DirecTV signals exempt from grey marketing and pirating: Quebec judge

A Quebec Superior Court judge has ruled that pirating U.S. satellite TV signals isn’t against Canadian law, and as such, can be hacked with impunity on this side of the border. In a surprising and unprecedented decision released May 29, Justice Pierre Tessier ruled that the Radiocommunications Act makes it a crime to steal signals only from authorized Canadian distributors, Star Choice Communications Inc and Bell ExpressVu. That same protection, he concluded, doesn’t extend to unlawful distributors such as DirecTV. The judge didn’t stop there. He went so far as to describe the foreign signals as ‘public domain’, and as such, free to anyone in Canada. In the end, Tessier dismissed the Crown’s appeal in the case against Al Gregory, who was acquitted by a Quebec provincial court last year under section 9(1) of the Radiocomm Act. The lawyer representing Bell ExpressVu in the case says the ruling appears to legalize a criminal activity. "If you’re taking something that is encrypted and belongs to someone else, decoding it and using it without their permission, it shouldn’t matter what country it comes from," says Bill McKenzie. "Is what we’re saying is that you can rob and plunder anyone you want, as long as they’re outside the country?" The decision has since been appealed to the Quebec court of appeal. With several different legal interpretations of the Radiocomm Act now circulating, McKenzie says it will be up to the Supreme Court to finally decide the issue. A hearing by the country’s highest court is expected later this year (CCR, Jan 17/01). "(This ruling) is just another one to throw in the hopper for when we go to the Supreme Court of Canada saying, ‘look you have to straighten this out. This has gone too far astray.’ If a judge is saying, ‘if a signal arrives here and it’s encrypted, you can do anything you want with it, including decode it and manipulate whatever it was protecting with impunity,’ surely that can’t be." In the meantime, the decision is being heralded as a major victory by dish dealers, many of whom have had U.S. satellite TV equipment seized by the RCMP, and charges laid under the Radiocomm Act. Reg Scullion, a Quebec dish dealer who won a black market case before another Quebec judge on May 28, said this latest ruling demonstrates once again that the government’s interpretation of the Radiocomm Act is wrong. "There are now 19 judges across Canada that have ruled in favor of defendants, including the Appeals Court of BC, and the Ontario Appeals court," Scullion writes in an email to Decima Publishing. "In my experience, never have so many rulings made the law so clear while the crown persists on seeking higher rulings in other provinces. Even the very contentious abortion issue never had this many rulings before reaching the Supreme Court." Earlier this year, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling that found the Radiocomm Act too ambiguous in its wording to make the sale of foreign satellite services a crime (CCR, Apr. 26/01). A similar ruling by the BC Supreme Court in December 1999 also ruled that the law was never intended to tackle the grey market (CCR, Apr. 13/00).The problem stems from the interpretation of Section 9 (1) of the Radiocomm Act. A May 1 letter from the Industry minister’s office to Chatham-Kent Essex MP Jerry Pickard, explains the dilemma:"One interpretation sees the section, as providing for an absolute prohibition against the unauthorized decoding of encrypted signals no matter where the signals originate. The other interpretation views the section as providing a prohibition only against the unauthorized decoding of encrypted signals that originate with a lawful distributor in Canada." If the Supreme Court rules that the Act doesn’t apply to foreign satellite services, Parliament will be under pressure by industry groups to amend the Radiocomm Act or draft new legislation.

DirecTV signals exempt from grey marketing and pirating: Quebec judge

News | 07/04/2001 4:00 am EDT

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