Mediaportal policy on sattelite/cam/dvb hacking

[frodo]

Mediaportal policy on sattelite/cam/dvb hacking

1. We dont answer any questions about illegal stuff. Not in IRC, forums, emails or PM's

2. Mediaportal does not support watching DVB in a illegal way

3. If you post information or asking question about this topic you get an offical warning

4. If you keep on posting information or asking questions about this topic, you will get banned.


Reasons for this:
1. We (The Mediaportal Team) dont want any expensive lawsuit
2. We want to keep Mediaportal free and by adding/supporting illegal stuff we can be sure that sooner or later Mediaportal will be shutdown by sourceforge or other parties
3. We have good relations with companies (like hauppauge, digital everywhere etc) and these companies probably wont support/help us anymore if we are doing illegal stuff

The Mediaportal Team

[frodo]

Recenly the MDAPI and 'softcam' discussion is getting a lot of attention again
The MP team clearly stated their opinion and reasons about not to support the MDAPI here : Mediaportal policy on sattelite/cam/dvb hacking

Now lots of people dont like this policy and tryto convince me and the team
to add MDAPI support . In fact, I noticed some guys already did it themselves

I would like to explain a little bit more why we cant do this and react on all those arguments i receive..
Here's the current list of all those arguments:

1) MDAPI can be used for a lot of things not just for illegal stuff
Sure i know you can do other things with it. (watching teletext for example)
But hey be honest with yourself and admit that the only reason why people want MDAPI support in MediaPortal is because they want to watch DVB channels illegally.

2) But I do have a valid subscription!
People tell me they have a valid subscription+smartcard but the smartcard is in the standalone settopbox and they want to view encrypted channels in MP also.
Let me state that if you want to view encrypted channels both with your settopbox and with MP, then legally you need to buy 2 smartcards + 2 subscriptions. I'm sorry about this, i dont like it either. But thats the way it is at the moment. Things like cardsharing or using softcams are highly illegal.

This is also the reason why you have to search in the dark places of internet, mostly on russian servers to download the softcam software (and the keys)

3) But i have a valid smartcard + subscription. But i don't have a DVB card with a CI slot.
Sorry, but that is not my problem. Mediaportal supports the CI interfaces of Technotrend, Twinhan and Digital everywhere so if you want to watch encrypted DVB channels you will need to use one of those cards.

4) But all other applications have MDAPI support?
I know. but those applications are not opensource and public like us.
We are an opensource project and so are the members of the project
We (the mediaportal team) can easily be traced by the law when doing illegal stuff.
If we were involved in doing illegal things (either directly or indirectly by supporting MDAPI) then this could (in theory) mean that legal measures are taken against one or more members of the MediaPortal team.
Now i dont know about you, but i dont like expensive lawsuits and/or the project being shut down.

Furthermore, if we were involved in doing illegal things (either directly or indirectly by supporting MDAPI) then this would mean the end of the very good relationship we have with tvcard suppliers like hauppauge, digital everywhere, twinhan, technotrend etc etc

I hope this clears things up a bit.
If you really want softcams to work then i'm sorry but you will need to use some other application.

Frodo