[FTA Michael]

Transmitter News Online reported this morning that "recently" one David Fuss was found liable by an Ontario Superior Court judge for providing "grey market" services (presumably US networks via satellite) to Canadians. TNO's quote of the judge's order is an exceptionally clear description of why such grey market stuff is unlawful.

TNO's report says that Fuss's company was trying to claim that "freedom of expression" rights trumped the Canadian legislation against receiving satellite TV from foreign broadcasters. The judge rejected that argument.

More here: http://www.transmitternews.com/NewsWire/103006newsletter.html#H1

And if anyone can find another news source for this, please add it here. I couldn't find any other reference to it online.

 

[Darkman]

Why do you need another news source?

Yours looks pretty good

Meanwhile .. i see that David Fuss is quite a controvercial fellow .. I typed at Google: "Incredible Electronics David Fuss" .. and came up with all those interesting matches:
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Incredible+Electronics+David+Fuss&meta=

This one even has his Picture, even though it's quite old (it's from 2002) :
http://www.cbc.ca/national/sasa/gms_bell.html (the first match there at Google - "Incredible Electronics dealer David Fuss he has been recording everything to protect himself ever since he realized Bell's involvement. ..."

 

[FTA Michael]

I was looking for another source because of the "recently", the vagueness of any settlement figure, and even the lack of a first name for the judge. The quote was too good to pass up, but I'd feel more comfortable with more concrete info about the five Ws for this story.

 

[Darkman]

As it just happened (or so i think) .. - maybe someone else will publish something on this soon....

So keep an eye on it maybe .. Google, etc

 

[James Long]

Recent? Here is a $2.2 million dollar costs decision from 2006-05-26

http://www.canlii.org/on/cas/onsc/2006/2006onsc13213.html

 

[Darkman]

hehe.. thanks James

 

[FTA Michael]

Thanks JL! TNO quoted paragraph 47 of this public document:

The investigations also revealed that the grey market was far from an innocent activity. For present purposes, it is perhaps sufficient to point out just three blameworthy aspects of the practice:

(a) often grey market activities were just a cover for black market activities;

(b) grey market activities involved elaborate schemes of false addresses and U.S. corporations that were a front for Canadian corporations with the intent of the grey marketer deceiving the foreign DTH broadcaster into believing that it was selling its service to a customer to whom the foreign DTH broadcaster was permitted to sell it. It is to be recalled that DTH broadcasters are regulated and may only sell their services in accordance with the licence granted by their regulator;

(c) although in the grey market, the foreign DTH broadcaster would be paid for supplying its services, it was, nevertheless, being victimized because unintentionally it was breaching its regulatory licence and unintentionally it was breaching its contractual and copyright arrangements with third parties. In other words, the DTH broadcaster not only was breaching (albeit unintentionally) the terms of its licence to broadcast but it was also breaching (albeit unintentionally) the terms of contracts with third parties about the copyright and intellectual property associated with the programs being broadcast.