QUEBEC – The long legal effort to pin charges of satellite TV-signal piracy on two Quebec men, and have them stick, has passed another judicial test.
The Quebec Court of Appeal has dismissed their appeal of a guilty verdict handed down by the Quebec Superior Court in April, 2005.
In a short, 16-paragraph decision, the three-member Appeal Court accepted the arguments of Superior Court judge Wilbrod Claude Décarie, who had reversed the men’s acquittal by the lower Quebec Court in 2004.
Judge Décarie found Jacques D’Argy of Drummondville and Richard Thériault of nearby St-Nicéphore guilty of three counts each of appropriating foreign signals.
D’Argy told Cartt.ca he is considering an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Pierre Pontbriand, spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) expressed satisfaction with the latest court ruling but declined further comment, noting the men have another six weeks in which to seek leave to appeal. The CAB has been waging a long campaign against what it calls TV signal piracy, saying it has cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars.
D’Argy and Thériault were first charged in 1998 of 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 Quebec Court of Appeal itself got the ball rolling when it asked Quebec Court Judge Danielle Côté, who had dismissed the charges once in 2000, to re-hear the case and especially to consider freedom of expression arguments.
She responded with a 103-page decision, in which she argued that two sections of the Broadcasting Act that outlaw the pirating of foreign satellite TV signals infringe upon freedom of expression.
The judge noted the accused were 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.
None of her lengthy argumentation, however, impressed Superior Court judge Décarie, who reversed Judge Côté’s acquittal.
Nor did it find favour in the latest Appeal Court ruling, in which the three judges said she erred with the freedom of expression argument because it must be presumed the legislator would not go beyond what the Constitution would permit.
Glenn Wanamaker is Cartt.ca’s Quebec Editor and is based in Quebec City.
