By John Oates for The Register. This
story has been reproduced with permission.
Two men have been sentenced for a total of 15 months for
advising people how to bypass security settings on their set-top
boxes.
Carl Morgan Davison of Llanfechell in Amlwch and Mark Taylor
from Leeds got ten and five months respectively. The two were
moderators of a site called modshack.co.uk. Davison used the
aliases "Hairy Monster", "HM" or "H" and Taylor was known as
"Novice Angle" and "Bubba's Boy".
The site including a link asking for donations which collected
almost £27,000. The site was closed in 2006 following the arrest of
Davison and Taylor.
Virgin Media and BSkyB complained to North Wales Police that
between 2003 and 2005 the website helped people get services
without paying for them, thereby defrauding both companies.
The two men were actually charged with providing a hacking
advisory service contrary to section 296ZB of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act.
© The
Register 2008
