Captain Midnight

"The most celebrated case of video piracy occurred in April, 1986, when a pirate calling himself "Captain Midnight" intercepted the satellite transmission of Home Box Office, a cable television programmer, and broadcast a message criticizing the company for scrambling its signal to prevent non-subscribers from receiving it on privately owned satellited dishes.

Captain Midnight later was identified as John R. MacDougall, a satellite dish salesman from Ocala, Fla. He was fined $5,000 and placed on probation for a year."

Source: The Chicago Tribune, November 24, 1987, quoted in:
http://www.textfiles.com/magazines/TOLMES/tns14
http://textfiles.zockbar.de/magazines/TOLMES/tns14 (mirror)

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_(HBO)

Related:
Pirate Television
Max Headroom incident

---