Back in 2006, a United States Court of Appeals issued a permanent injunction against EchoStar Communications for illegally retransmitting local broadcast network signals—allowing virtually anyone who asked to receive local signals through their DISH Network subscription.
Under existing law, satellite companies are only allowed to provide local channels to customers who reside within the market area of a local broadcaster but who for reasons of distance or geography are unable to adequately receive those signals.
The law is clear—rights exist in a local broadcast stream and are owned by the local broadcaster. Also clear—when the property rights of local broadcasters are run over, the penalties are severe.
Breaking this law required the “death penalty”—that the violator could no longer provide local channels to anyone outside of certain broadcast markets.
Almost immediately after the injunction was imposed Echostar began a campaign to get members of Congress to insert language into last-minute, lame-duck session legislation that would allow them to continue to illegally send distant network signals, continue to profit from their illegal behavior, and nullify the court injunction, even though their competition followed the law and gave up 900,000 subscribers in 1999 to comply with the law.
The ploy didn’t work then, so they are at it again.
Now Echostar is asking Congress, as part of the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act, to permit it to provide the local broadcast signals—even though the punishment for breaking the laws is clear and having once egregiously violated the law they should not be allowed to do so again.
Echostar defied a clear law, was found guilty, and now again wants Congress to let them off the hook, essentially crippling the rule of law to benefit a bad actor.
If a recidivist violent felon were sent to prison, and if after the briefest of time he pledged to act better if only released, certainly we would not even consider such an absurd request. The principle here is no different.
If injunctions, and the very law itself, are to have any meaning as a tool for the judiciary, they must also be respected by the legislature. If they are ignored as a means of enforcing the laws, then the law has no real force, and the property right has no real meaning.