated market areas.

Rick Boucher, who chairs the House communications and technology subcommittee, said rural residents in about 30 markets cannot currently receive local news and weather programming via satellite subscriptions.

Charles Ergen, CEO of DISH Network, said his company is willing to provide the local programming if it receives assistance in funding the technical fixes needed for retransmission.

Ergen said that local TV stations should be required to allow the retransmission at no cost, or for a fixed royalty rate. And stations without truly local content, a number Ergen estimated at 15 to 20 percent, should be excluded from retransmission requirements, he added.

“We would love to be able to do it with the right incentives,” Ergen said.

However some stations have been increasing their rates, according to DirecTV Senior Vice President Bob Gabrielli.

“Broadcasters now routinely demand fees three times those previously paid. And it does not appear that this additional money is being used to provide more or better local programming,” he told the subcommittee.

“Many broadcasters are producing less and less local news.”

Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) expressed frustration with the firms, saying residents of his hometown of Marquette did not have access to local content such as school closings, despite pledges that the situation would be resolved.

“All these promises that we get from these guys, but you never seem to fulfill it,” said Stupak, who has introduced a bill requiring satellite TV companies to carry local broadcasting in all markets.

Boucher said the law being considered for renewal was established to help satellite television companies compete against cable network operators and to give consumers more programming alternatives.