MONTREAL – The Quebec Superior Court has sided with Quebecor, in part, in civil actions filed against Bell Canada over alleged signal piracy that occurred nearly a decade ago.
The court awarded Videotron/TVA $600,000 in damages, a far cry from the nearly $400 million that the two Quebecor subsidiaries were asking when the trial began last September. The actions stemmed from allegations made by Quebecor that Bell failed to prevent the piracy of its Bell ExpressVu satellite television service between 2002 and 2005.
"We are glad to see the Superior Court condemn Bell for resorting to illegal means that weaken its competitors and for having failed to meet its obligations to protect rather than undermine the integrity of the Quebec and Canadian broadcasting sector”, said Quebecor president and CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau, in a statement Tuesday.
Peladeau then called on the CRTC to veto Bell’s proposed acquisition of Astral Media “on the basis that Bell's business practices do not meet the ethical standards expected from a company that has the privilege to exploit broadcasting services through licences granted by the CRTC for the benefit of all Canadians”.
“If such practices were to go unsanctioned, Canadians' slowly eroding confidence in its regulatory authorities would only be further undermined”, Peladeau continued. “Only by staying vigilant and by denouncing Bell's unacceptable practices by all possible means will we be able to prevent it from recreating the monopolistic model it relied on for so long."
When contacted by Cartt.ca, a Bell spokesperson said that “piracy was a broad problem that was faced by all Canadian satellite providers” when the alleged offences occurred, and noted that the lack of punitive damages awarded in the judgement indicates that “the Court did not conclude that Bell ExpressVu used illegal means or acted in bad faith in any way”.
“The Court didn't find that the measures taken by Bell ExpressVu to fight piracy were inappropriate – it concluded only that one of our piracy countermeasures, a Bell program to swap out cards in set-box boxes, should have been done more quickly”, said spokesperson Jacqueline Michelis in an emailed response.
Underlining that this case is unrelated to the company’s pending buyout of Astral, Michelis said that Bell understands “our competitor’s attempts to confuse the issue”.
“Bell’s acquisition of Astral levels the competitive playing field in Québec media”, she added. “It greatly reduces Quebecor’s longstanding market dominance, and it promotes enhanced competition, consumer choice and investment in Québec media. It’s a difficult new reality for our competitor to accept.”
– Lesley Hunter
