Pirates Walk the Plank: The Unauthorized Interception of Pay Telelvision Transmissions

The purpose of this note is to discuss the unauthorized interception of subscription television transmissions and to explain how the Federal Communications Commission and the courts finally arrived at the conclusion that television piracy is illegal activity. Until recently, there has been very little litigation on this question, and the remedies available to the subscription television services. Subscription television companies have attempted to protect their signals either by scrambling them or by transmitting them over microwave frequencies. Pirates have sold equipment capable of either decoding scrambled signals or receiving microwave transmission.

The author makes several recommendations on how the unauthorized interception of subscription television transmissions can be avoided.