Canadian ISPs Send Thousands of Copyright Notices

An anonymous reader writes "The CBC reports that Canadian Internet service providers are passing along thousands of copyright infringement notifications to their customers. These notices are coming, not from Canada, but from US copyright lobby groups such as the Business Software Alliance under a system called notice and notice. Michael Geist comments that unlike the U.S. takedown approach, the Canadian system is proving effective while protecting privacy and free speech. Downloaders take the hint, and alter their behavior before they receive a more serious letter in the mail."

Comments

First, how do they avoid these messages being ...

[ArsenneLupin]

... caught in the users' spamfilters?

Media fees

[Joe The Dragon]

So what are the fees that people pay for media for?

Re:Media fees

[--daz--]

But the reality is more like this:

Greedy Media Companies bilk consumers, consumers get angry and frustrated, turn to piracy to get the products they want, GMC's continue bilking, but now lobby Gov't for extra fees and taxes to recoup cost of piracy thus bilking consumers EVEN MORE and driving them to pirate more, etc, etc, etc...

The GMC's have created an artificial problem because they have essentially monopolized content distribution and colluded to create a huge barrier to entry where a consumer's only choice becomes to buy, not to buy, or to pirate.

Fortunately the Internet has helped with the Barrier to Entry problem, but, unfortunately, dramatically increased piracy.

The GMC's could solve the problem of piracy very easily, while simultaneously increasing good will of consumers (and therefore number of purchases and therefore profits) but they simply choose not to -- instead content to bilk the consumer and punish them for considering any alternative.

Re:Ha Ha Ha....

[corychristison]

If only we (Canadians) actually lived in igloo's, eh? The part about the weather is true though. Just sometime last week it was -45 in my area. Today it's -10 or so... Shorts and T-shirt weather for Canadians. :-)

Judging from your post, I don't think you are Canadian. We use the metric system for large distances. But props on your post anyway! Was a good laugh when I needed it.

My letters from the ESA

[My Iron Lung]

I've gotten two letters from the ESA in the last 6 months like this.. I don't think they hold a lot of water, they were sent to my ISP who forwarded them to me. My ISP was awfully nice, they offered a link to their site showing how to disable uploads on many popular P2P file sharing apps (made me laugh), covering damn near everything except BitTorrent. Now the first time they caught me was OK, I was downloading software I shouldn't have been, it scared me straight for about 15 minutes till I give it some serious consideration. The second one just made me laugh, it was for downloading an ISO of Starcraft (no cracks or anything, just the ISO), which I do have a legit copy and serial for but left my original copy at work.. Anyways, I'm rambling, but my only real point here is that the only one you should be afraid of is your ISP in cases like this. The ESA/RIAA/MPAA, whatever, holds little to no jurisdiction here in Canada (afaik noone in Canada has ever been convicted along these lines, please enlighten me if you've heard otherwise), but your ISP can easily give you the boot for violating their own terms of service.

Re:My letters from the ESA

[My Iron Lung]

Close, but no: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_Softwar e_Association Here's the first email I received: http://keeptalking.homelinux.net/esa.txt And this is the second: http://keeptalking.homelinux.net/esa2.txt

Re:I thought this was serious until the last sente

[urbanriot]

This might seem crazy or funny to you, but it's completely true. This tactic is to scare the casual downloader and it works. I've had numerous friends receive these letters in the past and they'd completely altered their download patterns ranging from installing RIAA/MPAA/BSA filtering software (such as Peerguardian) all the way up to stopping completely and removing all pirate software from their computer. Maybe to the more enlightened user this might sound crazy, or perhaps to those that haven't received these letters, but to most people receiving an official looking letter that's singling you out for software piracy... it can be a little worrisome.

Re:First, how do they avoid these messages being .

[rikkards]

I got one from Rogers for downloading a copy of Flight Sim X that I wanted to check out before buying. It was an email they got from the BSA. It had the specific IP, DNS name and torrent I was downloading from. Freaked the wife out but whatever. Normally my bittorrent behaviour is downloading tv shows i.e ones that Rogers PVR decided not to tape or to get widescreen version of shows that are displayed only in 4:3 like BSG but I wanted to see how Microsoft's new version fared.

The result of my trial was that I am not buying FSX as it runs too slow on the hardware I have and it isn't that much better than FS 2004.

...then open up the online viewing of past episode

[MikeOrr]

I'm not going to get into the topic of sending notices via ISPs... one thing from that news article that caught my eye, was the mention of NBC/Universal sending a notice, because they felt someone was downloading a TV show episode.

Well, on NBC.com most/all (I haven't checked every show) offers you to watch the entire episode the very next day of airing, for free.

But not for Canadians (and I assume anyone outside of the US). Instead, we get "We're sorry, but the clip you selected isn't available from your location." - what's the point of this artificial restriction? If you're making it available for free to some people, why not everyone? If NBC.com won't make it available, then why shouldn't I be able to just download the episode via BitTorrent? If I have a PVR so I can tape a show and watch it later (skipping all commercials), why shouldn't I be able to just download the show and watch it later?

This strikes me as odd

[thewils]

So will Rogers, for example, be sending letters to themselves for stuff that's hosted on their own Usenet servers?