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)."

Comments

What's the point?

[WhatAreYouDoingHere]

You made a bad movie. Stop involving the lawyers and blaming everybody else.

Re:What's the point?

[phantomcircuit]

You made a bad movie. Stop involving the lawyers and blaming everybody else.

They actually made an excellent movie.

However it was not available for purchase for 99% of the people who wanted to watch it, so people pirated it.

Shocking right?

Re:What's the point?

[gandhi_2]

I enjoyed the acting and cinematography, but as a war movie it rates below "In The Army Now" in terms of realism. You'd be hard-pressed to find a scene in that movie that wasn't completely unrealistic.

Re:What's the point?

[phantomfive]

Don't know, but if I thought I could make millions by suing downloaders of something I made, I would be seriously tempted as well. Who wouldn't be?

Re:What's the point?

[Opportunist]

Now you're being unfair. The credits looked quite credible.

Re:What's the point?

[FrootLoops]

Duh. You managed to completely ignore the high correlation between lots of accolades and "goodness" while coming up with an almost tautological and content-less one-liner. This is why I hate computer geek culture. There's always another smug idiot ready to bless the world with his unique insight, since he really does have insight in the computer world, and the real world is the same, right?

Of course objective measures of a subjective phenomenon are imperfect. That should be obvious to anyone. Unless you say why the measures I've provided are imperfect in this particular case, you've added nothing to the discussion but my raised hackles.

Re:What's the point?

[Opportunist]

The main reason for illegal copying, actually.

Take a look at how often TV shows get copied. TV shows, the very same you get to see on TV for free anyway. Now, why would people do that?

First, because they're not available at all where they live. It took 3 years to get Big Bang Theory where I live, and for the longest time it didn't look like we'd get it at all. Same for IT Crowd. And I'm still waiting for Mongrels (and it's not bloody likely I'll ever get to see it on TV).

Then there's the delay for non-US people getting shows. We're at the very least one season behind. More often, more than one. Sheen's freak out, causing an interruption in Two and a half man still hasn't hit us. And it won't for some time, the writer's strike just recently caused us to watch reruns. Not to mention that they often mess up the order and that we almost certainly don't get to see "season themed" shows (for Halloween or X-Mas) when they're appropriate.

And finally, the often atrocious dubbing. I won't go into detail, but a lot of jokes and often even the meaning get changed and mangled in translation. Simpsons are notorious for it, but for almost all shows, once you've seen the original, you realize just how crappy the dubbing is. And there's no chance in hell that you could simply forgo it.

Now, of course one could argue to get the show DVDs. And if they're available, I'll certainly take that option gladly. But they often fail for the same three reasons: Shows that weren't on TV yet are often "not available in that country", it takes ages for it to become available on DVD (we're literally talking years here) and it's often a matter of luck whether you can actually get a non-dubbed version.

Fix that and "piracy" will drop instantly.

Re:What's the point?

[phantomcircuit]

The movie played at various film festivals and was released in italy, then they soft launched in the US. At this point there was huge demand to watch the movie but absolutely no legal way for 99% of the people to watch it.

I would guess that it's probably one of the most pirated movies of all time.

It will last as long as it is profitable

[stretch0611]

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.

Re:It will last as long as it is profitable

[BitterOak]

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.

I disagree. I don't think these lawsuits are about making money for the studios as much as they are about deterrence.

Re:It will last as long as it is profitable

[TheReaperD]

I disagree. I don't think these lawsuits are about making money for the studios as much as they are about deterrence.

I somehow don't think it will deter Hollywood from making bad movies again. ;)

No

[gd2shoe]

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

They likely made a deal with those ISPs

[static416]

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.

Re:They likely made a deal with those ISPs

[compro01]

I really don't understand why ISP's aren't fighting this. Once p2p traffic goes down, they lose a lot of the high-paying customers, and the investments for the infrastructure will be harder to recover.

They don't want those customers. They want the people paying $200/month for HDTV and their video on demand (where they charge $5/movie, not that silly unlimited business from netflix) service.

Re:They likely made a deal with those ISPs

[Loadmaster]

It doesn't apply to "cases which aren't frivolous?" Awesome, who decides what's frivolous and what's not? I thought I knew frivolous cases from reading newspapers. Then I went to law school and actually read the cases. Give me an example of what you consider a frivolous case.

And court fees are always the domain of the court. I do 8th amendment/1983 actions which allow fee shifting but doesn't require it. What you really want is universal fee shifting. And that's OK, my Advanced Civil Procedure Professor wanted it as well. I just disagreed with the results of such a measure. The UK does have it if you want to see it in practice.

Here's my professor's Amazon page for his books:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books&field-author=Robert%20Hardaway
No, he couldn't remember anyone's name, but he knows everything about law. Even if he's wrong about universal fee shifting.

Big ISPs = larger number of defendants

[jimmyswimmy]

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.

Popularity Contest?

[mevets]

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.

Re:How about a boycott?

[QuasiSteve]

Oh goodie! A call for a boycott - because those work so well when there's still millions who won't join in on said boycott :D /sarcasm

Let's give it a shot, though...

Starting with the production companies...
Voltage Pictures - not much to boycott there.
Grosvenor Park - no watching "Love in the Time of Cholera", "Disaster Movie" (no loss there) or "Righteous Kill"
Film Capital Europe Funds - again, not much to boycott.
First Light Production - no "K-19 The Widowmaker"
Kingsgate - zilch

Ohhhh... this one should get some teenage girls going "omg I have to boycott them!? noooooooeees":
Summit Entertainment - That's right, no more watching the "Twilight" saga, the "Step Up" series, "Push", "Knowing" (ot: great opening sequence), "The Brothers Grimm", "Mr. & Mrs. Smith", "Memento", "Vanilla Sky",

I guess we'll leave the distribution companies be, but just for kicks, they include Warner Brothers Pictures, Lionsgate Home Entertainment, Summit Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Including them, and the other distributions, means you can now put more than half of the movies made, EVER, on your boycott list. That shouldn't be too hard, eh.

Oh, another good one..
Effects: Company 3 - They have worked on, among other, "Tower Heist", "Conan the Barbarian" but also the "Transformers" series, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, "X-Men: The Last Stand", "Sucker Punch", "Rango"... shit, they go all the way back to "Being John Malkovich". That's 202 more movies - many of which quite popular - that you can add to your boycott list.

And we haven't even gotten to the fact that you want the crew to be included. You do realize that eventually, it's entirely likely that you will have put, say, 95% of all movies out of Hollywood - and whatever bunch more that the distributors and investment companies etc. touch outside of Hollywood - on your boycott list, right?

Yes, the real power is in the consumer. The question however is not whether the consumer has the power to bring down corporations; that power is a given. The question is whether that consumer has the power to stop themselves from enjoying entertainment just because somebody on Slashdot is entirely deluded on the feasibility of boycotts in general, and especially those scoped as large as you just have.

If you just want to boycott the studio that's actually doing the suing, rather than some make-up artist who would give you puzzling looks as to what the hell you're on, then boycott Voltage Pictures.

But, again, there's just not much to boycott there, even though I guess their list is growing:
http://www.imdb.com/company/co0179337/

Re:I thought that we were not getting sued...

[adonoman]

Movies != music. Music is treated specially in Canada's copyright legislation.

Another Hurt Locker Thread

[winmine]

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.