said by rosco :

they could start with an IP block restriction...it cant be that hard to figure out sprint's ip's.
even a username/password page could be inserted with generated passwords for subscribed phone numbers sent to the phone via text message..

said by elios :

It is no more legal to steal something off my front yard than it is to go in my open back window and steal something.

said by TKJunkMail :

It isn't just Sprint.
»www.mobitv.com/channels/
They have this product available for multiple vendors. One is Palm WiFi. That is, the connection could be coming from any HotSpot anywhere. IP blocks won't work there.

And anyway, their system is just feeding Real Player streams:

<a href="rtsp://live.mobitv.com:554/X-CDMA.sdp" type="video/3gpp">station name</a>
Where 554/X could be 554/"any # 1 to 9999"
and "station name" can be any characters. And if your device supports 3gpp it works.

said by bear73 :

true, but possession is 9/10ths of the law. if you leave it in the open, and someone walks off with it, you have no recourse.

said by rosco :

I have to point out that it is not a security bypass. There was NO security in place. obscurity != security

said by dot_null :

How could it be a security bypass if MobiTV has no security? Their webserver will serve up that text file to anyone who asks for it, even if the referrer is listed as HowardForums. No one had to crack, hack or do anything else to receive these streams. If you look at how web servers work, this is akin to asking a building with a doorman permission to enter the premises and he blindly grants it, without stopping to ask whether you had legitimate business in the building.

said by Noah Vail :

If MobiTV would rather people not availed themselves of a free link to their content, they should stop publishing a free link to their content.

said by MyDogHsFleas :

I'd say your analogy could stand a little tweaking. What it's really like is if I had the big drapes closed, but around the side of the house, there was an unmarked button. If you tried pushing the button, you'd find it opened the drapes and you could see what was going on. Then I came out and yelled at you for opening the drapes. Your defense is, "But the button is right over there! All I have to do is push it! If you didn't want your drapes open, you should have protected your button!" And then you wrote a story for the local paper telling people where the button is and how to press it.

But I really don't, because you've copied my blue film and posted it on the Internet. Where is my business now?

The thing you and others are missing is that the video streams are not really on public display. If someone goes through the front door of the mobitv site, there is no link that says "Hey! Click here and get it for free!" Instead, there's a signup process by which you are given access.

To bypass it, you have to know (a) the URL of a file and (b) how to download that file, save it, examine its contents, and copy/paste the imbedded URLs into a Web browser. We, as techno-elite people, know how to do those steps easily. I guarantee you that at least half of the people on the Internet would, given the URL, fail to download the file, examine it, and then view the videos. Additionally, the URL to the file is not obvious by any means. Someone figured it out and posted it.

said by MyDogHsFleas :

What you say is completely true. It would be stupid for me to leave something out in my front yard that I didn't want to be taken.

However, that does NOT make it legal for someone to take it. If I catch the guy who took it and press charges, his defense of "it's your fault because you left it in your front yard" is not going to work.

said by MyDogHsFleas :

Again, you are confusing the technical means of securing a website with the legalities involved. In DMCA terms, there was a circumvention of protection.

Here's a summary of RealNetworks vs. Streambox that I found. In this case, RealNetworks sued Streambox for bypassing their (weak) security and accessing their servers and streaming content to a VCR-like piece of software, that would record video for later playback. RealNetworks won the lawsuit, brought under DMCA.

quote:

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Court rejected defendant's argument that its product did not constitute a violation of the DMCA because Plaintiff's effort to stop copying did not "effectively protect" against unauthorized infringement. The only question the court considered was whether there was a technological protection, not whether it was effective.

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said by TKJunkMail :

Securing their system will take some time and negotiations with the carriers. All the users from Sprint, AT&T, Palm, etc(see their web page to see how many »www.mobitv.com/channels/ ) have paid about $10/mo for access. To add in security now means downloading code in to hundreds of thousands of devices from many different carriers. That isn't something they will just dash off. It could be quite a while before they fix any security holes.