Canada Prepares For Crackdown On BitTorrent Movie Pirates

New submitter dreamstateseven tips this Postmedia News report: "A forensic software company has collected files on a million Canadians who it says have downloaded pirated content. The company, which works for the motion picture and recording industries, says a recent court decision forcing Internet providers to release subscriber names and details is only the first step in a bid to crack down on illegal downloads. 'The door is closing. People should think twice about downloading content they know isn't proper,' said Barry Logan, managing director of Canipre, the Montreal-based forensic software company."

Comments

Suck my pirate dick

[atari2600a]

$100 for 10 movies, or $10 for a VPN for 100 movies?

Re:Suck my pirate dick

[mark-t]

You are mistaken.

The levy that you pay on blank media in Canada exists to compensate Canadian artists for private copying. It might alleviate the impact of piracy as side effect, but that is not the purpose of the levy.

Under C-11, however, which is now evidently law in Canada, practically all private copying of newer media forms is illegal, since for many newer media forms, copying can necessitate bypassing some forms of copy protection, which under C-11 is illegal, without exceptions for private copying (the law is even explicitly says so, in fact). Therefore, the levy applies to an activity that Canadians cannot even generally lawfully participate in, as an ever increasing amount of content is published on digital media.

This makes the levy illegal, for all practical intents and purposes. The Conservative Party of Canada has tried scrap the levy before, before they had a majority government, but they have not brought the issue up since the last Federal election.

Re:Suck my pirate dick

[JimCanuck]

Our Supreme court ruled that P2P and other user to user file sharing services of copyright material is legal.

This is a non-story.

Re:Suck my pirate dick

[Mad Merlin]

Yes, that is the disgustingly awful part about C-11, but you missed the upside:

The goverment eventually arrived a trade-off that most Canadians would make: a tougher provision to target sites that facilitate infringement (the law already allows rights holders to do this) in return for a full cap on liability for non-commercial infringement. This applies not only to individuals (likely bringing to an end the prospect of file sharing lawsuits in Canada) but to any non-commercial entity including educational institutions and libraries (who may adopt more aggressive interpretations of the law with less risk of liability).

Emphasis mine, see http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6544/125/

Re:Suck my pirate dick

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, this Canadian just prepared for the crackdown by setting up a shiny brand new vpn to the Netherlands and or Sweden.

Re:Suck my pirate dick

[JimCanuck]

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6593/125/ - General copying for personal use at schools etc.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/resc/html_bkup/june62005.html - Giving up the identities of individual file sharers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMG_Canada_Inc._v._John_Doe - File Sharing Specifically, the first such court case that reached that level of the courts and struck down the notion that file sharing is actively trying to rip off and profit from sharing files on a computer, whether copyrighted or not.

Re:Suck my pirate dick

[JimCanuck]

No BMG Canada Inc v John Doe proved that sharing on a P2P system is legal. There is no distinction between uploading or downloading in that ruling.

Advertising copyrighted material for copying is illegal, which is why posting copyrighted music for download on a website it illegal as your intentionally advertising it for download (same with TPB/Demonoid etc which is why Demonoid wen't to the Ukraine in the end). You are not intentionally advertising the files on a P2P shared folder, unless someone else looks for it so it's "legal".

Re:Suck my pirate dick

[Dorkmaster Flek]

It's important to note that the cap of $5000 is for all infringement up to the point the lawsuit is filed. Not $5000 per infringement. And even then, the new bill C-11 contains instructions to judges on determining statutory damages to consider the personal nature of the infringement and how much it actually damaged the plaintiff. That $5000 judgment could go all the way down to $100. You won't be seeing any "$2 million for downloading two dozen songs" bullshit, so that's something.

They owe me at this point

[kawabago]

If the entertainment industry starts suing people then I'll start downloading stuff up to the full value of the media levy I've paid. If we all do that then suing people should drive away customers and money from the entertainment industry, the opposite of what they want.

No, not just physical media.

[DavidClarkeHR]

The taxes appear to only apply to physical media, however, and only to music. So it's legal to copy music onto a blank CD or cassette for personal use, but not to copy in other circumstances. The Copyright Board was planning to extend the tax to iPods, which would make it legal to copy for personal use onto them as well, but that was overturned.

Yes, the taxes are on physical media, but they cover the distribution and use of all those bits and bytes. It implicitly covers computers as the medium where the music is stored prior to being transferred to a disc. Since we're looking at "reasonable doubt" territory, can a prosecutor prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the music was never intended to go onto CDs?

And while it technically does apply only to mp3s, the RCMP has stated that they're not actively pursuing individual infringement - and they're not happy about being bullied (by US policy) into enforcing the laws against larger, for-profit organizations. So when the feds won't initiate actions, and the provinces can't be bothered to enforce it (RCMP does enforcement in many provinces and all federal enforcement) ... where do you think that is going to leave the law?

Re:Lucky for them bittorrent is uploading

[viperidaenz]

It was also copied to the buffer in the DVD drive and the main system memory too. That brings you up to 3 violations. There's also a screen buffer in LCD monitors, which would make it at least 4.

Re:Your kind are not welcome.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the Pirate Party. Make sure yours is emdorsed/recognized by Pirate Parties International, and become a member. Donating is great, joining even better.

PeerBlock before Pirate Bay

[Anonymous Coward]

Always remember to fire up PeerBlock before visiting PirateBay or starting up Bit Torrent.
They only go after the low hanging fruit, don't be it.

They NEED a WARRANT

[CHRONOSS2008]

General Inquiries
canipre@canipre.com
647.693.0727

Robin Berry
Senior Director, Operations
rberry@canipre.com

Media Inquiries
media@canipre.com

going to contact these people with the legal aspects of privacy law of canada and let them know that its against the law to knowingly gather information on a person OR IP especially since your scanning hte user to know they are using a certain protocol.

Scanning without a warrant or private investigators liscense ( still questionable without a warrant ) is illegal.

MAKE SURE YOU get a lawyer and have them look into scanning and info gathering without a warrant.

It's a matter of perspective

[msobkow]

I've purchased over 5,000 CDs and over 3,000 DVDs, as well as about 500 VHS tapes in my life. Prices back then weren't cheap, either, especialy for the VHS tapes. They were a "new thing." Same with DVDs when they came out.

I've spent over $150,000 on media over the years.

If I live to be 100, that would be 1200 months of payments. Near as I can figure, I've already paid $125/month from the cradle to the grave for media.

Just when is enough enough?

Re:Ok, enoughs enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

Host Name : DNS1.EHOSTPROS.COM

IP Address : 174.121.90.229

Host Name : dns2.ehostpros.com

IP Address : 174.121.90.227

Re:People should think twice...

[Dorkmaster Flek]

TFA says that the statutory limit for damages for non-commercial infringement is $5000

Per infringement. How many different people did you upload that bittorrent to? 1,700? Um... uh oh.

Wrong. It's $5000 for all infringement up to the point the lawsuit is filed. At the very least, there won't be any Canadian Joel Tenenbaums. It will be far less worthwhile to actually pursue these cases here.