Another month, another victory! Just after going to press last month, another major victory was handed down by the courts. In Saskatchewan, one of the last defendants in theraids of last summer had his search warrants thrown out and all charges stayed. Although I donot have a copy of the judgement at this time, it was definitely among the most favourableto date.
Part of the reasoning of the Judge in this case, was that DirecTV is a willing partic-ipant in the Grey Marketing scheme. It seems that the more often this situation is put before thecourts, the stronger the decisions get. When will the government get the message? We now haveno less than 4 very favourable decisions. All of them basically state the same thing, that wherethere is no lawful distributor there can be no offence.
The result of these decisions, legally, is that they have more or less nullified theamendments to the Radiocommunications Act. Let's not forget the only reasons those amendmentswere made was to try to prevent the very activity the courts have decided is legal: to decodewhere there is no lawful distributor. These amendments were the result of intensive lobbying bypeople like Ted Rogers (Rogers Cable) and Luther Haave (SuperChannel). That intensive lobbying did result in legislation being drafted and passed, however it seems like it has flopped in thereal world. And so it should. What these people would like is for the government to force you tohave no choice in programming, other than the monopolies already in place. Congratulations Tedand Luther, you tried to destroy an industry, and instead have created legal protection for us!
Before these decisions, it was always considered a grey area. Now that is has been testedin the courts, it seems quite clear what the boundaries are with respect to what prohibitions canbe places on reception and decoding of television signals. If they don't sell it here, it's fairgame to decode without payment. Many channels, such as HBO and others I do not expect to ever beavailable for sale in Canada. At least not so long as the CRTC is in existance.
I think when one looks at the light at the end of this very long tunnel, the obvioussolution to this situation is to have the CRTC no longer regulate television signals. In this dayand age of communication superseding all barriers and boundaries, it seems draconian to have somebody of government telling us what we can and cannot watch.
And what is happening now is that the jurisdiction of this government body and thefreedoms we enjoy and are entitled to, are clashing in a court of law. And the government islosing. At this time, it seems to me that the RadioCommunications Act now has the same appli-cation as the laws in place before the amendments. Those laws were not considered applicable tosatellite television signals. So we have come full circle.
The bad news is that the Crown has appealed this recent Saskatchewan decision. There isno date set yet, but I do plan on attending if at all possible. I encourage anyone else interested to also attend as a show of support for the industry. Maybe we can get some T-shirtsprinted up or something. This is the time to get involved, we will all benefit. It is not timeto consider your competitor an enemy, if they are in this industry they are your friend, andyou gotta help your friends. Let's not have the Judge the only one making some noise in this,it's time to stand and be counted. One thing to remember in all of this is, appeals courts arevery reluctant to overturn lower court decisions. And with the King case, the cases in Vancouverlast year, and my own case, there is much case law to support this decision. There is very littleother relevant case law which favours the government.
In other news, as I'm sure you are aware of, the card swap looms. As of this writing, allplastic and electronic test cards have failed. Channels have been slowly dropping, until thismorning when all channels came up expired. There is some speculation that this is merely an ECM,and that it could be corrected with a new file. This is entirely possible, however no one hasbeen able to demonstrate this to me at all. Needless to say, countless hours are now being spenton the new card. And make no bones about it, it will be hacked. Since the same platform which wasused in Europe is being used, and it was completely hacked in Europe, I have no doubts we willsee something surface very soon. All we can hope is that distribution of the product will remainsecure to keep it away from prying eyes. Rest assured, you will not see this software floatingaround for free on the internet. I think alot of tought lessons have been learned by what's happened on the internet over the last year, and most people will agree that is has only beendetrimental to the industry. A perfect example is the un99er. When it was held in private hands, the worst ECM ever dealt was the 99. Once the fix became public domain, they had no choice but todo something worse. And they did. As of this writing, there is no public fix for those cards (notthat it matters much now....).
Take it easy, I think we'll have lots to talk about next month!