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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."
$100 for 10 movies, or $10 for a VPN for 100 movies?
Just as in the US, in Canada there's no such thing as "illegal downloading." Guess it's lucky for the copyright cartels that the most popular way to download a movie is with bittorrent which, conveniently-enough, involves uploading (making available).
In general, though, I wish the media would stop parroting the general idea that it's illegal to download copyrighted materials. It's no more illegal than bringing home a bootleg CD bought on the streets of Karachi.
So CRIA will start suing end users in the same way RIAA did in US, accomplishing probably the same results regarding piracy deterrence: none. Good idea...
People should think twice about downloading content they know isn't proper
If the content is improper for viewing when pirated, how can one imagine obtaining it from a legit source would make it proper?
(in other words: what incentive do I have to move my ass in a movie theater chair or buy it on disk?)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I really would like to see organized resistance and civil disobedience to the Media cartels, and a campaign to paint them as the evil monsters they are.
I happen to think that RIAA, MPAA, CRIA, and BREIN are Scoundrels, of the same vein as the Westboro Baptist Church, and the Taliban, and other hate based organizations that use a religious or quasi-religious basis just like religion does to persuade people that they should be paid forever and ever and ever for a non-product, and for what really is an economically stilted scam meant to drain the poor, oppress other people, abuse children, ruin people's lives over a non-reason. Efforts should be taken by interest groups to dismantle these organizations.
Your litigation campain advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante (x) legal
approach to fighting piracy. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
(x) Torrent sites will change to a new protocol
(x) They don't have the money to settle or pay damages
(x) Open wi-fi access points
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(x) Litigation is not actually a deterrent to teenagers
(x) Your evidence collection methods are open to attack in court
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from judges
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many ISPs cannot afford to lose business
( ) Pirates don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
(x) Bad press when you sue a grandmother for what a 10 year old does
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for the net
(x) Open proxies in foreign countries
(x) Tor and darknets
(x) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of piracy
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business you
( ) Dishonesty on the part of pirates themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
(x) Any scheme based on mass lawsuits and prosecution is unacceptable
( ) IP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending data should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) I don't want the government reading my packets
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
I didn't think there were that many people in Canada. Isn't it mostly populated by sheep and bears?
Once again, we see these unlicensed "private investigators" working behind closed doors with no oversight. They make lists of "IP numbers" with zero proof that anyone ever did anything wrong. This fake detective work is completely wrong and illegal. They (the criminal shakedown scammers) should be arrested and made to pay back all the money they have stolen. And go to prison for a long time too.
The company name rhymes with canape, but I cannot help but read it as "Can I Prey!"
Anyways, Google Street View shows that their head office appears to be a mail box in a post office that is part of a corner store at 15410 Pierrefonds Blv, Montreal, QC so I guess I won't be ordering them a few thousand pizzas.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
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.
what if they dont know its not proper?
tv movies are a good example, they broadcast to you for free, maybe someone thinks "hey here is Stephen Kings IT on the web, lets watch that", they are now unknowingly being a movie pirate
Indeed, the door is closing, on the entertainment industry employing these types. They've seen how ineffective these firms are, how they've pissed off their customers, how they've gotten nothing but bad PR, how piracy actually increased their bottom line (sans lawsuits), and generally idiotic the entire enterprise has been.
The MPAA (and friends) looks the other way, their wallet is fatter. They do not, and it's thinner. So, why would they pay money for someone to make them poorer? Dumb.
I am John Hurt.
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?
... where do you think that is going to leave the law?
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)
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
A million Canadians? Really?! And you say it's illegal? Oh kaaay...
That's what, 1 of every 30 Canadians?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
So CRIA will start suing end users in the same way RIAA did in US, accomplishing probably the same results regarding piracy deterrence: none. Good idea...
It won't be quite the same process as in the USA. First of all, it'll likely have to go through small claims, because the burden of proof to get accepted into the superior court of justice is much, much higher. Second, the max in small claims in canada is generally around $25,000 - and you can generally only sue for money or the return of personal property, not the generally-intangible damages the RIAA sought in the USA.
No, the only people affected by this are the large-scale kim dotcom style companies that make millions off copyright infringement, and there are already a variety of laws in place that can be used to prosecute them.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
How long until it is illegal to have an open AP?
I would like to pay a fair pirice for good content, and not pay a dime for the terrible content. Also not be forced to use a myriad of players/accounts. Deliver it in mkv/mp4 using a common service where I can pay for the exact tv-shows and movies I want. Make it easier to get it the way I want it legally than pirating it and I won't bother to torrent anything. Make this the only way to get the tv-shows so if people start pirating their favourite content it will bite them by that content going away.
How is this legal for them to pursue litigation for something I can get freely from legitimate sources? My local public library has all the same movies on BluRay I can get from TPB. I can watch all the same TV shows (more, in fact) online, streaming, from legitimate sources for free as well...
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
At one time Canada used to be a good place.
John Eadie [JE46] http://www.c-art.com `one of these days the dogs aren't going to eat the dog food' - Bill Joy
Someone with access to MaxMind or something similar look up the IP blocks owned by this "Canipre" company and post them here. Then everyone can start hosting torrents with a spoofed return IP that's in their range. Once they start pulling down their own IP ranges maybe they'll figure out just how fucking stupid this idea is.
That's going to be down right impossible, since creative commons is a copyright license
which applies to making private copies for your own use of sound recordings of musical works we need a new file type that only plays the audio of the file but needs a password to unlock the video. This way all Canadians can still download the move and listen to is as an audio book but if if they are brave enough get the pass code to unlock the video. Or better yet a video player that fetches the pass code real time whenever you play the file.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
They'll just sue everyone who is range of the open access point.
wave the the extortion letters? Pay us $3000 or go to jail. I'll keep on downloading. If they bankrupt me I'll give be a incentive to grow weed and make my money that way. I can live comfortably with 4 1000W lights running.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
No matter how big you get, how healthy your economy, how great your health care and how happy your people, you will never ever be free of your servitude to multinational corporations.
If you get that through your thick bohunk skulls you'll save yourself a lot of grief later. The USA circa 1980-2012 wants you to know that the more you resist, the more it will hurt.
Your borders, your sovereignty, don't mean shit.
And for the people of Canada, you can congratulate yourselves all you want for creating a wonderful progressive paradise, but when the guys with big money say "Jump" your politicians are still going to get on their knees and start sucking. Or something.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You may want to review bill C-11... which became law just this fall. Specifically, note that the prohibitions on copy protection circumvention extend even to the point of preventing personal and private use.
Oddly enough, bill C-11 makes the levy illegal, since it is charging Canadians for something that they cannot generally lawfully do.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Every article has the same content, and links back to a post media story. I haven't been able to find a press release, and the case doesn't have a citation, so it looks like a "placed" story, to offset the limits on copyright infringement suits imposed by bill C-11.
Generally, one has to commence a suit, then go to court and ask for an order, addressed to a particular ISP, to obtain contact information for specific customers. Otherwise you need an extraordinary remedy, a so-called Norwich order (see Slaw, http://www.slaw.ca/2009/09/15/york-university-v-bell-canada-enterprises-observations-and-implications-for-future-norwich-jurisprudence/)
This suggests that someone was hired to find a group of downloaders in BC, all using the same large ISP, and went after them. This could possibly work elsewhere, since the two big ISPs are Bell and Rogers, and there are enough customers of each to be consider risking the cost of filing a suit against 10 gadzillion john does, and convincing a court that you're for real. The amount you'll recover is limited, but if you amortize it over enough people, you might make a profit.
It would be better to get the contact details and then send a bill-collector after each of them, as you could probably frighten some of them into buying you off and signing a non-disclosure. That's a well-known trick in the U.S. It's not obvious if it would work in Canada.
Were I the company doing this, I'd want financial guarantees from the companies employing me, and the right to keep all the fines and not remit them to to my clients, the copyright holders. Here too, it's not obvious if a lawyer could do that in Canada...
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
What the hell are they wasting people's tax dollars (through the courts) on? What the hell are they suing people over? Copying data? What a good use of time, money, and resources! Thank you for tackling this national security emergency!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Why this really pisses me off: just bought a new Sony Blu-Ray player, and especially chose one with WIFI and NetFlix built in.
I now discover that because I'm in Canada I can only choose from one quarter of the movies and shows available in the US.
The total number of entries for Canada is currently 2687 movies/shows . The total number of entries for USA is currently 10407 movies/shows. Same price, one quarter the movies.
When I can get the same choice, at the same price, I'll be more than happy to pay my $8 a month. Until then the media corps can suck eggs.
Three Squirrels
Well, it would most likely leave the law in a similar place to the U.S.
The RCMP *shouldn't* be getting involved in non-criminal suits. You won't be going to jail, but that doesn't exempt you from civil suits.
If the music companies can get your contact info to offer a "pre-settlement" or otherwise take you to civil court, that's probably where it's going to go. If you can be sued for several hundred G's, or just bankrupted with lawyer fees then it's nearly as ruinous as serving a short stint in a cell.
It does say that a recent court decision forces ISP's to reveal subscriber identities. I'm not sure which decision that is, but it would sure be nice if there were a link to it somewhere.
I do have some faith that the Canadian court system is a bit more sane in regards to penalties, but who wants to go to court?
Still, if a movie is worth seeing I usually prefer the theatre/Netflix anyhow, and any music I've downloaded online has come from Artists self-promoting for free (and good artists get more from me by donation than they'd ever get if I bought through a label) and ocassionally from iTunes.
Didn't a recent Canadian law make DRM circumvention illegal? And isn't it illegal in the US, except in certain circumstances?
"in range" could be quite a ways (and a very large number of potential defendants) if the AC OP has a high gain antenna.
There are other ways to download media...unfortunately, not unlike Fight Club, I cannot mention them...
USE the NET fellow Interneteers. You will find a way. :)
I did some quick math based on the numbers on the Statistics Canada website. Apparently there are 4.5 Million households in Canada. 80% of those had Internet access in 2011(that includes people with dialup folks...) So that's 3.6Million households. So you are telling me they have 1 million IP addresses? Are they really thinking of prosecuting1/3 of the Canadian population? Sketchy...
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.
scanning or gathering ip info on a user unless you are federal or law enforcement with a warrant is illegal
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.
There are likely many laws on the books that, for some interpretation or another, contradict each other. Could you point out where in the Charter such laws are forbidden?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Dude, you never had a party with one, hey?
Tomorrow is another day...
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?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
since the kids don't really download except for me I'll just keep a second HD with a clean install of Linux Mint on it (fresh from store HD). if they ever come I'll just plop it in and off I go. SInce my router has no password and I don't keep logs, shitty for them.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The half wolf, half pig creature looked up into the rolling meadows. As far as its hungry, greedy eyes could see were beasts of burden. Thousands of grey-white furry forms like the swirls in a wide, muddy stream. The hungry animal wished it could eat all of them. It roared/squeeled, not bothering with a stealthy approach.
Then it broke into a sprint and soon had an unlucky calf in its jaws, it's hot blood still pumping from its neck in spurts. The rest of the herd gradually dispersed. Although one was taken the rest were protected by their sheer numbers. Herd/swarm behavior evolved relatively quickly in the animal world because, at least for the majority, it works. Most of the animals worried little about being taken by predators and just went on with their lives. Someday it may be their turn, but the odds were against it.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Thinking about this for a few seconds and I've come to a conclusion... what are the odds that said forensics experts actually just started sharing out, hell even fully downloaded the popular movies and just IP logged all traffic... I say very high to yep that's exactly what they did. Solution... VPNs or a complete rethink to the P2P protocols using something like the old FSP (File Slip Protocol) and writing in something that trashes/obfuscates the destination and origin IPs. However I digress. The real question is... if they are using this technique to "NAB" the offenders... then they are offending themselves. Makes for interesting thought.
Interesting.
I didn't add anything to the meaning. In fact, there's nothing I said, above, which is not either explicitly mentioned in the copyright act, or else otherwise tautologically true.
I also didn't mention the word "media", so I'm unsure why you would expect me to define it for you.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I think that all y'all should read through the actual copyright law, or at least, check out Michael Geist's blog .
The max fine is 5000 canukshekels for all infringements prior to the lawsuit, but the minimum fine is $100, and the law contains language advising the courts to consider stuff like the impact of the fine on the defendant, and so on. Mr. Geist suggests that it might not be worthwhile for the MAFIAA and so forth to go to court only to be awarded $100 in damages.
As well, the rulings of that Federal Court in Montreal ordering the ISPs to hand over the names of subscribers (there was another case about 18 months ago in the same court, I believe) have never been appealed; eventually, that will wind up in the Supreme Court.
Doh.
See http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6710/125/
davecb@spamcop.net
It's a better product.
So why don't media companies adopt a certificate-authenticated rss feed. This would work really well for television shows as well as for new DVD releases, whatever. If this existed, I'd cancel my DirecTV subscription today and go straight to the content providers.
Charge $5/month per feed.
The rss feed can then point to torrents, or the networks's own resources (if they can handle the traffic ... remember, we don't want to spend 3 hours downloading a 20 minute TV episode).
Seems the best way to go to me. But what do I know. I'd pay this, as would many others. Especially if it was reliable and consistently labelled, and DRM FREE.
The more people will realise "Hey, wait a second, screw those assholes! I don't have to put up with this. I can say no to their products!"
And when enough shit happens, your Average Joe will go free culture (aka Creative Commons) ON YO ASS, YO!
Either they stop chasing their customers, or they die trying to squeeze their customers every penny they got.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
Date in memory is not a permanent storage, nor is data stored on disk. Furthermore, a string of binary bits which have been encoded and recoded are significantly different than the original.
Data on disk is considered permanent storage.
The copy doesn't have to be permanent to be in violation of copyright law.
A copy doesn't have to be identical to be a violation of copyright law. You can't legally copy the Harry Potter books by changing the font, a single word, etc.
It's time to open my wireless router, and give my kids access to the internet; I need plausible deniability.
Knowingly possessing content that is infringing on copyright,. even if somebody else had to break the law to make it, can still have legal ramifications for you. The consequences are rarely as severe as copyright infringement, however... but it can include having your computer equipment confiscated, at your expense. So no.... not a good defense. It's about on par with the defense that knowingly trying to pass off a counterfeit bill as genuine shouldn't result in charges against you because you didn't make the counterfeit.
Your next-to-best defense would be to claim you didn't know it was infringing... although the circumstances surrounding how and where you got it, as well as your own circumstances and likelihood that you could have realized its true nature would probably be weighed in context of such a claim, so it's certainly not automatic that they'd believe it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'