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The Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) and the Police jointly mounted a successful raiding operation last Thursday (January 13) against the sale of unauthorised pay TV decoders in Sham Shui Po area.

Seven suspected unauthorised decoders, 41 smart cards and 30 smart card programmers were seized and five people were taken to a police station to assist in further investigations.

An OFTA spokesman said that under the Broadcasting Ordinance (Cap 562), a person shall not, in the course of trade or business, import, export, manufacture, sell, offer for sale or let for hire an unauthorised TV decoder. The offender is liable to a maximum penalty of $1 million fine and five years' imprisonment upon conviction.

"People selling the illegal TV decoders and smart cards will be subjected to heavy criminal penalty. In two recent cases, the penalties were imprisonment for three months and four months, suspended for two years.

"OFTA will closely monitor these illegal activities and will take swift and prompt enforcement actions," the spokesman said.

The spokesman also said that using illegal decoders for commercial purposes, such as pirated viewing of pay TV programmes in a restaurant, was a criminal offence. Both commercial and domestic users of the decoder would also be subjected to civil court action by the pay TV operators.

"People purchasing or using the decoders will suffer not only financial loss, but will also face serious legal consequences.

"The Government will continue to work with the industry to clamp down on these illegal activities. It is also the primary responsibility of the pay TV operators to adopt protective measures against TV privacy," the spokesman said.

Ends/Monday, January 17, 2005

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