Awatmath.2277 net.followup utzoo!decvax!watmath!jcwinterton Thu Apr 29 10:58:27 1982 Re: Watch It! (interception of satellite/pay TV signals) All of the discussion under this topic can be summed up in one old legal profession cliche "A man's home is his castle". The Canadian Government tried to regulate home satellite dishes and got fully creamed in the process. No matter what congress does in the U.S. I expect any such law to be struck down in the U.S. courts. The communications legislation with respect to private correspondence (i.e. telephone calls) takes care of overhearing of private conversations by making it illegal (and very actionable) to use or repeat anything not specifically directed to the receiving station. I am aware of this because of the public correspondence channels on the VHF system that I have for my boat. Naturally, the real answer to secrecy in broadcast signals is encoding. Look how successful the Germans (ultra) and Japanese (purple) were in WW II. Science fiction fans will recall the opinion expressed by RAH in his story Waldo, many years ago. Who knows, maybe in a hundred more years of radiating additional energy into the atmosphere will solve the problem in natures way. We could be selected out. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.