The unanimous decision that it is illegal to sell equipment to
receive satellite signals from outside Canada was declared a
victory for Canadian broadcasting by the country’s biggest
satellite TV company, Bell ExpressVu, which brought the case
against a seller of decryption systems.
Its relief can be understood from a survey for the Canadian
Cable Television Association which estimates that between 520,000
and 700,000 Canadians are using unauthorised satellite systems,
switching off the Canadian broadcasting system and plugging into
the US network.
"That was undermining the Canadian broadcasting system, cheating
rights holders, creators, actors, technicians and others of their
lawful compensation," said the President of Bell ExpressVu.
The case concerned a dispute over Canada’s Radiocommunication
Act which a lower court said was written only to prohibit the
illegal decoding of Canadian broadcasts, but that could not cover
US broadcasts because US companies are not “lawful distributors” in
Canada. The lower court had criticised Bell ExpressVu for failing
to distinguish between paying subscribers of US signals and those
who use decryption equipment. However, the Supreme Court rejected
this criticism as misguided, considering that all decoding of US
signals is illegal, even if Canadian subscribers are paying for the
service.
See:
The court’s ruling
