Cable Television Piracy
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Cable Television Piracy
Cable television piracy is the act of obtaining unauthorized access to cable television services. It is a form of copyright infringement and a federal crime. Reception of cable television without authorization by a cable operator is forbidden by both federal and state laws. Cable television piracy is usually a class A misdemanor; if the service is $500 or more, it is classified as a class C felony. Methods In older analog cable systems, most cable channels were not encrypted and cable theft was often as easy as plugging a coaxial cable attached to the user's television into an apartment house cable distribution box (which often were unsecured (''i.e.'' without locks) to prevent unauthorized access). In some rural areas nonsubscribers would even run long cables to distribution boxes on nearby utility poles. Set-top boxes were required with some systems, but these were generic, and often in an unknowing violation of contract, former customers would donate them to thrift stores ...
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Cable Television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broadcast television (also known as terrestrial television), in which the television signal is transmitted over-the-air by radio waves and received by a television antenna attached to the television; or satellite television, in which the television signal is transmitted over-the-air by radio waves from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth, and received by a satellite dish antenna on the roof. FM radio programming, high-speed Internet, telephone services, and similar non-television services may also be provided through these cables. Analog television was standard in the 20th century, but since the 2000s, cable systems have been upgraded to digital cable operation. A "cable channel" (sometimes known as a "cable network") is a tele ...
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Emergency Alert System
The Emergency Alert System (EAS) is a national warning system in the United States designed to allow authorized officials to broadcast emergency alerts and warning messages to the public via cable, satellite, or broadcast television, and both AM/ FM and satellite radio. The EAS became operational on January 1, 1997, after being approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in November 1994, replacing the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS). Its main improvement over the EBS, and perhaps its most distinctive feature, is its application of a digitally encoded audio signal known as Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME), which is responsible for the "screeching" or "chirping" sounds at the start and end of each message. This signal encodes locations an alert applies to, useful for specialized encoding and decoding equipment at broadcasting stations to automatically filter alert messages that do not apply to the area and to relay messages that do. Like the EBS, the system ...
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Cable Modem
A cable modem is a type of network bridge that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC), radio frequency over glass (RFoG) and coaxial cable infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking advantage of the high bandwidth of a HFC and RFoG network. They are commonly deployed in the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe. History MITRE Cablenet Internet Experiment Note (IEN) 96IEN 96
- The Cablenet Project
(1979) describes an early RF cable modem system. From pages 2 and 3 of IEN 96:
The ...
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Addressability
Addressability is the ability of a digital device to individually respond to a message sent to many similar devices. Examples include pagers, mobile phones and set-top boxes for pay TV. Computer networks are also addressable, such as via the MAC address on Ethernet network cards, and similar networking protocols like Bluetooth. This allows data to be sent in cases where it is impractical (or impossible, such as with wireless devices) to control exactly where or to which devices the message is physically sent. In the case of simple hardware devices like the pager, the address is simply the electronic serial number (and later IMEI/MEID) in its firmware, or physically manufactured into its circuitry. In the case of GSM mobile phones, it also includes the subscriber identity module, which is also present as a smart card on satellite TV receivers, or a different PCMCIA CableCARD for cable TV. Addressing and encryption are used together for conditional access to different TV chan ...
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Product Activation
Product activation is a license validation procedure required by some proprietary software programs. Product activation prevents unlimited free use of copied or replicated software. Unactivated software refuses to fully function until it ''determines'' whether it is authorized to fully function. Activation allows the software to stop blocking its use. An activation can last "forever", or it can have a time limit, requiring a renewal or re-activation for continued use. Implementations In one form, product activation refers to a method invented by Ric Richardson and patented () by Uniloc where a software application hashes hardware serial numbers and an ID number specific to the product's license (a product key) to generate a unique installation ID. This installation ID is sent to the manufacturer to verify the authenticity of the product key and to ensure that the product key is not being used for multiple installations. Alternatively, the software vendor sends the user a unique ...
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Set-top Box
A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of signal, turning the source signal into content in a form that can then be displayed on the television screen or other display device. They are used in cable television, satellite television, and over-the-air television systems as well as other uses. According to the ''Los Angeles Times'', the cost to a cable provider in the United States for a set-top box is between $150 for a basic box to $250 for a more sophisticated box. In 2016, the average pay-TV subscriber paid $231 per year to lease their set-top box from a cable service provider. TV signal sources The signal source might be an Ethernet cable, a satellite dish, a coaxial cable (see cable television), a telephone line (including DSL connections), broadband over power lines (BPL), or e ...
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Virtual Private Network
A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The benefits of a VPN include increases in functionality, security, and management of the private network. It provides access to resources that are inaccessible on the public network and is typically used for remote workers. Encryption is common, although not an inherent part of a VPN connection. A VPN is created by establishing a virtual point-to-point connection through the use of dedicated circuits or with tunneling protocols over existing networks. A VPN available from the public Internet can provide some of the benefits of a wide area network (WAN). From a user perspective, the resources available within the private network can be accessed remotely. Types Virtual private networks may be classified into several categories: ;Remote acce ...
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Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. IP has the task of delivering packets from the source host to the destination host solely based on the IP addresses in the packet headers. For this purpose, IP defines packet structures that encapsulate the data to be delivered. It also defines addressing methods that are used to label the datagram with source and destination information. IP was the connectionless datagram service in the original Transmission Control Program introduced by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in 1974, which was complemented by a connection-oriented service that became the basis for the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The Internet protocol suite is therefore often referred to as ''TCP/IP''. The first major version of IP, Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4), is the do ...
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Mobile App
A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on desktop computers, and web applications which run in mobile web browsers rather than directly on the mobile device. Apps were originally intended for productivity assistance such as email, calendar, and contact databases, but the public demand for apps caused rapid expansion into other areas such as mobile games, factory automation, GPS and location-based services, order-tracking, and ticket purchases, so that there are now millions of apps available. Many apps require Internet access. Apps are generally downloaded from app stores, which are a type of digital distribution platforms. The term "app", short for " application", has since become very popular; in 2010, it was listed as "Word of the Year" by the American Dialect Society. Apps a ...
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Smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which facilitate wider software, internet (including web browsing over mobile broadband), and multimedia functionality (including music, video, cameras, and gaming), alongside core phone functions such as voice calls and text messaging. Smartphones typically contain a number of metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit (IC) chips, include various sensors that can be leveraged by pre-included and third-party software (such as a magnetometer, proximity sensors, barometer, gyroscope, accelerometer and more), and support wireless communications protocols (such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or satellite navigation). Early smartphones were marketed primarily towards the enterprise market, attempting to bridge the functionality of ...
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Tablet Computer
A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being computers, do what other personal computers do, but lack some input/output (I/O) abilities that others have. Modern tablets largely resemble modern smartphones, the only differences being that tablets are relatively larger than smartphones, with screens or larger, measured diagonally, and may not support access to a cellular network. Unlike laptops which have traditionally run off operating systems usually designed for desktops, tablets usually run mobile operating systems, alongside smartphones. The touchscreen display is operated by Gesture recognition, gestures executed by finger or digital pen (stylus), instead of the Computer mouse, mouse, touchpad, and Keyboard (computing), keyboard of larger computers. Portable computers can be classifie ...
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Apple TV
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ''Malus sieversii'', is still found today. Apples have been grown for thousands of years in Asia and Europe and were brought to North America by European colonization of the Americas, European colonists. Apples have Religion, religious and mythology, mythological significance in many cultures, including Norse mythology, Norse, Greek mythology, Greek, and Christianity in Europe, European Christian tradition. Apples grown from seed tend to be very different from those of their parents, and the resultant fruit frequently lacks desired characteristics. Generally, apple cultivars are propagated by clonal grafting onto rootstocks. Apple trees grown without rootstocks tend to be larger and much slower to fruit after plantin ...
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