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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."

11 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. Suck my pirate dick by atari2600a · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    1. Re:Suck my pirate dick by mark-t · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Suck my pirate dick by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 5, Informative

      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/

    3. Re:Suck my pirate dick by JimCanuck · · Score: 5, Informative


      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.

    4. Re:Suck my pirate dick by JimCanuck · · Score: 5, Informative

      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".

  2. Your kind are not welcome. by Zombie+Ryushu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Obligatory by maz2331 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  4. Illegal activities! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:People should think twice... by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Interesting

    (in other words: what incentive do I have to move my ass in a movie theater chair or buy it on disk?)

    Large civil fines ensure you'll always be bankrupt. Anything over $10,000 can't be discharged in the US; Not sure about Canada, but I suspect a similar limitation. Any significant assets you own will be seized. You won't be able to own a car worth more than a few grand, you'll never own a house; You'll be renting forever. Your wages will be garnished to ensure you are never able to acquire anything of value, or pay for your own health insurance (thank god you live in canada!). You will never receive another tax refund. Certain career choices will be unavailable to you, including anything in the government that requires a security clearance, work in the finance industry, or anything involving the handling of money or "crimes of trust." You may be denied a passport or visa, and will likely be unable to immigrate to any other country due to your debt (believe it or not, your credit report does matter when it comes to naturalization, just like any trouble with the law, even civil law). You will be summoned to court on a very regular basis to detail your financial situation to your debtors (the entertainment companies), and should you fail to show for any reason including being in a coma in a hospital, a bench warrant will be issued for your arrest. You will stay in jail for weeks to months until a hearing can be rescheduled. You will likely lose your job many times over the course of your life, and custody of your kids (if you have any).

    So there's your incentive. Now, that said, it wouldn't be a fair analysis without telling you what your odds of being caught, prosecuted, and a judgement placed against you are. File sharing is one of the most popular and widespread online activities there is, and the legal system can only process so many cases per month. It will take many years to decades of this kind of enforcement activity before your lifetime risk of being hauled into court leave the single digit percentages.

    As for me: I don't negotiate with terrorists; And terror is the weapon of choice for these people. Whether you do it with a bomb or a pen isn't relevant. They could make the penalty 30 years in the electric chair and it wouldn't change my behavior. But I'm not a normal person... normal people cave like a house of cards. It's your choice... but mine is to download, share, and annoy the hell out of them.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  6. Ok, enoughs enough... by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. A bit of advice for our friends to the North by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.