OTTAWA – The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed an application by two Quebec men seeking to appeal their conviction on charges of satellite TV-signal piracy. As is customary custom, the Court did not give any reasons for refusing to hear the appeal.
Its ruling brings to an end a long judicial battle that began in 1998 when the two men, Jacques D’Argy of Drummondville and Richard Thériault of nearby St-Nicéphore, were first charged with selling and personally using decoding equipment to access U.S. satellite TV signals from DirecTV. The case has been before the courts ever since.
The ruling also means that the two men will have to appear before a Quebec Court judge for sentencing on three counts each of appropriating foreign signals.
Pierre Pontbriand, spokesman for the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision.
With other cases involving alleged satellite TV-signal piracy before the courts the country, the decision effectively means that freedom of expression arguments, using the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, will be difficult to make, he said.
Such arguments helped D’Argy and Thériault for a while. In her 2004 decision acquitting the two men, Quebec Court Judge Danielle Côté noted the accused were indeed operating in the so-called black market, as they were not paying a subscriber’s fee and thus could not claim a lack of criminal intent, as they might had they been operating in the so-called grey market (using a U.S. postal address and paying a subscription fee).
For that reason, she said, the accused could be found guilty, unless they were “saved” by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In this case, they were, she ruled, because the right to receive information constitutes an essential element of freedom of expression.
However, Quebec Superior Court Judge Wilbrod Claude Décarie rejected that argument and reversed the men’s acquittal. The three-member Quebec Court of Appeal, in a decision last October, agreed and upheld Judge Décarie’s ruling.
Glenn Wanamaker is Cartt.ca’s Quebec Editor.
