CanadaBanAna Censors US TV (and bans decryption)

[nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)]

   Saturday, July 26, 1997
   By Terence Corcoran
   
   HOME Box Office, the U.S. cable network, just garnered 90 Emmy
   nominations in recognition of quality programming. But HBO is still
   banned in Canada. The network was not on the list of foreign services
   approved Wednesday by Canada's dictator of cable and satellite
   television content, the CRTC. Others banned by the CRTC include
   Bloomberg Television and the U.S. versions of the Discovery Channel,
   The Comedy Network, the Disney Channel and scores of other program
   services deemed too subversive for Canadians to watch in their
   original form -- unless, of course, the same programming passes
   through the hands of a Canadian middleman or monopolist who will
   culturally sanitize the programming by skimming off a fat profit.
   
   Once a Canadian has grabbed a piece of the action -- as a distributor,
   broadcast licence holder, cable operator or satellite owner --
   Canadians are allowed to view the U.S. content. This banana republic
   setup has been in place for decades, and now it may be getting worse.
   A judge has concluded in one of the satellite disputes that it may
   even be illegal for a Canadian to pay for HBO and other networks as
   they come in over the border on U.S. satellite systems.
   
   The oral judgment by Mr. Justice Frederick Gibson of Federal Court of
   Canada in the case of ExpressVu versus Norsat and other companies was
   issued last month, but the written version sets a number of bizarre
   precedents that appear to deeply infringe on individual rights. By
   ruling in favour of ExpressVu, the Canadian satellite company, Judge
   Gibson has essentially come up with a judgment that is the equivalent
   of making it illegal for a Canadian to subscribe to Fortune or
   Cosmopolitan magazines or to buy a copy of Vanity Fair or Esquire on
   the newsstand.
   
   In this judgment, it is illegal for a Canadian to watch HBO and scores
   of other channels now available in the United States -- even if the
   service is paid for -- on the grounds that the federal
   Radiocommunication Act makes it illegal. The act says no person shall
   decode an encrypted signal without paying for the service and without
   authorization of the person who has the lawful right in Canada to
   transmit the signal.
   
   The purpose of the act's clauses on encryption is a technical one to
   prevent fraud. Evidence presented by Andrew Roman, the lawyer for
   Norsat, makes it clear that the intent of the government was to make
   it illegal for people to use counterfeit decoders and other devices to
   avoid payment. All the debates in Commons committee focus on the act
   as an attempt to prevent theft of signals. No such theft occurs when
   Canadians subscribe to and pay for a U.S. satellite service.
   
   But Judge Gibson's judgment ignores the theft-of-signal intent of the
   legislation. Instead, he interprets the act, in conjunction with other
   laws, and concludes that the clause on encryption makes it illegal for
   anyone to subscribe to a U.S. satellite service. Norsat has filed an
   appeal.
   
   What makes this judgment even more unusual is that it effectively
   attempts to make it illegal for a Canadian to pay for a U.S. channel
   on a U.S. satellite, when the identical U.S. channel is available on
   Canadian cable or satellite. For example, WGN-TV in Chicago can be
   picked up on Canadian cable, Canadian satellite or on U.S. satellite.
   In each case, the subscriber pays for the service. But under this
   judgment, it would be illegal to pay the U.S. satellite for WGN-TV.
   Who does this serve -- other than giving Bell and the cable companies
   more revenue.
   
   Even stranger is that many of the networks carried by U.S. satellites
   are already available in Canada over the air waves free, or on cable,
   or on C-band, an alternative satellite service that has been available
   in Canada for years. A Seinfeld episode can be picked up free over the
   air from a U.S. television station, or on a U.S. station via cable, or
   on a Canadian station on cable. But if the same Seinfeld episode were
   bought by a Canadian from a U.S. satellite service, it's illegal.
   
   Filling the troughs of the Canadian broadcasting industry and
   transmission systems may be the purpose of broadcasting policy, but it
   is certainly not the objective of this section of the
   Radiocommunication Act.
   
   Canada's specialty networks, meanwhile, are gearing up to flood the
   country with copy-cat versions of the networks banned by the CRTC --
   including The Globe and Mail, which is a partner in ROBTv, a business
   channel that hopes to benefit from the fact that Bloomberg will be
   banned in Canada. Other brilliantly innovative duplications of U.S.
   networks are The Home and Garden Channel, History Television, The
   Comedy Network, Discovery and Country. Is this unique Canadian
   culture? One such Canadian offering, The Family Channel, has even
   abandoned all pretext to being a Canadian original: it's changing its
   name to recognize the source of most of its content: The Disney
   Channel.
   
http://www.globeandmail.ca/docs/news/19970726/ROBColumn/RCORC.html