Mike the Usurper wrote:

A complaint announced today by the FBI alleges that through a company called HDTV Ltd. located in Brooklyn, Iqbal and others provided customers in the New York area with satellite broadcasts of al Manar, which is a television station owned and/or operated by Hezbollah.

The Department of Treasury named al Manar as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity" in March 2006, thereby making it a crime to, among other things, engage in business transactions with al Manar. In conjunction with the arrest, agents executed search warrants at both HDTV's Brooklyn office and Iqbal's Staten Island residence where, it is alleged, Iqbal maintained several satellite dishes.

Okay, so here's an interesting question. If he's paying Al Manar to distribute their signal, he's consorting with terrorists, but if he's not paying them, then he's stealing their signal and liable under FCC copyright issues? I'd be interested to see what he was doing, because I'm not seeing any way to square this with the first amendment. You can do time, place and manner restrictions, and you can't shout "Movie!" in a crowded firehouse or the like, but otherwise, speech may not be restricted.

This one looks really ugly.

This IS an interesting question.

1. Its not legal to retransmit this broadcast without paying for it. However, it is extremely unlikely that any U.S. organization would enforce those laws on behalf of a designated terrorist organization. They should have stolen the broadcast. Of course, this could have openned them up to extra-legal fee collection from local Hezbollah supporters.

2. Its not legal to engage in commerce with a designated terrorist organization without a license. He could have applied for one. It probably would have been denied, but he could have challenged this denial on first amendment grounds, and he might have won such a challenge. Dan Bernstein did exactly this a few years ago with respect to cryptography export controls. The fact that he did this without obtaining a license muddies the water considerably. It could be argued that a licence requirement places a chill upon the freedom of speech, but its much harder to get that arguement to fly, particularly if the restrictions aren't hard to comply with and are directly connected to legitimate national security interest.

3. The FBI is likely most interested in his subscriber lists.

A complaint announced today by the FBI alleges that through a company called HDTV Ltd. located in Brooklyn, Iqbal and others provided customers in the New York area with satellite broadcasts of al Manar, which is a television station owned and/or operated by Hezbollah.

The Department of Treasury named al Manar as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity" in March 2006, thereby making it a crime to, among other things, engage in business transactions with al Manar. In conjunction with the arrest, agents executed search warrants at both HDTV's Brooklyn office and Iqbal's Staten Island residence where, it is alleged, Iqbal maintained several satellite dishes.

Mike wrote:

Okay, so here's an interesting question. If he's paying Al Manar to distribute their signal, he's consorting with terrorists, but if he's not paying them, then he's stealing their signal and liable under FCC copyright issues?

Decius added:

This IS an interesting question.

I can't imagine Al Manar intends the subscription model to be a profitable venture. What if Al Manar decided to post all of their programming to YouTube? Would YouTube be in trouble for selling advertising alongside those videos, even if there is no economic transaction between YouTube and Al Manar?

noteworthy wrote:
I can't imagine Al Manar intends the subscription model to be a profitable venture. What if Al Manar decided to post all of their programming to YouTube? Would YouTube be in trouble for selling advertising alongside those videos, even if there is no economic transaction between YouTube and Al Manar?

No. If there is no economic transaction there is no crime. They might attempt to argue that youtube is providing "material support" but it has already been established in court that operating a website is not "material support." First amendment interests trump.

Decius wrote:
1. Its not legal to retransmit this broadcast without paying for it. However, it is extremely unlikely that any U.S. organization would enforce those laws on behalf of a designated terrorist organization. They should have stolen the broadcast. Of course, this could have openned them up to extra-legal fee collection from local Hezbollah supporters.

The nature of the broadcast is not mentioned in this article. They do not mention if the transmission medium was by cable, or over-the-air broadcast. They do not mention if this broadcaster is licensed or tariffed for broadcasting in this manner. If the broadcaster is not FCC licensed and is broadcasting on a TV channel without a license, they are liable to the FCC. The FCC does not authorize low power transmitters in the TV channels or even consider applications under 100W of radiated power.

Furthermore, the FCC would force them to comply with the same standards of broadcasting that current broadcasters deal with, which would be interesting because of both the freedom of speech angle and the chilling effects squelching a broadcast which to everyone else would simply appear to be a broadcast in Arabic. In the world of broadcast, there are some extremely interesting laws that have been abused in the past and provide fodder for the lawyers almost every time. If you, as a broadcaster, have a contract with a tower owner and decide one day that you wish to terminate the contract, the tower owner cannot have you removed as long as your transmitter is in operation because it is against the law to interfere with a public broadcaster.

3. The FBI is likely most interested in his subscriber lists.

I'm sure they'll take a page from DirecTV for the prosecution.