“Signal piracy is increasing at an alarming rate and it is becoming too sophisticated.”

Perhaps, like me, you see a line like that and wonder what signal piracy actually is? Well perhaps this by Aynon Doyle, regulatory affairs manager at MIH Group, can help to clear it up:

“Signal piracy is when a party steals the programme-carrying signals of free-to-air or pay-TV broadcasters for either the purposes of unauthorised access to transmissions, or re-transmission to the public or subscribers”

And believe it or not, but this kind of piracy has been going on for around ten years according to Obed Bapela referring to statistics by the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Although this may all sound foreign to you and perhaps as though it involves top end corporations and espionage between MNet and SABC it is actually far more simple than that. Department of Communications minister Boloka has categorized the crime into two broad fields: consumer and industrial.

Consumer signal piracy includes basic acts such as card swapping (think DSTV)and illegal cable extensions/connections whereas Industrial signal piracy refers to vendors with advanced technical know-how flogging intelligent receivers.

I wonder if unauthorized connections to wireless networks would also count towards signal piracy? Hmmmm, it seems you might know something about signal piracy after all…

Feel free to read the original article here.

Regards,

WarBrad.

First and foremost a great big thank you to my mate, Rick (over at Pure Silence Studios), for the amazing website.

Please be so kind as to check in on my blog posts from time to time as I am sure there will be some helpful tips and topics – needless to say feel free to drop me an email to suggest anything blog-worthy.

Regards,

WarBrad.