First of all, I would like to say this article was very well researched and articulated and I enjoyed reading it, even though it infuriates me even more.

I am familiar with this topic and have been following it for awhile now, and with a good portion of the articles i read one thing is always left out. The notion of innocent until proven guilty. Maybe they think that that is obvious or the phrase is too cliche so they leave it out. The thing that I dont understand (and I admit I don't know the 'system' that well) is why people take this! Have I been dreaming when I thought if someone accuses you of something they must show sufficient PROOF that you are guilty and not the other way around? Again, this is painfully obvious, but when I see things such as:

"Mercer admits that DirecTV has dismissed some cases after the defendant proved his or her innocence to the company's satisfaction."

...it makes me feel like I have it all wrong. I just cannot see the logic in that. Getting right down to it though, we can confidentally assume, that alot of the people (won't say majority because I don't know that for sure) who have recieved letters ARE knowingly pirating DirecTV's signal. The bottom line is, and I don't care what fatcat judge or smug DirecTV spokesperson says about it, is that if you the accuser, cannot PROVE (redundancy anyone?) that allegation then there is no case. No $3,500 settlement fee. Nadda. I think the original goal of DirecTV's campaign was to have people either 'settle up' or waste their hard earned money on pointless legal fee's so as to intimidate the masses. The whole winning thing and the courts not opposing their 'guilty until proven innocent' strategy was a fortunate side affect and I would bet they were as surprised as the rest of us when that happened.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here but I had to write something in response to this.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/6402/20893#20893