Why DTH black marketers are losing the war

So-called state-of-the-art DTH pirates and their customers got a rude shock last fall when a Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench shut down a major industry player. Bell ExpressVu teamed up with News Datacom Ltd to send a loud message to the DTH black marketeers that Canada is not a safe haven for satellite television pirates. On a cold Winnipeg morning, a pirate awoke to find the sheriff at the door of his house. Simultaneously, his Northern Satellite Technologies business was being raided. Before it was over, Northern Satellite’s international piracy trade, including his email service, had been annihilated. ExpressVu and NDS seized thousands of access cards, sophisticated microscopes, computer programs, and all the tools necessary to hack smart cards of US service providers and react to ECMs. More than $300,000 in cash and money orders were confiscated. The Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench has issued a powerful injunction prohibiting Dean Love and his employees from further piracy activities anywhere in the world. Despite what you may read in the newspapers, the DTH black marketeers are not winning the war in Canada. Last year, a faulty affidavit which was used as a precedent to obtain search warrants meant that a number of criminal charges that were laid in Ontario could not proceed. The press reported that these were major victories and that they meant piracy was lawful in Canada. Unfortunately they generally did not report the more accurate responses to the contrary from broadcasters. When the BC Court of Appeal in ExpressVu v Can-Am disagreed with the Federal Court of Appeal in ExpressVu v Norsat about the interpretation of the Radiocommunication Act, the pirates regaled the press with a message that piracy was legal in Canada. The fact that a powerful anti-black-market injunction had been issued by the same court was ignored. So what is the public to make of all this? Black marketeers rob Canadian broadcasters and copyright owners of $350-million per year. What the public hears and reads is a carefully orchestrated public relations campaign crafted by the "bad guys". The answer, in my view, is for the good guys to get together. We have some of the best communicators and marketers at our disposal and the ears and eyes of virtually every Canadian. We are producing the court victories. We must put this all together and get a benign yet powerful message out to all Canadians that DTH piracy is theft. Piracy is so pervasive that we cannot ignore the reality that Canadians from all walks of life are avid customers. We hear two rationalizations: The first: "So what if I get the programming for free? The Canadian companies don’t give me the programming I want." The second is "Those big companies can afford it". These constant refrains are spoken by those who live on the wrong side of the law. The industry must fight for the minds and consciences of law abiding citizens by reminding them that they are part of the problem and should be part of the solution. If they continue to deprive the Canadian broadcasting industry of all that revenue they actually contribute to a restriction of the amount of programming, especially Canadian programming, that is legitimately available in Canada. We recently wrote a brief for the Supreme Court (CCR, Jan. 17/01). We pointed out the perils of allowing black marketeering to flourish: We told the court that such a practice would: undermine Canada’s broadcasting policy; erode the integrity of copyright agreements and laws; deprive Canadian programming and content creators of an important source of financing; and, divert the flow of income to the U.S., with the resulting loss of jobs and tax revenue and weakening of the Canadian dollar. These are the messages that should be communicated, again and again, to the non-believers. Bill McKenzie is a lawyer with Crawford, McKenzie, McLean and Wilford in Orillia ON. He is representing Bell ExpressVu in its legal battle against Can-Am Satellites.

Why DTH black marketers are losing the war

Broadcast | February 1, 2001

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