The $58,000 TV bill: When DirecTV sued O.J. Simpson for piracy

In 2001, the FBI raided O.J.'s house and found smartcards, bootloaders.

See full article...

 

[mygeek911]

He led a good life and then it just went sideways and downhill in a horrible fashion. I wonder if he had from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) from his football years.

ETA: We’ll never know. His family refused to have his brain studied before cremating him.

 

[NoSkill]

I wonder if he had from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) from his football years.

ETA: We’ll never know. His family refused to have his brain studied before cremating him.

He was a murderer, then proven a scofflaw, followed by violent offenses and sent to prison. He wanted CTE to be the reason for his crimes, but some people just can't live with the rest of us.

 

[Whiner42]

If the dongle doesn't fit, you must acquit.

... I'll see myself out.

 

[tlhIngan]

CTE would just serve to explain the behavior, but not excuse the actions. He'd still be in prison, but we'd have a reason for his change in behavior.

And chances are, it wasn't his family, it was the NFL paying his family to not have the brain studied. Probably under an excuse like "bodily integrity" or something.

The NFL is deeply afraid of CTE because it could ruin them (i.e., kill the profits) because it would limit the pipeline of new recruits to continue the money machine go whirr. They've been known to hire people to discredit studies - because they can't have young people not wanting to go into football and have families restricting their kids from getting into football.

If you wonder why the NFL is investing heavily into flag football, this is why. They have accepted that CTE is an occupational hazard of playing football, and it's well known at this point that people deliberately hitting each other on the head will cause brain damage. They won't admit it, lest it kill the golden goose, but they are investing in alternatives that hopefully will allow the sport to continue. Because it'll be like smoking in the end - sure you'll have some player recruits, but the pipeline will be a lot smaller than it is now.

Schools are starting to see the change - parents not wanting their kids in football, but in football (soccer). It'll be a slow transition because well, the college pipeline is still relatively full (and even then mild CTE is somewhat detectable), but parents are starting to hesitate and hence the rise in flag football.

Anyhow, I think this article was neat in describing how the things worked in the end - I remember the ads for bootloaders and such back in the day, and wondered how they all worked.

 

[pokrface]

He was a murderer, then proven a scofflaw, followed by violent offenses and sent to prison. He wanted CTE to be the reason for his crimes, but some people just can't live with the rest of us.

If one is really trying to understand the full measure of the guy, I recommend the excellent ESPN 30-for-30 docu OJ: Made in America. It is a comprehensive look at OJ's life, his god-tier football abilities (because he really was that good), and his equally horrific flaws. It does not excuse, but it does contextualize.

My personal opinion is that OJ was ultimately an opportunist above all else. He was fantastically physically gifted, showered with fame and money and praise early on, and lived a life of extreme privilege with few consequences. Until he murdered two people, and the bill came due.

 

[Tactical Finesse]

If the dongle doesn't fit, you must acquit.

... I'll see myself out.

"Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!"

 

[marsilies]

Technically he did not murder them. He was just somehow financially responsible for their murders. The actual murder charges were found not guilty, and jeopardy was attached, so you should not say he was an actual murderer. He was accused of murder, but that does not make the man a murderer. But then again...I'm sure we've all heard the story, about how if you fuck just ONE sheep...

Double Jeopardy doesn't apply to separate criminal vs civil cases. OJ couldn't be tried again criminally for the murders, but a civil wrongful death case is not criminal, and so doesn't count as double jeopardy.

https://www.matinlaw.com/are-two-trials-possible-what-about-double-jeopardy/

Now, although criminal trials and their related penalties cannot be held successively for the same act or omission, the Supreme Court has determined that both civil and criminal sanctions may be handed down for the same offense after independent criminal and civil trials. That means that an offender might be tried criminally for a particular offense, only to face civil charges in a separate trial later based on the same act. One notorious situation exemplifying this ability relates to the criminal murder trial of O.J. Simpson, which sought incarceration or worse (he was found not guilty), followed by the civil trial for wrongful death which sought monetary damages after the initial criminal trial (he was found guilty). Although Simpson managed to avoid prison time penalties sought in the criminal trial, he was ordered to pay over $33 million in damages after being found responsible for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson (his ex-wife) and Ronald Goldman in the civil trial. Simpson was tried for the same act, in two different trials, each with different goals, and wildly different outcomes. Yet, even after being found guilty in the civil trial, Simpson can never be retried criminally for the same offense due to double jeopardy protections.

Also note that with a civil case like a wrongful death case, the bar to cross for OJ to be found civilly liable is only "based on the preponderance of evidence," not "beyond a reasonable doubt." Basically, a more than 50% chance that he did it.

https://www.sgrlaw.com/ttl-articles/burden-of-proof/

Most common law jurisdictions have substantially the same burden of proof in a civil action, on the one hand, and in a criminal proceeding, on the other.

The standard of proof in a civil action is “the preponderance of the evidence.” Simply put, a “preponderance” means just enough evidence to make it more likely than not that the fact in issue has been established.

The standard of proof in a criminal proceeding is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The burden is met where the evidence establishes a particular fact to a moral certainty and that no reasonable alternative is possible.

So it seems contradictory that he was found criminally not guilty (which doesn't mean innocent), while civilly liable for the same incident, but it's the way the US legal system works.

 

[ZippyPeanut]

Wow, what a compelling read! With lots of good nerd stuff, too.

 

[GTROME]

I had one of these hooked up years ago. People forget how expensive DTV full subscriptions became. You could rack up add ons for $600 month fees, allegedly including porn. Back then, that was insane money and spurred the very Industry it chose to shutter.

 

[ZippyPeanut]

If one is really trying to understand the full measure of the guy, I recommend the excellent ESPN 30-for-30 docu OJ: Made in America. It is a comprehensive look at OJ's life, his god-tier football abilities (because he really was that good), and his equally horrific flaws. It does not excuse, but it does contextualize.

My personal opinion is that OJ was ultimately an opportunist above all else. He was fantastically physically gifted, showered with fame and money and praise early on, and lived a life of extreme privilege with few consequences. Until he murdered two people, and the bill came due.

Yeah, it was amazing how physically gifted he was with the Buffalo Bills. I can only imagine what he could have done with the Sabres!

 

[ai_fodder]

....Until he murdered two people, and the bill came due.

One could argue that the bill didn't quite come due, as he was acquitted (famously) in the murder trial... The consequences were he had to try to hide his money from the family of the people that he was acquitted of killing, because he was later found responsible for deaths under a lower bar: "Preponderance of the evidence.", rather than "Beyond a reasonable doubt."

 

[Fred Duck]

If the dongle doesn't fit, you must acquit.

attempts to insert dongle

It doesn't fit.

"Try rotating 180º."

attempts to insert dongle

It doesn't fit.

"Try rotating 180º again."

It fits!

jury gasp

"Type A strikes again."

 

[randolphmcafee]

Only on Ars...

What a fantastic story. How did they figure out to lower the voltage at the critical moment during the instructions? Those people should work for NASA or Apple. And OJ as the icing on cake.

I love Ars Technica.

 

[Nate Anderson]

I had one of these hooked up years ago. People forget how expensive DTV full subscriptions became. You could rack up add ons for $600 month fees, allegedly including porn. Back then, that was insane money and spurred the very Industry it chose to shutter.

The court docs I was reading for this suggested that the average user at the time paid about $200/month--so $2400 a year. Pay-per-view cost extra, of course.

 

[ZippyPeanut]

attempts to insert dongle

It doesn't fit.

"Try rotating 180º."

attempts to insert dongle

It doesn't fit.

"Try rotating 180º again."

It fits!

jury gasp

"Type A strikes again."

Will you also be showing yourself out?

 

[fxer]

The court docs I was reading for this suggested that the average user at the time paid about $200/month--so $2400 a year. Pay-per-view cost extra, of course.

Wow if those are 2001 numbers that's ~$380/mo or ~$4600/yr in 2026. Eye watering even if you're subscribed to multiple streaming services including live sports today.

 

[ktmglen]

Only on Ars...

What a fantastic story. How did they figure out to lower the voltage at the critical moment during the instructions? Those people should work for NASA or Apple. And OJ as the icing on cake.

I love Ars Technica.

The same way people find zero days in any software. Here's a presentation one person made at a Chaos Computer Club meeting on how he did it for a different type of decoder:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhbSD1Jba0Q

The DigiCipher2 decoder was always an oddball in the industry because it used battery-backed SRAM in an ASIC for security when everyone else was using smartcard processors (either in smartcard form or in a traditional IC package).

 

[randomcat]

they also found several large wooden chests full of books, which in turn were filled with thousands of random characters, suggesting that Simpson intended to crash the chunk if law enforcement arrived with items in their inventory

 

[pokrface]

Fact: O.J. Simpson was acquitted and never convicted of any murder. A jury found him not guilty of the 1994 stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

That doesn't mean he wasn't a murderer—it just means that he wasn't a convicted murderer. The fact that a jury decided to use a not-guilty verdict to protest the acquittal of Mark Fuhrman et al for almost killing Rodney King, and as a referendum on LAPD chief Daryl Gates' minority-targeting fascist-adjacent policing policies, doesn't change the fact that Orenthal James Simpson murdered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

 

[The Muftak]

OJ Simpson being found guilty of piracy is right up there with Al Capone going to jail for tax evasion. Right guy, wrong crime.

 

[Dachannien]

If the dongle doesn't fit, you must acquit.

... I'll see myself out.

I was on a jury recently. One of the state's witnesses was supposed to open an evidence box (I think with a firearm inside), and she needed to put on latex gloves before handling it. Unfortunately, she had some kind of arm injury and only had functional use of one arm at the time, so the bailiff was helping her put the glove on.

While doing so, the bailiff joked, "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit."

I'm pretty sure most of us jurors were old enough to get the reference and pass it off as a joke rather than a suggestion, but the judge, likely quite alarmed by the potential mistrial implications, did an immediate facepalm.

 

[Tactical Finesse]

That doesn't mean he wasn't a murderer—it just means that he wasn't a convicted murderer. The fact that a jury decided to use a not-guilty verdict to protest the acquittal of Mark Fuhrman et al for almost killing Rodney King, and as a referendum on LAPD chief Daryl Gates' minority-targeting fascist-adjacent policing policies, doesn't change the fact that Orenthal James Simpson murdered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

This is an important part forgotten. These are Rodney King era cops.

One of the few good things about our era of ubiquitous cellphones and social media? Is that all the "crackpot" accusations of abuse and corruption against cops aired/memorialized on vintage copaganda TV shows like Law & Order in the 90s...were probably true.

And the OJ prosecution was one of the first big cracks in the wall and put it all on full blast that msome if not many of these trusted civil servants--probably shouldn't be.

 

[ktmglen]

Only on Ars...

What a fantastic story. How did they figure out to lower the voltage at the critical moment during the instructions? Those people should work for NASA or Apple. And OJ as the icing on cake.

I love Ars Technica.

Just wanted to add: early smartcard processors didn't have protections against what are considered basic attacks today. In the case in the article, the voltage dip affected the operation of the processor. In later generation smartcard processors, the voltage dip would be detected and the processor would either reset or halt rather than be allowed to continue operation after the borked instruction.

Another popular attack was to craft a bit of code that looked like an ECM packet that needed to be decrypted, load it into the smartcard, then glitch the reset, clock, and power lines until the instruction counter glitched and started executing from the RAM containing the malicious packet. The malicious packet would attempt to read and dump keys out the data pin. Later generations detect or filter these glitches and have firewalls to prevent execution out of RAM, reading EEPROM from code in RAM, and other rules.

 

[pokrface]

This is an important part forgotten. These are Rodney King era cops.

One of the few good things about our era of ubiquitous cellphones and social media? Is that all the "crackpot" accusations of abuse and corruption against cops aired/memorialized on vintage copaganda TV shows like Law & Order in the 90s...were probably true.

And the OJ prosecution was one of the first big cracks in the wall and put it all on full blast that msome if not many of these trusted civil servants--probably shouldn't be.

It's kinda like the man said: "Some of those that work forces / are the same that burn crosses."

 

[DCRoss]

attempts to insert dongle

It doesn't fit.

"Try rotating 180º."

attempts to insert dongle

It doesn't fit.

"Try rotating 180º again."

It fits!

jury gasp

"Type A strikes again."

Narrator's voice:

"It was, in fact, Type C."

 

[evanTO]

The court granted final judgment on November 29, 2005, ruling that “the Juice” owed DirecTV a grand total of $58,678. It was pricey, yes—but in a way, Simpson got off cheap. When the recording industry launched its own mass lawsuit campaign, college students and single moms were eventually hit with $675,000 or even $1.92 million verdicts.

USA! USA! Where Justice is contingent on Wealth!

 

[ai_fodder]

The first eight computer bytes of all hacked cards were rewritten to read “GAME OVER.”

that is 11 bytes assuming they null terminated the string, 10 otherwise...

 

[Cryxx]

I worked with someone who was selling this at the time. The loaders the computers as a deal.
Yep he got a letter, he even told us about it all (he kept none of it quiet so everyone in IT knew).
it was thousands, 10k+ or something.
I know he got a lawyer and finally shut up, I'm guessing he paid something or did some settlement.

 

[DRJlaw]

Technically he did not murder them.

Only the courts are required to presume innocence and find proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The general public can have any opinion that it wants, and given the civil verdict, nobody was/is at risk for defamation liability for using the word "murder."

Also, you can murder someone by contracting to have it done. In many places the charges would include "felony murder." You're splitting hairs as if we care about a meaningless distinction.

 

[DRJlaw]

Fact: O.J. Simpson was acquitted and never convicted of any murder. A jury found him not guilty of the 1994 stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Fact: "On February 4, 1997, (a) civil jury found Simpson liable for the wrongful deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The jury awarded the Goldman family $8.5 million in compensatory damages. Simpson was ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages. This amount later ballooned to over $40 million due to Simpson’s reluctance to pay and accruing interest."

 

[marsilies]

That doesn't mean he wasn't a murderer—it just means that he wasn't a convicted murderer. The fact that a jury decided to use a not-guilty verdict to protest the acquittal of Mark Fuhrman et al for almost killing Rodney King, and as a referendum on LAPD chief Daryl Gates' minority-targeting fascist-adjacent policing policies, doesn't change the fact that Orenthal James Simpson murdered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

It wasn't a "protest vote" jury nullification, Mark Fuhrman perjured himself on the stand, and took the 5th when asked about whether he planted any evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fuhrman#Defense_team's_strategy

During his closing argument, defense attorney Johnnie Cochran called Fuhrman "a lying, perjuring, genocidal racist",[48] likening him to Adolf Hitler.[49] He argued that Fuhrman had planted the bloody glove on Simpson's estate as part of a racially motivated plot against Simpson, which could be traced back to Fuhrman's first encounter with the interracial couple in 1985.[48] Although there was no evidence to suggest that Fuhrman had planted the glove, his perjury about his use of the word "nigger" was widely seen as severely damaging the prosecution's credibility in front of the mostly black jury, especially in the wake of the Rodney King trial,[50] and has been cited as one of the main reasons Simpson was acquitted.

https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1995/rt9509/950907/09070104.htm

Detective Mark Fuhrman was called back to the witness stand Wednesday and was asked point blank whether he planted evidence against O.J. Simpson. He refused to answer, invoking his Fifth-Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Climaxing months of defense claims that Simpson was framed by a racist detective, Fuhrman refused to answer any question. Jurors weren't in the courtroom to see the brief confrontation between Simpson attorney Gerald Uelmen and the subdued detective who, five months earlier, told the panel he found a bloody glove on Simpson's property.

``Detective Fuhrman, did you plant or manufacture any evidence in this case?'' Uelmen asked.

``I assert my Fifth Amendment privilege,'' Fuhrman replied, his attorney standing at his side.

....Legal experts said that under California law, it was unlikely Fuhrman would be required to assert his constitutional right again with jurors present. The defense likely will ask the judge to tell jurors that Fuhrman pleaded the Fifth, but they won't be allowed to consider such a claim in deciding on a verdict.

The joke was the LAPD framed OJ for murders he actually committed, but when the police testimony is that much in doubt, it's very hard to clear "beyond a reasonable doubt." We may think OJ is guilty, but the cops and the prosecution clearly screwed up the case to the degree that a reasonable person would determine that they failed to show OJ was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

 

[pokrface]

It wasn't a "protest vote" jury nullification, Mark Fuhrman perjured himself on the stand, and took the 5th when asked about whether he planted any evidence.

The 30-for-30 docu includes interviews with people who served on the jury who explicitly say that it was a "protest vote" jury nullification.

(Though no disagreement that the trial was an absolute circus of lunacy all around.)

 

[TheHokieCoder]

The first eight computer bytes of all hacked cards were rewritten to read “GAME OVER.”

that is 11 bytes assuming they null terminated the string, 10 otherwise...

Presumably the period is inside the quotes for proper grammar/punctuation. And even more presumably is that the space was included for clarity. But yes, Ars should be better about those technical details! Nerd standards, after all!

 

[marsilies]

The 30-for-30 docu includes interviews with people who served on the jury who explicitly say that it was a "protest vote" jury nullification.

(Though no disagreement that the trial was an absolute circus of lunacy all around.)

This seems to be the relevant part from that documentary:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUJCLdmNzAA


There's one story of "I heard from a sheriff that he overheard," which is hearsay, but it does have one jury saying they did it as payback, with another juror denying it was payback.

Relevant transcript, with some annotations based on the above clip
https://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?t=27723

[First Juror interview in clip]

[Interviewer] Do you think that there were members of the jury that voted to acquit O.J. because of Rodney King?

[First Juror seen in clip] Yes.

You do?

Yes.

How many of you think felt that way?

Oh, probably 90% of them.

90%?

Did you feel that way?

Yes.

That was payback?

Uh-huh.

You think that's right?

[First Juror shrugs]

[separate interview]

[Second Juror from clip] The majority of the world or the majority of Americans think that we're a group of idiots who didn't get it right. I think that the jury was made to be the scapegoat for their faults. It was a mistake to present Fuhrman the way they did. It was a mistake to let Darden get up there and be a part of that case. Had they come correct, had they had the right attorneys up there putting on the case that they need to put on, they would've won. It wasn't payback. They messed up.

You don't get a "not guilty" verdict if one person is nullifying against the facts of the case, and the other person using the facts of the case, if the facts show the person is guilty. At best, that'd be a hung jury. Maybe some on the jury acquitted him as a protest, the clip and transcript only quote on juror explicitly saying so, but others acquitted him based on the case presented.

 

[Batmanuel]

From the files of Police Squad!

 

[Fury13]

That doesn't mean he wasn't a murderer—it just means that he wasn't a convicted murderer. The fact that a jury decided to use a not-guilty verdict to protest the acquittal of Mark Fuhrman et al for almost killing Rodney King, and as a referendum on LAPD chief Daryl Gates' minority-targeting fascist-adjacent policing policies, doesn't change the fact that Orenthal James Simpson murdered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

Wow, glad I don't live in your kingdom of omnipotent authoritarianism.

 

[marsilies]

Wow, glad I don't live in your kingdom of omnipotent authoritarianism.

I don't think they're arguing that the government should've convicted and imprisoned OJ anyway. They're just saying that, in their opinion, OJ was guilty of the crime, and they have the right to that opinion regardless of the outcome of the legal case.