CABLE GUY PLUG PULLED AFTER PITCH GOES ONLINE.Byline: Peter Hartlaub Daily News Staff Writer Peter Johnston sent out advertisements on the Internet last year, selling cable TV descramblers under the moniker (1) A name, title or alias. See alias. (2) A COM object that is used to create instances of other objects. Monikers save programmers time when coding various types of COM-based functions such as linking one document to another (OLE). See COM and OLE. The Original Cable Guy. He became a pioneer of sorts - but not for reasons he'd like to publicize pub·li·cize tr.v. pub·li·cized, pub·li·ciz·ing, pub·li·ciz·es To give publicity to. publicize or -cise Verb [-cizing, -cized] . In the first prosecution of its kind in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. , Johnston pleaded no contest Friday to dealing in illegal descrambling devices. Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Ronnie MacLaren sentenced him to 250 hours community service and ordered him to pay $5,500 in fines and penalties. Johnston, 43, said he didn't know that selling the so-called black boxes was illegal until police came to his door. ``There's no way I would have done it if I thought it was illegal,'' Johnston said. ``I may be naive, but I'm not stupid.'' Johnston said he was caught after unknowingly sending one of his advertisement e-mails to a security manager at Time Warner Communications, who discovered that the product actually made scrambled scram·ble v. scram·bled, scram·bling, scram·bles v.intr. 1. To move or climb hurriedly, especially on the hands and knees. 2. transmissions even fuzzier. Deputy City Attorney Don Kass said police searched Johnston's home after the cable company found his post office box in Tarzana. Police seized instructions for the boxes and several of the $15 descrambler de·scram·bler n. An electronic device that decodes a scrambled transmission into a signal that is intelligible to the receiving apparatus. descrambler kits, which consisted of a few parts that can be bought at Radio Shack See RadioShack. . ``This is one example of unlawful activity on the Internet,'' Kass said. ``It's an area with a multitude of scams. It's a way to be anonymous and take advantage of people.'' Johnston said he will perform his community service with a positive attitude and hopes he can use his skills in computer design to help others. ``If I break the law, I want to take responsibility for it,'' he said. Kass said that among police-seized letters from consumers who ordered descramblers were complaints from unsatisfied customers who said the black box didn't work. The prosecutor said the cable company tested an assembled product on a partially scrambled TV picture, and found that it only made it worse, mucking Mucking is a hamlet and former parish adjoining the Thames estuary in southern Essex, England. It is located approximately 2 miles south of the town of Stanford le Hope in what is now Thurrock unitary authority. up the entire screen. ``What he was selling was of such poor quality that it just scrambled the whole picture, instead of just part of it,'' Kass said. Johnston said he has already sent refunds to several customers. |
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