19 Firms Told Not to Sell Illegal Descramblers : FCC Warns Against TV Satellite Piracy

The Federal Communications Commission, acting to curb a surge in the piracy of satellite television signals, Thursday issued formal warnings to 19 electronics firms suspected of selling devices that allow viewers to receive programs without subscribing to them.

FCC Chairman Dennis R. Patrick said that in recent years illicit operators have refined the technology for “descrambling” satellite signals broadcast by pay-TV companies, and are selling a rapidly increasing number of illegal descramblers to satellite dish owners.

An FCC spokesman estimated the number of illegal descramblers in use at 300,000 to 600,000.

“Today, we’re putting the pirates on notice,” Patrick said. “We’ll no longer look the other way.”

In announcing the warnings, Patrick said his agency will work with the Justice Department in prosecuting companies that continue to sell illegal equipment. People convicted of selling illegal descramblers face as many as five years in prison and a fine of as much as $500,000.

Patrick said piracy could threaten the economic future of the satellite television industry.

The ease with which non-subscribers can get the signals is discouraging new satellite television systems from opening and forcing customers of existing systems to pay more in subscription fees to subsidize research on more secure signals, he said.

“The market for satellite programming could dry up completely in the long run if we can’t stamp out this problem,” Patrick said. “A secure system of program delivery and payment is essential to the continued existence of the dish market.”

When a satellite television service signs up a subscriber, it issues him a decoding device that clears the distortion that is deliberately broadcast in the signal to prevent unauthorized reception.

Some electronics firms have managed to make counterfeit “descramblers” that do the same thing.

An official of one company on the warning list, contacted for comment, denied that it was selling descramblers, but admitted selling or repairing equipment that could be used to make the devices. He asserted that such actions are not illegal.

“There are a lot of people out there who want to experiment with software,” said Howard Walker, owner of Walker Technical Services in Catlett, Va. “Am I guilty of doing something wrong if I sell someone parts that he can then use how he wants?”

The FCC warning letter said the companies are selling equipment with the “sole purpose” of sidestepping a communications law that prohibits the “importation, manufacture, sale or distribution of equipment” intended for use in descrambling.