TV Pirate ‘Captain Midnight’ Fined

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Video pirate “Captain Midnight,” who briefly jammed a satellite TV signal to broadcast a protest of cable television signal scrambling, was fined $5,000 and given a year’s probation Tuesday.

John R. MacDougall, the only person ever known to have taken private control of a commercial satellite, said earlier that he committed the video piracy because pay TV signal scrambling was ruining his 2 1/2-year-old satellite dish business in Ocala.

MacDougall appeared before a U.S. magistrate in a 10-minute hearing for approval of a plea-bargain agreement he reached with prosecutors shortly after his arrest July 22. Although the video raid was only a minor annoyance to Home Box Office and its viewers, the Federal Communications Commission launched a massive investigation because of the potential problems a less selective video hacker might cause.

FCC investigators tracked MacDougall by analyzing the power of the pirate transmission and the electronic typewriter used to write the message.