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Analysis and raw contents of a real copyright infringement notice

Posted on by Jody Bruchon

Final Update

I have canceled the copyright-infringement-notice.com domain name and archived the text elsewhere on this blog. All of this content was written in 2012 and hasn’t been updated in years. I am keeping the post you’re currently reading for historical and entertainment purposes. If you follow any outdated advice or information given below, you do so entirely at your own risk. I am not a lawyer and only a fool would take anything I write as legal advice.

I’ve got a treat for you guys. I’ve been forwarded an email as a result of my Copyright Infringement Notice website [note: domain canceled, archive link available at top of post] that is a prime example of a copyright infringement notice with a settlement demand enclosed. (Here’s a link to my earlier copyright infringement notice post that inspired that site.)

Below is the full text of a Charter Internet e-mail DMCA notice sent by Copyright Enforcement Group, LLC.  The identifying information has been stripped and replaced with words in brackets. I want you to pay specific attention to a few things that often go unnoticed:

  1. This is supposed to be a DMCA takedown notice. It is being abused to demand a settlement, rather than merely demand that infringement cease.
  2. Note the XML section tag names and values, specifically the HashMatched and MetadataMatched values. What is notable here is that the hash and metadata are not the actual allegedly infringed content. Conspicuously absent is any indication that any of the file’s data was acquired from the alleged infringing party to ensure that they were actually offering out parts of the copyrighted material in question.
  3. The hash is simply a calculated value based on the file(s) in the torrent that is likely to be unique, though it is possible for hash collisions to occur. Therefore, the hash under which someone is registered on a torrent tracker as a peer is not a reliable indicator of infringement. Being in a peer list for a theoretically infringing torrent and actually sending allegedly infringing data are very different things. Remember that a torrent peer list only lists IP addresses that supposedly have chunks of data for the hash in question and the only way to verify that the data is infringing is to actually acquire the data from the supposedly infringing party directly.
  4. The metadata is information such as file names, sizes, and dates. Peer-to-peer file sharing has no way of enforcing the match between file metadata and file data, and in fact this was a severe real-world issue with the now-defunct Kazaa file sharing application, which was notorious for having incorrectly named files as well as having mismatched “file name” and “title” metadata. Again, the only way to verify that an offered file infringes is to fetch the file data from the person and verify that it contains the content described.
  5. If a matching hash, matching metadata, IP address, port, and time are all the information that Copyright Enforcement Group, LLC can produce, they simply do not have enough information to prove that Joe Blow at 555 Foobar Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA is infringing on their copyrights.
  6. I’ve noticed that in every single case where copyright infringement is alleged, the accusing party never offers up a complete copy of the file(s) alleged to be infringing; by extension, conspicuously absent is proof that the entirety of that infringing data was downloaded directly from the IP address in question rather than a combination of that IP address along with other peers in the same list for the hash in question.
  7. The same accusers also fail to show that they have downloaded the file(s) in question themselves to verify that they are actually infringing. It can only be inferred that they are assuming the material infringes simply based on a matching piece of metadata (i.e. the file name contains a film name). Ask any file sharer who has downloaded an AVI file over the course of many hours or days only to discover it’s actually a password-protected RAR file how trustworthy such tagging is in practice.

The content of the infringement notice is below.

Dear Charter Internet Subscriber:

Charter Communications (“Charter”) has been notified by a copyright owner, or its authorized agent, that your Internet account may have been involved in the exchange of unauthorized copies of copyrighted material (e.g., music, movies, or software).  We are enclosing a copy of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice that Charter received from the copyright holder which includes the specific allegation.

Under the DMCA, copyright owners have the right to notify Charters register agent if they believe that a Charter customer has infringed on their work(s).  When Charter receives a complaint notice from a copyright owner, Charter will notify the identifiable customer of the alleged infringement by providing them a copy of the submitted DMCA notice.  As required by law, Charter may determine that the customer is a repeat copyright infringer and reserves the right to suspend or terminate the accounts of repeat copyright infringers.

It is possible that this activity has occurred without your permission or knowledge by an unauthorized user, a minor who may not fully understand the copyright laws, or even as a result of a computer virus.  However, as the named subscriber on the account, you may be held responsible for any misuse of your account.  Please be aware that using Charters service to engage in any form of copyright infringement is expressly prohibited by Charter’s Acceptable Use Policy and that repeat copyright infringement, or violations of any other Charter policy, may result in the suspension or termination of your service.  You may view Charter’s rules and policies, including Charters Acceptable Use Policy, under the policies section of charter.com.

We ask that you take immediate action to stop the exchange of any infringing material. For additional information regarding copyright infringement and for a list of frequently asked questions, please visit charter.com/dmca.

If you have questions about this letter, you may contact us at 1-866-229-7286.  Representatives will be available to take your call Monday through Friday 8am – 8pm, Saturday and Sunday 8am – 5pm (CST).

Sincerely,

Charter Communications Security Resolution Team
http://www.charter.com/security

— The following material was provided to us as evidence —

[Part 0 (plain text)]

—–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
Hash: SHA1

***NOTE TO ISP: PLEASE FORWARD THE ENTIRE NOTICE***
[date redacted]
Re: Notice of Unauthorized Use of Registered Copyrights Owned by Diabolic
Case #: [case]

Dear Sir or Madam:

This notice is intended solely for the primary Charter Communications internet service account holder. Someone using this account has engaged in the illegal copying and/or distribution of pornographic movies. This notice may contain the titles of those movies, and therefore may contain text that is offensive to some readers.

Copyright Enforcement Group, LLC, (“We”) represent Diabolic. Diabolic owns all right, title and interest to the registered copyrights listed below.

Evidence:
Infringement Title: No Swallowing Allowed
Infringement File Name: No Swallowing Allowed
Infringement Hash: c2c389655c099a8de9c5dc039597b32af8b1ac9f
Infringement File Size: 3375105242 bytes
Infringement Protocol: BitTorrent
Infringement Timestamp: [redacted]
Infringers IP Address: [ip_address]
Infringers Port: [port]

The following files were included in the download:
File 1: No Swallowing Allowed/1 Tami Lynn.mkv
File 2: No Swallowing Allowed/10 Luci Thai.mkv
File 3: No Swallowing Allowed/11 Katin.mkv
File 4: No Swallowing Allowed/2 Luci Thai.mkv
File 5: No Swallowing Allowed/3 Dana Vespoli.mkv
File 6: No Swallowing Allowed/4 Hollie Stevens.mkv
File 7: No Swallowing Allowed/5 Tami Lynn.mkv
File 8: No Swallowing Allowed/6 Luci Thai.mkv
File 9: No Swallowing Allowed/7 Hollie Stevens.mkv
File 10: No Swallowing Allowed/8 Dana Vespoli.mkv
File 11: No Swallowing Allowed/9 Cris Taliana.mkv
File 12: No Swallowing Allowed/bonus Hollie Stevens.mkv

You are hereby notified that your unauthorized copying and/or distribution infringes the registered copyrights of Diabolic under the U.S. Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 106. In this regard, demand is hereby made that you and all persons using this account immediately and permanently cease and desist the unauthorized copying and/or distribution of the registered copyrights listed in this notice or otherwise owned by Diabolic.

You may also be held liable for monetary damages, including attorney’s fees and court costs if a lawsuit is commenced against you. You have until [redacted] to access the settlement offer and settle online. To access the settlement offer please visit http://www.copyrightsettlements.com/ and enter Case #: [redacted] and Password: [redacted]. To access the settlement offer directly please visit https://www.copyrightsettlements.com/?u=[case]&p=[password].

Settlement Information:
Direct Settlement Link: https://www.copyrightsettlements.com/?u=[case]&p=[password]
Settlement Website: http://www.copyrightsettlements.com/
Case #: [case]
Password: [password]

If you fail to respond or settle within the prescribed time period, the claim(s) will be referred to our attorneys for legal action. At that point the original settlement offer will no longer be an option and the amount will increase as a result of us having to involve our attorneys.

Nothing contained or omitted from this correspondence is, or shall be deemed to be either a full statement of the facts or applicable law, an admission of any fact, or waiver or limitation of any of the Diabolic’s rights or remedies, all of which are specifically retained and reserved.

The information in this notice is accurate. We have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of herein is not authorized by the registered copyright owner, its agent, or by operation of law. We swear under penalty of perjury, that we are authorized to act on behalf of Diabolic.

Sincerely,

Dale Spislander
Copyright Enforcement Agent

Copyright Enforcement Group, LLC
8484 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 220
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

Local: 310-526-8610 Ext. 2
Toll Free: 877-5-COPYRIGHT (877-526-7974)
Email: X
Website: www.copyrightsettlements.com

– —-Start ACNS XML
<?xml version=”1.0″ ?>
<Infringement xsi:schemaLocation=”http://www.movielabs.com/ACNS/ACNS2v1.xsd” xmlns=”http://www.movielabs.com/ACNS” xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”>
<Case>
<ID>[case]</ID>
<Status>OPEN</Status>
<Severity>Normal</Severity>
</Case>
<Complainant>
<Entity>Copyright Enforcement Group, LLC</Entity>
<Contact>Dale Spislander</Contact>
<Address>Copyright Enforcement Group, LLC, 8484 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 220, Beverly Hills, CA 90211</Address>
<Phone>310-526-8610 Ext. 1</Phone>
<Email>X</Email>
</Complainant>
<Service_Provider>
<Entity>Charter Communications</Entity>
<Contact></Contact>
<Address>12405 Powerscourt Drive, St. Louis, MO 63131-3674</Address>
<Phone></Phone>
<Email></Email>
</Service_Provider>
<Source>
<TimeStamp>[redacted]</TimeStamp>
<IP_Address>[ip_address]</IP_Address>
<Port>[port]</Port>
<Type>BITTORRENT</Type>
<UserName></UserName>
<Number_Files>1</Number_Files>
</Source>
<Content>
<Item>
<TimeStamp>[redacted]</TimeStamp>
<AlsoSeen Start=”[redacted]”></AlsoSeen>
<Title>No Swallowing Allowed</Title>
<Artist></Artist>
<FileName>No Swallowing Allowed</FileName>
<FileSize>3375105242</FileSize>
<Type>Movie</Type>
<Hash Type=”SHA1″>c2c389655c099a8de9c5dc039597b32af8b1ac9f</Hash>
</Item>
</Content>
<History></History>
<Notes></Notes><Type Retraction=”false”>DMCA</Type>
<Detection>
<Asset>
<OriginalAssetName>No Swallowing Allowed</OriginalAssetName>
</Asset>
<HashMatched>true</HashMatched>
<MetadataMatched>true</MetadataMatched>
</Detection>
<Verification>
<VerificationLevel Type=”DT”>2</VerificationLevel>
</Verification>
<TextNotice><![CDATA[***NOTE TO ISP: PLEASE FORWARD THE ENTIRE NOTICE***
October 28, 2011
Re: Notice of Unauthorized Use of Registered Copyrights Owned by Diabolic
Case #: [case]

Dear Sir or Madam:

This notice is intended solely for the primary Charter Communications internet service account holder. Someone using this account has engaged in the illegal copying and/or distribution of pornographic movies. This notice may contain the titles of those movies, and therefore may contain text that is offensive to some readers.

Copyright Enforcement Group, LLC, (“We”) represent Diabolic. Diabolic owns all right, title and interest to the registered copyrights listed below.

Evidence:
Infringement Title: No Swallowing Allowed
Infringement File Name: No Swallowing Allowed
Infringement Hash: c2c389655c099a8de9c5dc039597b32af8b1ac9f
Infringement File Size: 3375105242 bytes
Infringement Protocol: BitTorrent
Infringement Timestamp: [redacted]
Infringers IP Address: [ip_address]
Infringers Port: [port]

The following files were included in the download:
File 1: No Swallowing Allowed/1 Tami Lynn.mkv
File 2: No Swallowing Allowed/10 Luci Thai.mkv
File 3: No Swallowing Allowed/11 Katin.mkv
File 4: No Swallowing Allowed/2 Luci Thai.mkv
File 5: No Swallowing Allowed/3 Dana Vespoli.mkv
File 6: No Swallowing Allowed/4 Hollie Stevens.mkv
File 7: No Swallowing Allowed/5 Tami Lynn.mkv
File 8: No Swallowing Allowed/6 Luci Thai.mkv
File 9: No Swallowing Allowed/7 Hollie Stevens.mkv
File 10: No Swallowing Allowed/8 Dana Vespoli.mkv
File 11: No Swallowing Allowed/9 Cris Taliana.mkv
File 12: No Swallowing Allowed/bonus Hollie Stevens.mkv

You are hereby notified that your unauthorized copying and/or distribution infringes the registered copyrights of Diabolic under the U.S. Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 106. In this regard, demand is hereby made that you and all persons using this account immediately and permanently cease and desist the unauthorized copying and/or distribution of the registered copyrights listed in this notice or otherwise owned by Diabolic.

You may also be held liable for monetary damages, including attorney’s fees and court costs if a lawsuit is commenced against you. You have until Sunday, November 27, 2011 to access the settlement offer and settle online. To access the settlement offer please visit http://www.copyrightsettlements.com/ and enter Case #: [case] and Password: [password]. To access the settlement offer directly please visit https://www.copyrightsettlements.com/?u=[case]&amp;p=[password].

Settlement Information:
Direct Settlement Link: https://www.copyrightsettlements.com/?u=[case]&amp;p=[password]
Settlement Website: http://www.copyrightsettlements.com/
Case #: [case]
Password: [password]

If you fail to respond or settle within the prescribed time period, the claim(s) will be referred to our attorneys for legal action. At that point the original settlement offer will no longer be an option and the amount will increase as a result of us having to involve our attorneys.

Nothing contained or omitted from this correspondence is, or shall be deemed to be either a full statement of the facts or applicable law, an admission of any fact, or waiver or limitation of any of the Diabolic’s rights or remedies, all of which are specifically retained and reserved.

The information in this notice is accurate. We have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of herein is not authorized by the registered copyright owner, its agent, or by operation of law. We swear under penalty of perjury, that we are authorized to act on behalf of Diabolic.

Sincerely,

Dale Spislander
Copyright Enforcement Agent

Copyright Enforcement Group, LLC
8484 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 220
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

Local: 310-526-8610 Ext. 2
Toll Free: 877-5-COPYRIGHT (877-526-7974)
Email: X
Website: www.copyrightsettlements.com]]></TextNotice>
</Infringement>
– —-End ACNS XML

This is an automated email. If you have questions or concerns, please visit us at http://www.copyrightsettlements.com/contact_us.html. Replies sent to X are not read.

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Laptop thinks headphones are always plugged in (Compaq Presario CQ50): workaround!

Posted on by Jody Bruchon

We had a laptop that suddenly decided there were headphones connected to the computer 100% of the time, which caused the laptop’s internal speakers to be disabled entirely.  It was a Compaq Presario CQ50.  The unit was not dropped or damaged; it seems that the jack detection just happened to malfunction for unknown reasons.  Plugging speakers into the headphone jack worked just fine, so the internal sound card was clearly functional as well.  The same thing happened in Linux. Performing a BIOS update did not have any effect.

So, we had this unit sitting on a bench, with clearly functional sound, having tried all kinds of driver and BIOS and OS changes, and we couldn’t get the thing to stop detecting headphones and disabling the speakers. You’d think that meant we were pretty much screwed on getting the internal speakers to ever work. Fortunately, we found a workaround!

The system has a control panel called Conexant SmartAudio. Inside, there’s a configuration tab that allows pushing audio streams to headphones or speakers, and by default is set to “basic” settings; by switching to “advanced” instead, and telling the audio to duplicate headphone output to the internal speakers, we were able to successfully push audio out of the speakers despite the “always plugged in” headphone problem. Of course, it’s not a perfect solution since it will never turn off the internal speakers if headphones are plugged in, but most customers use the internal speakers almost all the time anyway, and the setting can always be reversed if it ever became an issue.

If you’re having problems with a system thinking headphones are plugged in all the time, and headphones work when plugged in, look for a vendor-specific control panel where you can change a similar setting. You might not have as big of a problem as you think. The most common vendors we see control panel items for seem to be VIA, Realtek, Conexant, and Sigmatel. I haven’t checked to see if any of them support this, but then again, this problem is somewhat rare for us, so I’ve not had a need. Report your results in the comments when you’re done!

Moving factory jobs overseas indirectly resulted in 50% hard drive price increase

Posted on by Jody Bruchon

Massive flooding in eastern Asia has caused hard drive prices to increase by a whopping 50 percent.  As one comment in the linked article notes, the potential supply chain disruption factor is rarely ever factored into the process of pushing jobs and manufacturing overseas.  If you want another argument for why putting all of our manufacturing eggs (or indeed, any form of industry we rely on) in one overseas basket, this is it.

500GB SATA hard drives that once cost as little as $50 at retail have now jumped to $80-$90 or higher.  2TB green drives, which have been notoriously cheap around $70-$85, have exceeded the $100 mark.  That means that, excluding major computer manufacturers who have tens of thousands of hard drives stuffed in warehouses and can wait out the temporary jump in prices, everyone can look forward to paying at least $30 more per hard drive until the factories dry out.

Would we have the same disastrous price increases if manufacturers had at least a minimal secondary factory here in the United States, or at least in North America?  I doubt it.  While the units would cost more to manufacture here, and all prices in general would have to be increased to make up for it, the lower risk of supply chain disruption would be arguably worth the slight increase.

I’m reminded of the Japan flooding which disrupted flash memory manufacturing, since the vast majority of the world’s flash memory chips are made in Japan.  Here again, we had a situation in which natural disasters temporarily shut down an industry that the modern world of technology relies on heavily.  Again, the answer seems to be to stick some factories somewhere less prone to quakes, tsunamis, and flooding.

Then again, what do I know?  I’m just a guy quoting computer builds to customers and having to explain why it’s $50 higher than it would have been last Friday.  Maybe I’m clueless about how huge manufacturing businesses work, but then again, I feel like a lot of this is common sense.  How many more things have to flood or collapse in Asia before our major manufacturers start hedging their bets?

How’s $421.32 monthly as a PC technician sound? That’s the salary of India-outsourced PC techs!

Posted on by Jody Bruchon

Are you familiar with the company iYogi? They’re an India-based PC support company that is growing amazingly quickly, especially considering they’ve barely been around for four years as of this blog post. iYogi is spreading like a virus. The company that makes Avast! Antivirus outsources to them for their technical support, which is how we initially discovered that iYogi isn’t just a random one-off company: our customers at Tritech Computer Solutions started to complain that they called the Avast support phone number, got pushed to iYogi, and that iYogi told them the usual “doom and gloom” story where “your PC has problems and we will fix them for $139” or something similar. Needless to say, we provide support services to the customer already, and they were distraught when they were being pressured to pay for extra PC repair services they didn’t really need. I personally wrote to some higher-ups at Alwil Software and asked them what the deal was, and they indicated that they had received numerous complaints about iYogi’s aggressive sales tactics and that they were working with iYogi to develop a training program to eliminate the troublesome treatment of Avast! Antivirus customers. I’ve read that Microsoft and HP and Dell and Toshiba also outsource to iYogi, but can’t confirm this personally. While I’m hammering on the subject, it seems that they use 100% free scan tools such as SUPERAntiSpyware and MalwareBytes as at least part of their support services, and customers can easily install and run these without paying anything to anyone.

That’s a bit off-topic for this post, but I feel that it’s very important to the reader to understand what I have personally experienced so far as it relates to the whole salary topic in the title. Today, I once again ran into iYogi because they apparently have sponsored videos on YouTube, and I wanted to find out what on earth they were doing that kept them “in the spotlight” so heavily all the time. Clearly, the video production, massive advertising, and partnering with major vendors as their technical support outsource company requires a LOT of money to keep going. That’s how I ended up finally breaking down and looking at the number one cost of business: paying people a fair wage to do the actual work.

Note that I’ll be using United States dollars as the currency from here on out; that way I don’t have to write “USD$” over and over.

The median hourly wage for a PC help desk technician in the United States circles around $15.00 or so (source: PayScale.com), depending on how lofty the title is (“analysts” make more than “representatives” etc.) and we’ll assume that they work a 40-hour work week, 8 hours per day, approximately 21 days per month (Monday through Friday). That’s about $2,520 per month in gross wages, or roughly $30K/year.

A job posting I found on PlacementIndia.com (which will probably be deleted before you read this) for a position titled “Required IT Application Helpdesk Support Executive” at Unistanz Software – Mumbai, Maharashtra, lists the following requirements: “Bachelor Degree, B.A, B.Com, or B.Sc” and 2-5 years experience. It is a full-time position, and the monthly wage is stated to be Rs. 15,000-20,000. (Rs. is Indian rupees, a form of currency.)

A quick spin over to the CoinMill.com currency converter for INR to USD reveals that the United States dollar equivalent is $315.99-$421.32 PER MONTH.

You read that correctly. Indian tech support agents with a four-year degree command a monthly salary that, according to these numbers, is between 12.53% to 16.74% of the monthly salary of an American technician that may not even have a degree at all. In other words, I could reduce my largest cost of doing business to ONE SIXTH OF THE CURRENT COST if it can be outsourced to India.

That’s why iYogi can charge a rate that is insanely low: $169.99 per customer per year for what they advertise as essentially unlimited technical support. A cover feature piece in India Inc. magazine states that iYogi has 6,000 people manning the phones, so doing obvious math, those people cost between $1,896,000 and $2,532,000 per month to employ (based on the pay scale I found advertised for a similar position at a different company). Dividing all that by the $170 per year fee (I used integer math, it’s one penny, get over it) the company requires 133,824-178,728 yearly paying customers to pay their people. I realize that this example ignores a whole host of other business expenses and staff; I’m only trying to get a rough idea of how much money is required to roughly break even on the actual workers, to make a point later.

So we can safely assume that iYogi has well over 180,000 yearly customers since they’re supposedly growing with the force of a deadly plague. What would it cost to employ American workers at the stated American wages, in place of the outsourced workers? Well, at $2,520 per month for 6,000 workers, $15,120,000 per month. That’s almost exactly SIX TIMES MORE. Using this “six times more” ratio, the equivalent yearly fee charged to the customer would need to be $1,020 per year to cover those workers’ wages, which works out to around $85 per month. iYogi’s yearly fee divides out to $28.33 per month.

Another way to put all of this in perspective is this: with the $2,532,000 that iYogi pays out for 6,000 call center workers, an equivalent American firm can only hire 1,004 people…and keep in mind that all of these figures ignore the standard 3-tier technician model, where Tier 2 and Tier 3 are paid much more due to possessing more experience and skill. Taking tiers into account requires information I don’t have, but consider that if Tier 2 makes 30% more on average than a Tier 1, the worker in India will be paid $127 more per month, while the U.S. worker will be paid $504 more per month. That’s notable because the difference in those pay raises equates to the cost of another Indian Tier 1 technician!

What should you take away from all of this calculator dancing and long-winded discussion? Indian workers cost about one-sixth of American workers to employ for completing any given labor effort that is capable of being outsourced. That’s why iYogi is doing so well: American firms can’t compete unless the call center workers can get six times the work done in the same time frame as the equivalent Indian worker. Can it be done? I don’t know. “Work smarter, not harder” has long been the reason for my company, Tritech Computer Solutions, being able to often pump out ten or more computer repairs in a day with only one technician on staff, but having been an individual self-employed computer technician that at one point lacked both the resources and the knowledge that I possess today, I can definitively say that even the best techs I’ve ever met don’t do six times the work of a “newbie” technician. (Though we definitely avoid the high rate of return or of creating angry customers, but that’s a story for another day!)

There are other factors that work in favor of U.S.-based technical support call centers, though, and once a critical mass of individuals is reached that becomes fed up with this outsourcing trend, we may see outsourced support diminish considerably. In America, we’ve recently learned to accept lower quality goods and services if they come with a sufficiently lower price tag, so we don’t give it a second thought until we discover first-hand what kind of serious quality issues can arise. Dell became the poster child for terrible India-based outsourced technical support staff because they were one of the first huge companies to make the switch (though XPS “premium” support remained stateside), and the backlash can be heard around the United States to this day. Customers in the United States find it highly frustrating to spend a significant amount of time on the telephone attempting to understand what the agent halfway around the world is trying to say, and the fact that most Tier 1 technicians follow “idiot-proof scripts” to the letter only adds insult to injury. When a Tritech technician calls Dell support to have a replacement for a customer’s failing hard drive shipped in to fulfill the Dell warranty obligations, and the person on the other end only repeats lines from some unseen magic flowchart on their desk which results in a 30-minute call that could have taken five minutes, the depressing failure of outsourced technical support starts to become apparent.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of properly conducted American tech support is that their communication is immediately comprehensible to the caller without unnecessary requests for repetition. Being capable of adapting (if not forced to stick to a script the whole time) is also very crucial; while representatives cannot be given unlimited power over the remedies they may make available to the customer, giving them enough freedom to break from the procedural flowchart can greatly reduce call times and improve service experiences for the help desk technician, the customer, and the company in general.

A classic and very personal example of this would be when I had to call T-Mobile technical support to have my G1 smartphone replaced under warranty. The gentleman with whom I spoke was clearly a native English speaker, knowledgeable about both his job and the devices he was required to support, and willing to work with me on my level of technical aptitude. After I explained that I had rooted the phone myself, and detailed the exhaustive number of steps I had performed to figure out why the wifi was not functioning anymore where it had been perfectly fine with the same rooted firmware for months prior, he gladly skipped ALL OF THE DIAGNOSTIC STEPS ENTIRELY and simply set me up with a warranty replacement to be shipped out immediately. Imagine how long I would have been on the line if he had refused to accept my reports of having performed every diagnostic test known to man, started at step one, and had me reboot the phone, then try pulling the battery, then factory reset the phone, then…well, you get the idea. When that replacement phone decided to completely refuse to work as a USB mass storage device with my computers a few months after that, I had an identical experience with a very nice lady in technical support.

Yet when I call Dell and tell the Indian guy on the other line that we’ve run software which initiates a read of every sector on the customer’s hard drive from beginning to end and that unreadable sectors were detected, the experience was disastrous and we were forced to run Dell’s built-in diagnostics and read a Dell-specific code out before they would even consider sending a hard drive out. My software was questioned, my methodology was questioned, and when I was asked what prompted the drive test and revealed that the customer originally had viruses on the computer, I was told “we cannot fix viruses, you need to call the paid support people for that.” Riiiight, because somehow “the hard drive is failing” wasn’t the reason we called, it was now magically “viruses” that were the entirety of the problem. Needless to say, the customer and all of my technicians heard the conversation on speakerphone and we concluded that the Indian guy was either a complete idiot, deathly afraid of losing his job, or both. It was an extremely customer-hostile experience, and it was repeated twice because I called back twice, hoping to talk to a different person that wasn’t a complete idiot…and failing to do so. Apparently, Dell doesn’t care about customer service. Minimizing the cost of warranty fulfillment is priority one.

We need American tech support, but to get it, we have to be willing to pay the price. On the cheaper end of technical assistance, you tend to get what you pay for.

I know that this has been a very long post, but thank you for reading it. If you have any thoughts or more information, or you’re an insider of some sort that knows more than I can learn simply by trolling the Web, please comment below. I’d also like to hear from ANYONE in the United States that has had a personal experience with iYogi, either positive or negative.

References:

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Skill=Help_Desk_%2f_Desktop_Support_%28Tier_1%29/Hourly_Rate

http://www.placementindia.com/job-search/vacancy_detail.php?id=view_job_posted&job_posting_slno=259765&recruiter_mem_slno=279450

http://www.slideshare.net/alokmittal/iyogi-cover-story-inc-india-mar-2011

http://coinmill.com/INR_USD.html#INR=15000

By the way…there are more technical jobs that require significant knowledge yet pay even less than the one I used for this article. Here’s another that pays Rs. 10,000 – 15,000:

http://www.placementindia.com/job-search/vacancy_detail.php?id=view_job_posted&job_posting_slno=257776&recruiter_mem_slno=273972

iYogi complaints and reviews at this next link are quite scathing; according to one post, they ask their employees to drop tons of fake positive comments around the Internet in favor of the company:

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/iyogi-c325325.html

Easily bypass “Lock and Pay” screens on DVDs with your computer!

Posted on by Jody Bruchon

Someone I know (who shall remain unnamed for their privacy) brought me a “mature” DVD and an interesting challenge that I couldn’t refuse. This DVD has a “main” movie and then a large variety of “extra” add-in scenes that appear to add up to drastically more time than the “main” video. However, this DVD had a feature that I haven’t ever seen or heard of before: when you try to pick any of these 20 or so extra scenes to watch, you have to call a 900 number and enter a 4-digit PIN code to watch them. Some of the exact text on the screen, for anyone who is going to search for it, is as follows:

To watch this sequence, please call 1-900-622-9900. Then, enter the following reference number: 114.  Or send by SNMS (text message): SUN114 to the following number: 64762. (blahblahblah) This is a “lock & pay” system offered by Euro First Multimedia. (more junk in mouse-type that I won’t bother with)

They’re monetizing a DVD they’ve already sold! I know that DVDs contain program code in the IFO files, and I know that it isn’t THAT complicated, so I started to look at the code with a program called PGCEdit…and I noticed something fishy. To play the video, the code selects “angle 2” (yes, that’s right, the almost-never-used multiple angles feature of DVD video). So, with that in mind, I quickly figured out a solution and beat the challenge. I’m going to share those steps with you now.

  1. Install Media Player Classic Home Cinema (run a search for MPC-HC and it’ll come up quickly).
  2. Go to File – Open DVD, and select your DVD drive from the list.
  3. When the DVD starts to play, right-click on the video and go to Navigate – Jump To… – (select whatever chapter you want!)
  4. If the video doesn’t play correctly after selecting a chapter, you’ve found one of the “lock and pay” streams. To fix it…
  5. Right-click the video and go to Navigate – Video Angle – Angle 2.

That’s it, you should be able to view the “locked out” video without tediously figuring out or paying money for a PIN code!

Hot dogs are as bad as cigarettes? Use logic before you believe medical study conclusions!

Posted on by Jody Bruchon

I was recently informed by a friend about a billboard that shows hot dogs coming out of a pack of cigarettes claiming that hot dogs will “WRECK your health,” and a study related to that billboard that concludes, in part, that hot dogs are “linked” to more colorectal cancer and other bad things.  I discovered that the group who put the billboard up has an animal rights agenda and subtly pushes a vegan agenda in general, but what really annoyed me wasn’t that. Groups push hidden agendas daily, but studies never come under the same scrutiny that outspoken groups do.

In fact, logic seems to bail out when a medical study says something. I posted the following in a comment box on a site and decided that it would be better off on my blog. Comment if you have any thoughts. Please note that I’m not trying to push any form of agenda of my own here, I’m trying to introduce critical thinking and logical analysis into peoples’ personal evaluations of medical study conclusions that tell them something is horrible and will cause their intestines to rot out and their car tires to flatten.

The vast majority of medical studies that “link” consumption of something to a negative outcome are questionable at best. Why? Simple logic: the study is unlikely to take ALL factors into account that “tip the scales.”  For example, take the statement “hot dogs have been linked to higher chance of developing colorectal cancer.”  Well…what about the fact that people who consume more hot dogs are likely to be taking other unhealthy actions, such as drastically over-consuming beverages containing high-fructose corn syrup, or always “having fries with that” when they eat take-out, or never engaging in any physical activity, or consuming large amounts of alcoholic beverages?  Do any of these studies attempt to ensure that the only significant factor involved is the targeted food item or activity that’s being “linked” to the bad outcome?

Honestly, if we took these “linkages” from all of these studies as gospel and avoided the things they’re linking to negative outcomes entirely, we’d probably die of starvation or malnutrition, or live off of nothing but multivitamins and water. Apparently red meat, despite being an amazing source of protein, is supposed to kill anyone who eats it before they turn 40, yet it’s been an integral part of the American diet since anyone can remember, and I’m sure you can think of relatives of your own that have eaten red meat regularly and lived to be 80+ years of age. Remember: correlation does not indicate causation; ergo, eating more hot dogs plus having more cancer doesn’t mean that the hot dogs directly caused more cancer. It’s simple logic, really, but people seem to ignore logic when someone with “M.D.” after their name says something to them.

Vegan diets, without artificial supplements, have essentially zero human-usable Vitamin B-12, a lack of which causes myelin sheaths on nerve cells to degrade. Think about that. I just “linked” veganism with brain degradation, so does that mean all the vegans reading this will now stop eating a vegan diet? It’s ironic to say it here, but take everything you hear with a grain of salt.

I also recently found the term “food fascists” and for some reason, it’s starting to make sense…

Google semi-censors “Chromebook Sucks” searches, uses “Chromebook review” as substitute

Posted on by Jody Bruchon

As you know, Google Chromebooks are out, and Google advertises their existence underneath the search box on the Google home page.  However, I tried typing out a search, without quotes, for “Chromebook sucks” and was greeted with nothing but search results were “review(s)” was substituted for the term “sucks.”

Go to Google and try it yourself.  I’ll still be here when you get back.

To get actual results for “Chromebook sucks” you must enclose the words in double quotes instead.  I’m willing to give Google somewhat of the benefit of the doubt here, because usually someone who types “sucks” after something is looking for reviews about that something, and primarily negative ones, so the substitution may make sense in that regard; however, the fact that it happens when you’re trying to find negative information about a Google product presents a conflict of interest, in my opinion, and I think that they shouldn’t “help steer you in the right direction” when it’s something that they are selling and you happen to be using the search engine they also control to see what the downsides of the pitched product may be.

If you work for Google and know the reason this works the way it does, feel free to comment!

Tritech Service System 2.1 progress

Posted on by Jody Bruchon

So far, only a few bugs remain in TSS 2.1, which is currently at  version 2.1-alpha5.  There are some problems currently being worked out with KMS support, which is the biggest issue so far.  The entire “init” system has been rewritten to replace traditional “init” with the runit-init tools provided by BusyBox.  The move to a partially modular kernel has been done, and we’re testing that out on machines to make sure it behaves as expected.  (Modular support is necessary for drivers that must load firmware, like most wireless network adapters and some of the KMS video drivers in the kernel).

We haven’t set up the “beacon server” features yet, mainly because some security issues need to be addressed.  Persistent home support has been thrown out for now, since we will be replacing it with something more robust in the future.  We’re not too far from the 2.1 release.  It’s going to be pretty sweet!  Stay tuned!

Update (2011-04-08): Up to -alpha7b2, trying to help the Linux kernel developers with some serious framebuffer issues.  It seems that Intel i915 framebuffers (inteldrmfb) like to cause a completely black screen at boot time on plenty of computers (and that’s even using today’s most recent git pull of the kernel code).  Radeon and nVidia once in a while has the same issue.  In the meantime I’ve built a second kernel that has all the graphics stuff stripped out so that we can use console-only mode.

Yahoo! is now a haven for spammers

Posted on by Jody Bruchon

Apparently, Yahoo laid off their email abuse staff, because the company now responds to forwarded email with full headers to abuse@yahoo.com with a notice that “abuse reports are only accepted in Mail Abuse Reporting Format.”  Someone on the Internet actually tried to make a script that would format email messages into the correct format, following the guidelines in the RFC for MARF, and all attempts were rejected by Yahoo’s servers.

In other words, Yahoo no longer accepts reports of email abuse.  Notably, I have seen a sharp uptick in the amount of spam reaching my spam folder from @yahoo.com addresses, and now there is no way to report such abuse.  It may be time to blacklist all yahoo.com email and whitelist addresses I know are good.  Word in my shop is that Yahoo has been self-destructing for a while now and this is probably just the latest incarnation of the hellfire that Yahoo will become if it remains on the current path.

Where is the leadership?

I am TIRED of missing hard drive caddies on eBay!

Posted on by Jody Bruchon

PLEASE, people, if you need to remove a hard drive from a laptop computer for data privacy purposes, PUT THE CADDY AND SCREWS BACK IN THE UNIT OR IN THE BOX when you want to sell it off!  I understand that some corporations need to remove and destroy hard drives from their surplus laptops out of irrational paranoia (you DO know that a zeroed hard drive’s old data is only readable to someone with a clean room and scanning tunneling electron microscope and tons of highly specialized skills, right? RIGHT?) but there’s simply no excuse for not taking 60 seconds to unscrew up to four screws, put them in a piece of folded-over clear tape, and shoving the entire caddy assembly and taped-up screws and interface connector (where applicable) back in the unit!

The problem is that purchasing a laptop with no hard drive caddy and related equipment usually means being completely unable to install a hard drive into the unit without trying to source a caddy from another source.  That means extra time, money, and frustration…and it also means that you’re less likely to sell your laptop!  If you do sell it, you’ll get significantly less since it’s not working and the buyer can’t just buy a hard drive and slap it in.

If you run a business that removes hard drives from laptops and then sells them, be it by surplus sales or auctions or eBay stores, PLEASE put the hard drive caddy back in the unit!