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