DirecTV silences signal for television pirates in Cuba

The U.S. government believes Cubans should see more of America on television, and for years, Cubans have been happily complying -- cobbling together clandestine satellite systems to pick up everything from the World Series to soap operas.

No longer. Most of these systems have been silenced -- not by Fidel Castro but by an American company’s war on TV piracy.

“We’re sad because we cannot reach our people with so much happiness,” said Crystal Larraondo, executive assistant for Los Fonomemecos, the Miami-based Cuban American comedy team whose show was popular here.

In late April, DirecTV, based in El Segundo, changed its decoder cards to halt widespread piracy in the United States.

By chance, it knocked out most of Cuba’s pirates too.

Hans de Salas, research associate at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, called it “an unexpected gift for the Castro government.”

But DirecTV had no choice but to go by the book, said Robert G. Mercer, its public relations director. “While we understand they have a different motivation than the individuals who are stealing our signal in the U.S., they are still receiving our programming without our authorization and in a part of the world where we do not have a license to operate.”

The few Cubans who use the Dish TV system of U.S.-based EchoStar aren’t yet affected, and EchoStar spokesman Steve Cox wouldn’t reveal details about possible security updates there. Shifting from DirecTV to Dish would require a different decoder box.

The U.S. government’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting targets the island with its own station, Television Marti, but its broadcasts are jammed by Castro’s regime.

Anecdotal reports speak of about 10,000 satellite television dishes in Cuba, according to Joe O’Connell, spokesman for the U.S. government’s International Broadcasting Bureau, which oversees Television Marti, among other operations.

Dishes serve entire families and extension lines sometimes connect them to neighboring houses.

The government is determined to confine Cubans to the state broadcasting system, on which Thursday night’s 90-minute discussion show was devoted to “Cuba confronting the fascist policies of Bush.”