HoFo: We’re Ok People, Nothing More to See Here

News

MobiTV Cofounder and President Paul Scanlan probably won’t be inviting Howard Chui out to the strip club with the boys any time soon, but he seems to have forgiven the HowardForums founder for a recent troublesome post on the site. In case you missed it, MobiTV’s legal team went after Howard with guns blazing as a result of a post on HoFo detailing just how easy it is to steal MobiTV service. They went as far as contacting HoFo host Global Net Access with a steamy cease and desist order that would have threatened to shut down the popular mobile forum. Howard wisely chronicled the ordeal publicly on HoFo, garnering support from the HoFo community and from across the web. Apparently MobiTV got the message; maybe any publicity isn’t always good publicity. Scanlan and Chui spoke privately and Scanlan claimed that his cohorts jumped the gun a bit. "Again, we’re big fans of the sight and our intention was never to bring your entire sight down or to ‘censor the Internet’ like we’re being accused," Scanlan stated. By "sight" we think he means "site". He went on to say, "Additionally, we also have a responsibility to our content and carrier partners to reduce the impact of any breaches to the system once they occur and that was really the basis for the correspondence you had with our legal team." A novel concept; fix the problem instead of threatening those who expose it.

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9 Comments
  • thelostsoul

    “fix the problem instead of threatening those who expose it.”

    If only more people recognized that’s what needs to be done. Nice line there ;)

  • Glenn

    If its acceptable to post a method of getting something for free that others pay for, we might as well be able to post cracked versions of IM+ and other applications… after all.. it’s the company who “allowed” it to be cracked.

  • matt

    Glenn, you are a bit off here in that this wasn’t a crack… This just never was secured.

  • http://www.bgr.com Zach Epstein

    Glenn: The difference is that by cracking software you are violating copyright laws. A HoFo member merely posted a link to a publicly available file on the mobitv site. There is nothing illegal about linking to a file. He didn’t post it on the forum or alter it in any way. The issue here was the text content of this member’s post, which is theoretically protected under freedom of speech. Apples and oranges.

  • TxdoHawk

    Thank goodness. Between info messing around with current phones and news on new ones, I

  • TxdoHawk

    …lurve me some HoFo. That was an odd cut off, sorry.

  • Joseph Singer

    I hope Scanlan will learn the difference between site and sight!

  • J.C.

    Heh, i Have been using that method, works like a charm, and i get free XM Radio…

    Hope they don’t patch the hole…

  • C DM

    @Glenn: As other’s pointed out, it’s not the same thing, not by a longshot.

    @J.C.: MobiTV already secured things on their end, at least to a degree enough that things aren’t in the open and all (or at least certainly most) of the people who are not signed up for the service can’t access it any more.

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