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To: Free2Be49
All of this talk about the Canadian government roving the streets looking for illegal satellite signals ... I have yet to read/hear about it. Do you have a source, or is it hearsay? It's my understanding that the signals get scrambled periodically by the satellite service providers. I don't own a dish so I'm not the most informed on this issue.
36 posted on 04/28/2004 5:45:18 AM PDT by NorthOf45
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To: NorthOf45
OK, time to set a few things straight.

The US digital sattelite services will not knowingly sell their equipment and service to someone in Canada. They don't have the broadcast rights for Canada. Same for Canadian sattelite services in the US. If you have or want to get an old-style big sattelite dish, you're free to tune in and watch anything you can legally get the equipment to tune in.

The Canadian gov't has been clamping down on US digital sattelite dishes in Canada to protect the Canadian sattelite services, and also because almost all the people using US sattelite dishes here are stealing the signal with "cracked" equipment, which is a violation of our equivalent of the DMCA. I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's more about cultural protectionism than it is censorship.

As to Fox news, the CCTA made an application to bring in it, along with HBO and some other services (ie in a single application). Again, in protectionist mode, HBO and the others are being kept out of Canada because they would cut into the viewership of Canadian cable channels that buy programming from HBO and others for broadcast in Canada. That was last year. Here's a link to a news article about this: Toronto Star

The CCTA has just (a couple of weeks ago) made application to bring in FOX News again, this time by itself in an application. It remains to be seen how quickly this will be dealt with, and what the outcome will be.

I'm not saying that I'm too happy about this stuff, and that I wouldn't rather that we had free access to all the US cable channels, but this is more about protecting Canadian cable channels than it is about censorship. Prove me wrong if you can, but otherwise this thread is mostly half-truths, supposition, and Canada-bashing.

37 posted on 04/28/2004 6:05:26 AM PDT by -YYZ-
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To: NorthOf45
Do you have a source, or is it hearsay?

Yes.  First, my brother told me about it.  Then an article concerning this issue caught my attention.  It was in an online Canadian paper.

When I called my sister, who lives up there, during the conversation she mentioned her husband was watching the news.  So I said, "I'll bet you he's not watching Fox News." 

That's when she confirmed that programming from the US is controlled by the Canadian government and yes, by the by, she confirmed the truth of the article that said they do drive around checking for using a dish to receive illegal US programming.

Sometimes, I will store exceptional articles on my drive.  If I run across it, I'll ping you with it.

45 posted on 04/28/2004 11:35:01 PM PDT by Free2Be49 (A wise man's heart inclines him toward the right, but a fool's heart toward the left. Ecc. 10:2 RSV)
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