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From: rb@ccivax.UUCP (rex ballard)
Newsgroups: net.video,net.politics
Subject: Re: Satellite Signal Scrambling
Message-ID: <453@ccivax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Mar-86 16:16:42 EST
Article-I.D.: ccivax.453
Posted: Fri Mar  7 16:16:42 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Mar-86 23:24:20 EST
References: <156@jc3b21.UUCP> <733@ihlpm.UUCP>
Reply-To: rb@ccivax.UUCP (What's in a name ?)
Organization: CCI Telephony Systems Group,  Rochester NY
Lines: 52
Summary: It might not be so bad

Scrambling was considered to affect 4 groups of dish owners.

Hotel and Bar owners (who derive indirect revenue from sattelite programs)

Rural owners (who cannot recieve these services any other way - no cable)

Suburban and Urban owners (who have access to cable but use dishes to
get "free cable").

Special interest owners (who wish to recieve services not carried by
their local cable company) in this case, they really fit in the same
catagory as the rural owners.

Hotel and Bar owners should be liable reguardless of whether the
signals are encoded or not, scrambling simply ensures that they
will have to pay for the attractions.  Ideally, they should subsidize
the other groups (Rural especially).

Rural owners should be able to get scramblers/codes for nominal fees.
The assumtion is probably that they weren't necessarily pirating the
service, just trying to get it the only way they could.  There is
no threat to cable companies in this case.  The alternative would have
been to force encryptors to provide cable service to anyone who wanted
it.  This is not really practical when "aunt Mable's farm" is 200 miles
from the nearest cable company.  In this case, the dish owner might
even consider normal cable rates to be reasonable.

Suburban/Urban dish owners gambled that the dishes would be amortized
before scrambling occurred.  Unless the cable companies choose to give
a "distribution discount" to dish owners, it is likely that these dishes
cannot be further amortized.

The bright spot here is that if a single "standard decoder" is adopted,
the dish owner can "shop around" to get the best price for "key codes"
from a cable company.  A dish owner in New York can get the codes from
an operator in Denver Colorado and have it charged to his VISA card by
phone.  If the local company wants $15/month and Denver wants $5/month,
a $200 decoder would be amortized in less than 2 years.  A $1000 dish
would take almost ten years.  Of course if the same discounts apply
to a number of services, the amortization would be much faster.

The other bright spot is that programs that couldn't otherwise be shown
(X rated, politically offensive,...) may be allowed because the encryption
makes the signal inoffensive to anyone who has not specifically requested
that program/service.

Whether this is actually how things work out or not, it is worth considering
before flaming at the insensitivity of congress and sattelite owners
to ALL dish owners.

I would be interested in hearing flames if the Rural/Special groups end
up getting burned.