(A) Each grantee shall strictly observe and protect the rights of privacy and of property of subscribers and users at all times. Information on individual subscribers, individual subscriber preferences of any kind, viewing habits, political, social or economic philosophies, beliefs, creeds, religions or names, addresses or telephone numbers shall not be revealed to any person, governmental unit, private agency or company, unless upon the authority of a court of law, by statute, or, upon prior written permission of the subscriber. The request for permission must be contained in a separate document with a prominent statement that the subscriber is authorizing the permission in full knowledge of its provision. Such authorization shall not in any event be required as a condition of receiving service.
(B) A grantee may release the number of its subscribers but only as a total number and as a percentage of the potential subscribers throughout its service area. When indicating the number of subscribers viewing a particular channel at a particular time, a grantee shall indicate only the total number of subscribers viewing during the relevant time and the percentage of all subscribers which they represent, but never the identity of a particular subscriber.
(C) A grantee may maintain only the information, relating to subscribers, as is necessary to bill subscribers for the use of any of its services.
(D) Neither a grantee nor any other person shall initiate in any form, the discovery of any information on or about a subscriber's premises without prior valid authorization from the subscriber. As used in this division,
VALID AUTHORIZATION means written approval from the subscriber expressly valid for a period of time not to exceed one year.
(E) A subscriber may, at any time, revoke any authorization previously made, by delivering to a grantee in writing, by mail or otherwise, his/her decision to so revoke. Any such revocation shall be effective upon receipt by franchisee.
(F) No monitoring of any subscriber terminal shall take place without specific prior written authorization by the user of the terminal in question, provided, however, a grantee may conduct systemwide or individually addressed "sweeps" for the purpose of verifying system integrity, security monitoring, and/or other addressable premium service implementation or verification which the subscriber has contracted for. In no event shall residential aural or visual monitoring of any kind take place without a clear indication to the subscriber that such monitoring is taking place.
(G) A grantee may, without prior subscriber approval, monitor those subscriber terminals which are connected to utility monitoring devices which measure utility usage and which have been first approved by the City Council.
(H) Prior to implementation of any interactive subscriber response mechanism, a grantee must first demonstrate to the City Manager that such a mechanism can operate effectively and provide absolute protection against any invasion of privacy.
(I) A grantee shall not tabulate any test results, nor permit the use of its system for such tabulation, which would reveal the commercial product preferences or opinions of subscribers, members of their families or their invitees, licensees or employees, without prior authorization of the subscriber.
(J) Each compilation, publication, tabulation or other dissemination of each piece of information made or permitted to be made in violation of this section shall result in the imposition of liquidated damages, pursuant to the grantee's franchise.
(K) The rights accorded subscribers pursuant to this section shall be in addition to any other privacy right accorded subscribers pursuant to federal or state law.
('83 Code, § 5.24.190) (Ord. 912, passed - -85) Penalty, see § 10.99