Slashdot Mirror
Hurt Locker Lawsuits May Reach Canadians, Too
First time accepted submitter so.dan writes "Canadian copyright guru Michael Geist reports that the 'File sharing lawsuits involving the movie the Hurt Locker [that] have been big news in the United States for months... are coming to Canada as the Federal Court of Canada has paved the way for the identification of subscribers at Bell Canada, Cogeco, and Videotron who are alleged to have copied the movie.' This is the first I've ever heard of MAFIAA lawsuits beginning to succeed in Canada. The move seems to target larger ISPs. Are subscribers of smaller ISPs — who must lease their lines from the larger ones such as Bell — relatively protected from such invasions of privacy due to some sort of technical difficulty in determining the names of subscribers? (Please excuse my technical ignorance)."
You made a bad movie. Stop involving the lawyers and blaming everybody else.
"What are you doing here, Elijah?"
FTA: "The ISPs were given two weeks to respond and are entitled to be reimbursed for their expenses."
Once ISP expenses cost more than the expected settlement amount, this nonsense will stop in Canada.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
Are subscribers of smaller ISPs — who must lease their lines from the larger ones such as Bell — relatively protected from such invasions of privacy due to some sort of technical difficulty in determining the names of subscribers? (Please excuse my technical ignorance)."
Short answer: no
Longer answer: not likely
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
We should also go back to spelling it as micro$oft in the summaries, too!
Race has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's a culture problem reinforced by ethnic identity politics. From BOTH sides of the equation.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I feel the pull of your trolling all the way form the southern hemisphere.
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
knee grows
Oh, look, honey--Junior made a funny. Isn't he just the cleverest little fellow.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
There was a previous case involving BMG that was stopped because CIPPIC intervened and showed that you can't plausibly identify an individual based on an IP address, and that there were huge privacy violations involved in just handing over subscriber information. http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2011/09/hurt-locker-lawsuits-about-to-detonate.html We have a Privacy Act here in Canada that is supposed to prevent these sorts of things.
In this case the Voltage (movie production company) moved so fast that there was no chance for anyone to intervene, and the ISPs didn't put up any kind of fight, so the court process was mostly a formality. On top of that, Bell, Cogeco, and Videotron provided all the subscriber info within two weeks of the ruling.
Two weeks is a very short time. With the same situation in the US, I think Comcast and Time Warner said that it would take them months and months to find all the information.
My guess is that Voltage approached Bell, Cogeco, and Videotron much earlier and made sure they would not be putting up a fight. And possibly even got them to start collecting the information early. By making sure it moved quickly they minimized the chances that CIPPIC could get involved and block it as they did before. This is why they didn't include other ISPs, they wanted to make sure the ISPs they were dealing with were just going to just go along with it, and smaller providers like Teksavvy would have very likely stood up for their customers and drawn CIPPIC into the battle with them.
Now that they have all the information they need, I'm sure that individual suits will start. But the situation in Canada is a little different than the US, and the suits may not work as well. Here we have something of a precedent showing that this information should not have been provided in the first place. Furthermore, if the defendant is able to win, Voltage will be forced to pay the defendants legal fees so it's not quite the same extortion racket it is in the US.
In answer to OP's question, I suspect that the movie mafia are going after downloaders at large ISPs because the payoff is bigger - they get one process going through one legal department, and a number of names and addresses of suspected downloaders is produced, after which they send out ransom letters. At smaller ISPs, there are fewer targets to send letters to, so the cost is proportionally higher per target.
So in a sense, you could say that customers at smaller ISPs are safer, depending on the movie organizations' intent - if they want to make money off people and get a lot of big settlements to make news, they would focus on large ISPs and their customers. If they want to thoroughly scare people, they'll go after everyone, independent of the cost of doing so.
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
How about someone makes a database that lists everyone in every one of these movies they sue over and boycott any works by those studios, the actors, even down to the crews that work in them. If any of those people are in a movie or related to it in anyway; it's boycotted. The real power is in the consumer, not the courts, not the studios.
Take the Red Pill.
Because of certain laws, not because they simply never got around to it yet. now this seems to be saying that Canada has been illegal movie download litigation free simply because they have not bothered to sue anyone yet?
I am not sure about movies, but I know we are allowed/semi allowed to pirate music because the government taxes all MP3 players expressly to pay for the loss of profits that piracy costs the artists.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Boxoffice mojo claims it was the #116 in popularity in 2009. Going by popularity, it got its ass kicked by "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The squekquel" ( no I didn't make that up ); and nudged by a few million dollars by "Astro Boy".
I haven't seen any of them; but I think I might go with the experts on this one.
I downloaded the movie, but never could watch, it well, just sounded way too dumb.
So am I guilty?
It got deleted, never watched.
Obviously I'm somewhat guilty of having bad taste, but I deleted the movie before it damaged my mental capabilities, so does that take some of the downloading shame away?
Wait, I should sue the movie makers for putting out a movie that i wasted time downloading but not watching.
Be seeing you...
Comments that say the movie sucks will get modded up.
Comments that defend the movie will stay below sea level moderation.
This is because some people associated with the movie decided to pursue a civil copyright lawsuit.
The summary will say the MPAA is involved. This will be false.
No analysis of the movie, or any new analysis of copyright law will occur.
As a nation, Canada just said...."No." to this. To America's absolutely nutso attempts to punish the misdeeds (arguable) of a minority at the expense of the majority. I doubt it will ever really happen here in the States...but maybe there are other countries that don't subscribe to this particular brand of insanity?
Legislation just stops nothing.
Criminals will do whatever they want.
Last I checked, murder is nailed down pretty well and it still happens every day.
Exactly what kind of legislation do they think they could enact that would "stop" online piracy?
Perhaps something of the nature "If the movie industry even thinks you've shared one byte of a pirated movie they're entitled to schedule a predator strike on your house" might work, and I probably shouldn't have given them the idea.
I rarely buy DVDs anymore, because I realised that there are very few things that I want to watch more than once, but I rent them and the rental price is reasonable. In the UK, however, I still have to wait about a year between something being available to pirate and it being available to rent on DVD.
It's the same with films. At home, I have a projector and a reasonable sound system. My local cinema charges about as much to watch a single film as I pay to rent a dozen DVDs and their sound system has the levels set so high that there's horrible distortion whenever the sound gets loud. And here's the funny bit: studios delay releasing the DVD so that it won't cannibalise cinema ticket sales. That means that they believe that, given the choice between renting or buying the DVD and going to the cinema, a lot of people would chose the DVD. Their business model is to intentionally not give people what their market research shows that they want. And yet they have the nerve to blame piracy.
I don't pirate. If something isn't available in a format that I'm happy with at a price that I'm willing to pay, I just don't buy it. But I can understand people who do pirate. I'd love to see copyright require a bonafide attempt to distribute the copyrighted material.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
When was the last time you saw a Jew doing manual labour? You know, building a house, digging a road, planting and picking crops, etc.
I don't know. I've never stopped at a construction site and said 'excuse me, are any of you people jews, by any chance?' Perhaps we should make them wear yellow stars so that they're easier to spot.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Typical Hollywood crap. If some two-bit adrenaline junkie ran around playing cowboy in RL like the main protagonist did in that movie, he'd have spent four-fifths of his tour of duty in the guardhouse.
Regards;
Just sayin'.
expandfairuse.org
What about just switching ISPs (if possible). If a significant number of people with Bell sent letters to Bell and said please terminate my service I don't trust you to protect my privacy any more since you were willing to hand over names and addresses just because you were provided and IP address and an accusation.
Also if I were accidentally caught up in this (and didn't download anything) my first check would be whether I can sue my ISP for breaching privacy laws. There is definitely a Tort case to be made. 1) they have a duty of care to protect your personal information. 2) they failed in this duty by just handing over the info. 3) the defense of the lawsuit will cost money (aka cause me harm).
Personally I would expect my ISP not to surrender my personal information until served with a court issued warrant.
I suspect that there will be much backlash on this, especially since we already pay additional fees on blank media in Canada.
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
I downloaded a copy, as the movie was only in local theatres for a few weeks, then disappeared. I never had a chance to see it. The copy I downloaded was dubbed in Spanish, but I was able to make out the gist of the story. I purchased it on Blu when it came available and own it. The production company can have my dubbed version back, if they want it.. Sic Semper Tyrannis!
> I downloaded the movie, but never could watch, it well, just sounded way too dumb.
.. I dont think it'll fly. Maybe
you'd be better off saying you made a mistake and downloaded the wrong movie since a lot of people
here said it was a five star stinker. ;-)
Isnt that kinda like saying you were smoking marijuana but not inhaling