c_mitra, I think the issue here is that some governments prohibit viewing news and entertainment sources they cannot themselves control. ANY attempt to view outside information is banned so it isn't what the dish is pointing at that matters, its that any dish could be viewing foreign material so they are all banned.
When I was young (and that was a very long time ago), we were not supposed to listen to any radio broadcast other than the domestic ones. But we all wanted to listen to BBC for news and other channels for entertainment. When we first got our TV (that was in 1984) we had to to pay tax and the license did mention that we are not allowed to watch foreign channels.
I stays in a fancy five star hotel in China and when I asked for internet access, I was shown one desktop that says everything in Chinese. Because it was not running linux or windows, I could not even change the display language. Next time I carried my desktop and I discovered that the great firewall of china is not really that great.
In south asia, the concept of democracy is rather fuzzy and banning things (??) are rather common. We ban books, internet access, mobile service, news, and what not. We usually take it very sportingly- it is a cat and mouse game. Catch me if you can.
But a dish can look and function like a local TV dish and can actually receive signal from other satellites.
The dish service provider (for me) has not bothered to customise the software - so with a wrench and a screw driver (and a signal meter) I can select one of the 30 satellites that are visible in the chart. But the signals are encrypted and my box cannot decrypt.
The box looks simple but is quite sophisticated; I have not probed much though.