In our Binchmarks column (see. p. 29), McMillan Binch lawyer Jason S. T. Kotler writes on a Quebec Superior Court Judge ruling that ‘pirating of U.S. satellite TV signals is not against Canadian law (unless you pirate the signals from a ‘lawful’ Canadian satellite distributor).’ He also reviews other lower court decisions on the legalities of satellite signal pirating.

However, as Kotler reasons, even a Supreme Court ruling on the technicalities of the grey and black satellite markets won’t end the story. The federal government would still face pressure since content providers, specifically, have to be sure our laws protect their right to be paid for exploitation of their products. They’ll want the Radiocommunications Act revised accordingly.

Many thousands of people pirate signals, and are even perpetrating a ‘reverse grey market’, in which travellers find ways to bring their home-based TV services with them.

It must be a delicious, illicit pleasure, that cut-rate entertainment, a delectable, almost tangible dream. Here’s a poetic take…

took me way out to the coast last month, just one week – no, six days

where the clay meets the plovers meets the sand

said the beard at the desk, we’ve no phones here, no TV

if it’s urgent we will tack it to your door

so I turned to the head in the Burke on the wall

I asked him would he show me where to dance

in the castles by the shore, on the tag-along bike

to the jigging Ceilidh rhythms in the crazy buggy night

coursed the sweat, sassed the stars, dared the surf

did a reel along the red swell of the sea

he whose passion on that coast lets him hold the ocean close

he’s a smile etching wrinkles on the one he loves the most

at the sunup, no more dancing, we are wilted with the dawn

have we been there, does he bow there, is the mirage on the fade?

‘no,’ he tells me, ‘I must go now, I am lonely for my right place,

in the Burke there on the wall. If you want me for forever -‘

Pan left. Zoom in on: woman, waking, sensing bed-head, yawns, absent-mindedly twirls dull, lifeless bangs, creaks slowly to stand, stretching, scratching and shrugging off effects of funky dream.

Watching this all from the wings, the government must recognize it’s time to wake up, too. Content providers need not fight the iCraves and the JumpTVs for fair recompense in the use of their property, only to see those same productions beaming in, unpaid for, via pirated satellite signals.

No matter how pleasant the dream