By James McNair
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Pirating satellite TV signals, as many Tristate residents are finding out, is a sure way to beam oneself into a courtroom.

In federal lawsuits filed across the country, the nation's biggest satellite TV broadcaster - DirecTV - is hunting down signal thieves with prosecutorial vigor. Its claim: that the defendants helped themselves to its satellite programming through the use of bootleg devices bought on the Internet.

What downloaders are to the music industry, the users of piracy devices are to satellite TV companies.

DirecTV, based in El Segundo, Calif., has filed civil suits against 20 companies that make piracy equipment, but it has also sued almost 20,000 of its customers, including dozens in Greater Cincinnati.

In Nashville last month, a federal judge sentenced a man to 30 months in prison and ordered him to pay $2.6 million to DirecTV for making and selling satellite decryption devices.

Once customers buy a satellite dish and other equipment from a dealer, they normally pay DirecTV anywhere from $40 to $88 a month for more than 225 channels. That doesn't include premium services such as pay-per-view movies and sports packages.

"It's not for free," DirecTV spokesman Robert Mercer said. "It's why they call it pay TV. That's the point we're trying to make with this (enforcement) campaign. It's stealing, no different than hot-wiring a Honda or stealing from employers."

DirecTV says it has 12 million customers, about 4 million more than the No. 2 player, EchoStar's Dish Network. But two years ago, DirecTV learned that it had tens of thousands of customers of the poaching variety.

Armed with court orders, the company raided the offices of piracy equipment vendors and confiscated the offending devices. What's more, it found the names and addresses of their customers.

"These outfits are thieves and crooks, but they do keep good records," Mercer said.

DirecTV went after companies in California, Florida and nine other states. In June 2002, it began sending letters to their 70,000 to 80,000 alleged customers.

It asked them to surrender bogus access cards or devices. It asked for about $3,500 in reparations. And it asked for an oath swearing off their parasitic past.

As tough as those terms were to swallow, most violators complied. DirecTV is suing the rest. At least 18,240 suits have been filed, and the number grows weekly. One case, involving a Cleveland man, was on the eve of trial when he decided to settle out of court for about $20,000, Mercer said.

"The suits are in various stages of litigation," Mercer said. "Some are in discovery. Some have settled."

It isn't hard to obtain the access cards or hardware needed to intercept DirecTV's signals. Companies with names such as Axxess Plus, Hack3M and EQ Stuff found takers through their Web sites. DirecTV won civil judgments against those three, but others are carrying on.

DirecTV discusses the piracy problem on a Web site of its own (www.infositeonline.com).

Some vendors sell access cards that have been reprogrammed to receive and decrypt DirecTV signals without paying. Others sell devices - generally known as emulators, programmers and unloopers - that allow people to modify access cards for illegal reception.

"They have one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to steal DirecTV's programming," Mercer said.

User lawsuits in Cincinnati were filed by Columbus lawyer David Wallace; in Covington by Louisville lawyer Larry Ethridge.

Those who have filed responses deny the allegations in general terms. Carla Griffitts of Goshen was more explicit in her court-filed answer.

"I have Time Warner Cable in my home and have not had DirecTV since going into bankruptcy," she wrote. "I know nothing of any illegal devices and furthermore would not begin to know how to use such devices. I am willing to work with DirecTV Inc. to clear up any questions they might have regarding this matter."

E-mail jmcnair@enquirer.com