Clandestine cable capers

>> Ladder-wielding pirates will get you wired

By NOEMI LOPINTO

If you ever snuggle up to watch The Antiques Road Show on your pirated cable line and harbour conspiracy theories about Vidéotron vans policing the street with Star Trek ray guns looking for you, you may rest easy. Cable pirates are small fry in the world of communications fraud and illegally hooked-up customers are virtually immune to prosecution.

Up until recently, individuals who install cable for their family and friends could rely on a corporate indifference to their shenanigans. However, companies like Vidéotron and Star Choice have begun cracking down on the little mice nibbling away at their profits. Vidéotron estimates that beyond their 1.5-million cable subscribers there are an additional 50,000 viewers who secretly sneak a signal off the lines.

Seymour (not his real name) has lived in Montreal for a little under a year. He renovates homes by day and installs cable by night, for a mere $50 and no monthly fees. He says cable is an urban necessity. "In Toronto you can live without cable because there are regional networks, like CityTV, CJOH, channel 11 and Global. I'm sure Montreal is the only city in North America where you get so little variety."

He has never been arrested, nor heard of anyone else who has, and considers it a small risk. His guarantee of service includes a promise to reconnect your pirated line after cable officials sniff it out. "I have never seen anyone get a note, a warning, a fine, a subpoena--nothing. The cable companies don't seem to care. They leave live wires hanging around, they forget to disconnect customers who unsubscribe. They've found my dividers, and the worst thing they've done is to remove them or cut the cable cord. That's nothing a trip to Radio Shack won't cure."

In his few encounters with cable company employees, Seymour walked away scot-free. Cable inspectors walked in on him once while he was perched on a brick wall, connecting a neighbour. "They disconnected my line and handed me back my tools. It's kind of a joke."

The companies have slowly started to install "addressable systems," tamper-proof set-ups that keep guys like Seymour out.

Corporate crybabies

Claude Hurteau, director of technical quality at Vidéotron cable, has the job of hunting down cable pirates. He is not panicking. Hurteau says that, of the 50,000 illegal cable watchers, 30 per cent will eventually subscribe legally. "Our policy is to follow up after we've disconnected someone and offer to connect them legally. After someone has pirated for one or two years they are addicted--or their children are. We have never arrested or fined a homeowner."

Yet the lost revenue represents $18-million a year to Vidéotron, a sizeable enough chunk that arrests of cable pirates have jumped in the last year and a half, from zero to 22. "It's a serious problem," Hurteau says. "It represents a lot of money."

Hurteau says neighbours reporting on each other has increased in the last five years. "Nowadays people seem to have more of a tendency to say, 'Hey, I'm paying and this guy isn't.' In the final analysis, customers are paying us to go get these guys." Vidéotron disconnects approximately 10,000 illegal connections a year. Hurteau says the arrests in the last year will force judges to take this type of fraud more seriously. "It helps because we're building up legal precedents. This is a new phenomenon for the courts, they are beginning to understand that this is a service that we sell."

A lack of convictions

Fines are small, ranging from $500 to $3,000 and, according to Sergeant Gilles Blanchet of the RCMP department of copyright and trademarks, the fines are not much of a deterrent. He says: "It [enforcement] is starting to go up, depending on the kind of fraud. So far no one has gone to prison for it. But that possibility is there if the person keeps coming back. Most people that we arrested stopped doing the activity, which suggests to us that it is not linked to organized crime. This kind of fraud is one of the least urgent dossiers. It's not a very high priority."

For Seymour, pirating is business as usual. "It's illegal, but it doesn't hurt anyone. I'm not selling heroin to kids. Nobody can look me in the eye and say: 'You've done a really bad thing.'"