WITH THE GROWING PROLIFERATION of so-called “free-to-air” satellite receivers – and the outright theft of both Bell ExpressVu and Dish Network signals with those falsely-named decoders – the Canadian video distribution industry is looking to re-launch the Coalition Against Satellite Signal Theft.
Representatives from Rogers Cable, Bell and others held a meeting this week to discuss reforming the group or something like it. However, no decision has been made yet to move forward, a source told Cartt.ca.
The hope is that if the legitimate Canadian video distributors can organize, the issue can be pushed back onto the federal government’s agenda and be included when it finally gets around to moving forward on its oft-promised copyright reform bill.
CASST was an educational and lobby group put together earlier this decade by the (now defunct) Canadian Cable Television Association, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, ExpressVu, Star Choice, filmmakers, producers, writers and others to fight – at the time – the rampant theft of DirecTV signals.
It, too, repeatedly pushed hard for copyright reform, but several short-term Liberal governments always seemed to put the kibosh on progress towards new legislation.
Back in 2002/2003, hacking a DirecTV conditional access card was as simple as having a web connection as the codes for the card were easily attainable. New codes to new protection schemes were often available online within minutes of deployment.
Entire retail chains sprung up selling the DirecTV systems all through southern Ontario and other border regions in Canada. Police ignored them, for the most part as they had better things to do than interpret or enforce the Radiocommunication Act. Especially when some courts were letting those arrested, go.
However, when DirecTV bought NDS, which supplied the code for the cards, and then reissued new CA cards to all of its legitimate subscribers in the second quarter of 2004, leaks of the code stopped and the money Canadians spent to buy an illegal dish washed down the drain as the DirecTV systems were suddenly boat anchors. The new encryption system has been safe ever since.
Plus, DirecTV cracked down hard on illegal distributors, winning settlements and court cases to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. It scared many away from the bogus industry.
With all the pirating going on back in ’03, CASST estimated losses to the Canadian broadcasting industry could be as high as $400 million annually (Ed note: Which was always a rather large overestimation. We hope they don’t re-start with this figure).
Now, however, hackers have been focusing on EchoStar’s Dish Network technology – and by default, Bell ExpressVu, since the Canadian company buys its gear from the U.S. company.
As for the various free-to-air satellite receivers, of course that’s a misnomer. Nothing is free. These new receivers are cardless and some are “legit” – or at least used legitimately – where they pick up unencrypted signals from a variety of satellites and deliver many channels the user’s cable operator doesn’t deliver, like niche ethnic channels, for example.
Others (some would say most of them) decode encrypted channels – primarily Dishnet’s and ExpressVu’s DVB technology and, of course aren’t legit because they aren’t paying a monthly fee to anyone.
Click here for a pretty good overview of the FTA industry.
The primary reason why the Canadian distributors are noodling over rebuilding CASST is they are seeing the beginnings of some unexplained basic subscriber losses – sort of like they did when the DirecTV hacking was gaining popularity.
Some are losing a very low percentage of basic customers altogether, and also seeing some customers pull back to just basic – so they can get their local channels cheaply from cable – and use their “not-so-free-to-air” gear to steal the rest of their channels. This type of thing happened frequently back in 2002-03.
The FTA receivers also boast a substantial number of HD channels, too.
While it’s incumbent on the industry to clamp down on this as quickly as they can (or it will grow just as it did a few years ago where people began to think if they weren’t getting DirecTV for free, they were chumps getting ripped off by their cable company), the big difference this time around is the quad play and the various additional services launched since then.
With ever more customers viewing high definition sets, getting phone and high speed Internet from their cable companies – and discounts on wireless from some of them, too, it’s a tough value proposition to pull all that apart for a new “free-to-air” receiver.
That’s not to say people won’t do it, because saving $100 a month (less the $500 or so for the FTA gear) is an attractive proposition.
But at least this time around, there’s more built-in protection from the lure of piracy.
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