[d@DCC] Signal interference in Bill C-2: Any engineers want to explain this?

[Christophe Beauregard]

On Saturday 14 February 2004 14:16, mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:

> Another issue is that illegal satellite TV receivers are generally just
> legal satellite TV receivers with the dish pointed at a different
> satellite and a different decryption key loaded.  So the vast majority of
> illegal DirecTV setups aren't emitting anything that isn't also being
> emitted by the legal ExpressVu setups next door.  It's identical
> hardware.

That's just about my gut feeling. It would be like arguing that a Dell 
computer meets electronic emission standards when Windows XP is installed, 
but fails to meet them when Linux is installed.

On the other hand, it was possible to make many types of mainframe and 
minicomputer disk drives walk across the room purely via software. We're 
starting to see things like general purpose radio equipment in wireless 
networking devices, software controlled winmodems, and projects like GNU 
radio. A satellite receiver built around a programmable radio device could, 
I guess, end up leaking outside the approved chunk of spectrum far beyond 
what a simple oscillator would allow for when different software was 
dropped in.

Anyhow, I googled and this looks like the source of the claims:

  http://www.ccta.ca/english/news-information/black-market/pdf/2003/backgrounder.pdf

With additional background at:

  http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/insmt-gst.nsf/vwGeneratedInterE/h_sf05659e.html

The technical explanation they're using is that the problem was interference 
came from the smart cards themselves, not the receiver. That strikes me as 
a load of crap, but I've never actually seen one of these cards. 

c.
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