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In article <w7dLd.21217$wi2.13472@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com>,
Robert Redelmeier <redelm@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:
:Walter Roberson <roberson@ibd.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca> wrote:
:> In Canada, it is not sufficient that one has paid the
:> broadcaster for reception rights: one has to restrict
:> oneself to domestic broadcasters (ExpressVu or StarChoice)
:> for such signals [but unencrypted FTA is legal.]
:I'm surprised. Why should the US laws and FCC regs have
:any effect in Canada (beyond broadcast treaties)? Does
:Canadian law have a provision incorporating US law?
The situation in Canada is independant of US law, except perhaps
in the indirect sense of copyright and contract law.
It was pretty clear under Canadian law that unauthorized reception/
decoding of satellite TV signals was illegal: we implimented
the Berne Convention on Copyrights years before the US did, we didn't
have anything resembling the First Amendment until relatively recently
(1982), and we have no legal history that '"freedom of speech" includes
"freedom to listen" to that which to "speaker" does not want heard'.
We also had CRTC regulations governing domestic licensing of TV, cable,
satellite, and other like forms of transmissions [but no-one has
advanced a serious argument that the CRTC governs Internet
*content*... though it does have some control over the provision of
data circuits.] The CRTC is, amongst other things, a instrument for
bilingualism and retention of national culture [e.g., Canadian Content
rules.] But more-so, the CRTC is an instrument for enforcing exclusive
Canadian distribution rights (including, and this turns out to be a big
contention, the right to substitute Canadian commercials for the US
commercials.) The overall effect is that to deliver content to Canadian
markets, you need a permit, and you aren't likely to get a permit
unless you can convince the CRTC that the major media companies have no
interest at all in going after that market any time in the next 20
years or so. Thus, it's best to be applying with respect to content
that the existing major companies don't believe they could make a
profit in serving.
Now, what was -not- completely clear under Canadian law was the situation
in which a customer was willing to pay a US satellite company
[e.g., Dish Networks] full retail value for the equipment and
channels used. This situation did not fall under the "theft of service"
arguments because the customers were paying and the US providers
were willing to serve those customers. [I heard a figure at one point
that up to 20% of Dish's customers were in Canada -- an amazing number
when you consider the 10:1 population ratio.] The RCMP used to
"turn a blind eye" on the situation, especially in rural areas where
cable TV didn't reach: what harm, after all, is being done by a
customer willingly paying the asking price for a service that was
perfectly legal at it's point of origin. They'd go after the
illict decoders, but ignore the people with paid equipment.
The government and RCMP were, though, heavily pressured by StarChoice
and ExpressVu to respect the exclusive distribution agreements that
those companies had, so they set up a couple of high profile raids
of stores, grabbed customer lists, and charged the store owners.
The main case went right up to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled
that Yes, the law -did- give the CRTC jurisdiction to decide which
signals to allow or not, and thus that it was indeed the CRTC's
perogative to ban the importation of foreign satellite signals even
when "grey market" [paid for] decoders were being used. judgement did
take note that there was a Charter of Rights argument that could be
made about free speech, but that that was not what the case they had in
front of them was about: the case had come up through the path of
whether the CRTC had jurisdiction in such cases, so in deciding that
the CRTC did have that jurisdiction, the CRTC-claimed ban on
importation of signals was upheld. The Supreme Court judgement
practically invited people to start a new case upon the issue of
whether the CRTC regulatory procedures were "justifiable" limitations
upon free speech "in a just and democratic Western society".
From a US perspective, the issue was whether or not Canada would
uphold copyright law and "exclusive distribution" contracts...
from that perspective, Canada didn't really have any choice in the matter,
not without serious kerfuffle that would spill over into all manner
of contracts. Too high a stakes to not recognize the validity of
the contracts.
If there is to be a successful challenge to the law, then it will come
from an ethnic community which is unable to gain access to programming
related to its own language, culture, and religion, and the argument
will be that since StarChoice and ExpressVu have expressed complete
disinterest in serving those markets, that it is an unreasonable
imposition upon the members of the community to be denied access
to stations that are already there in the aether and for which they
are willing to pay reasonable access fees. Community members would
have to present copies of letters requesting access from those
companies, and copies of the companies' replies that they weren't
interested in providing that service. I have reason to believe that
that sort of evidence is available.
--
Strange but true: there are entire WWW pages devoted to listing
programs designed to obfuscate HTML.
lease help me!
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