IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May 2018 - 111

threat. Unlike the conventional broadcast
stations, the cable operators had to finance
and build substantial infrastructures.
They fought to get the right to put television cables on the same utility poles that
carried telephone and electrical cables.
They had demanded national policies to
protect their investments from local governments, which might refuse to renew
operating permits.
Initially, the industry tried to limit the
spread of satellite dishes through local
zoning regulations. While some communities agreed to make such dishes illegal,
not enough of them were willing to ban
the antennas. By 1982, the industry estimated that between 40,000 and 50,000
dishes were installed each month. Needing to secure the future of their business,
the cable operators began to consider
how to scramble the satellite signals and
requested a national policy to make it
illegal to receive satellite signals without
prior authorization.
When cable operators proposed
scrambling the satellite systems, they
faced substantial opposition. It was "a
bitter confrontation between programmers and satellite dish owners," reported The New York Times. Shortly after
HBO started scrambling its signals, one
dish owner, who took the name Captain
Midnight, temporarily hijacked its sat-

Conference Reports

ellite channel in protest. Ultimately, the
federal government offered a compromise. Cable operators could scramble
their signals provided that individual
customers could unscramble them for a
reasonable fee.
The compromise secured the future
of the cable industry. It allowed cable
operators to increase investments and
expand their network. It also enabled a
few operators to consolidate the industry and gain the advantages of scale. By
1990, the number of cable operators,
which had once been more than 4,000,
had been reduced to roughly ten.
As the cable industry grew, its operators continued to invest in security. They
had to replace their original scrambling
algorithm, which was too easily circumvented. By 2000, critics began to argue
that the industry was too secure. They
pointed to mediocre service, limited offerings, and the growing costs of cable
service. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the cost of cable
television is increasing at roughly three
times the rate of inflation. Customers
have been responding to the increased
prices by abandoning cable services.
Critics have pointed to a number of
reasons for cable television's decline. In
addition to high prices, they point to
mediocre offerings and products that

require customers to buy access to more
channels than they use. In this debate,
no one has pointed to the rule of security. Without a secure supply chain, the
cable television industry would not have
full control over its operation. It might
not have survived the initial challenges
of the 1980s. It also might not have been
able to make some of the decisions that
have led to the current business challenges. If we think too narrowly about
security, we only ward off the social disturbances that we face today. We also
have to think about the long-term impact
of such technology and ask if we are
protecting the progress and life of a
business in the future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Alan Grier (dag@dagrier.net) is
the author of When Computers Were
Human, the former president of the
IEEE Computer Society, and the former editor-in-chief of the IEEE Annals
of the History of Computing. His podcasts can be accessed at http://How
WeManageStuff.com.

REFERENCE
[1] I. Kamen, "Design of video security systems
for pay-TV," IEEE Trans. Broadcast. Telev.
Receiv., vol. BTR-10, no. 1, pp. 42-54, 1964.

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IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

111

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