back in Ye Olden Days there were people at the local market that could chip your PS1 or give you an address to write to if you wanted knock-off satellite TV smartcards, and some bloke down the pub who could reflash your cable modem's customer ID to get faster internet for free.

I love that this same cottage grey/black-market industry still exists but for online services now, and people are happy to do it because greedy rentseeking pricks made everything a subscription.

@gsuberland ah....I fondly remember my Dbox2, for getting all the Virgin Media/Diamond Cable/NTL channels for free.

Cable modem hacking was fun, too. You just had to find the MAC address of someone with the service tier you wanted on a different UBR, as they only checked for duplicates on the same UBR, and the FTP server gave out a config file based on your MAC address.

Happy days 😀

@gsuberland yeah, I had a mate who worked for Clueless & Witless over in Liverpool who turned up with a box of brand new, unregistered surfboard 3100s one weekend.

This was in the days when you'd get a discount off your bill if you bought your own CM rather than "renting" one off them.