A Florida Federal Court walloped a DISH Network pirate with a $51 million judgment after he was found to be posting software on the internet that allowed people with Free-to-air (FTA) satellite systems to receive programming from DISH Network without paying for it.

Satellite companies like DISH go to great lengths to protect their signals with various types of encryption, but when someone figures out how to crack the code and receive programming for free, they sometimes share it with others who also end up risking prosecution if they are caught pirating a subscription channel.

The court held that the posting of pirating software code is a violation of the Federal Communications Act, and that statutory damages should be arrived at based on how many persons downloaded the pirating software. Considering the $51 million number, one heck of a lot of people must have downloaded that code!

These matters are taken very seriously and as one pirate who was foolish enough to advertise his illegal wares found out, $51 million is a pretty big number. Can’t imagine how the average Joe could pay that, but I sure wouldn’t want to have to figure out how!

Psssst! Hey buddy, want to buy a free satellite TV descrambler? A shady looking character on a street corner selling illegal satellite receivers out of the back of a van is the image that comes to mind when I think about satellite pirates. This kind of stuff has been going on for years, even before the age of satellite TV when people would hijack cable TV programming by hooking up their homes illegally or buying descrambler boxes which allowed them to watch programming that was not part of the package they were paying for.

In this recent case of satellite piracy, forget about the shady dude with the van – these bozos actually set up a company that was selling a device called “Coolsat,” which allowed purchasers to receive DISH Network programming without paying for it. These geniuses, and their company, called “Freetech” (I wonder how they came up with that name?) recently but the dust in a big way after DISH Network prevailed in a lawsuit that netted a $97 million judgment against the company, hand over all its liquid assets to DISH Network and shut down its business which was reportedly engaged in “business” in other parts of the world beyond the U.S.

Talk about a smack down. Perhaps this will serve as a warning for anyone else foolish enough to actually set up a company and start selling equipment to receive television programming illegally.

I guess “Coolsat” didn’t turn out to be so cool after all.