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Canada Creates Cap On Liability For File Sharing Lawsuits
An anonymous reader writes "Over the past couple of days, there have been reports
about the return of file sharing lawsuits to Canada, with fears that
thousands of Canadians could be targeted. While it is possible that
many will receive demand letters, Michael Geist has posted a
detailed primer on liability in Canada that notes that recent
changes to Canadian copyright law limit liability in non-commercial
cases to a maximum of $5,000 for all infringement claims. In fact,
it is likely that a court would award far less — perhaps as little
as $100 — if the case went to court as even the government's
FAQ on the recent copyright reform bill provided assurances
that Canadians 'will not face disproportionate penalties for minor
infringements of copyright by distinguishing between commercial and
non-commercial infringement.'"
Yet another reason to consider moving to Canada...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#Canada
If I bought a spindle of DVDs, I should not be able to be sued.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
With high priced music and high risk even associating with use of purchased music, I have been out of the market since this started. Maybe customers will return in Canada. This is worth watching. I don't buy music because I can't use it for slideshows at weddings, dance party (public performance), etc. It is all restricted to private home use only. Really puts it in the buggy whip centrury. All the new internet uses are prohibited. Why purchase it?
The truth shall set you free!
Prime Minister
This will be a relief for all those who will fall victim to the upcoming "crackdown" mentioned on slashdot in this article: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/11/27/230215/canada-prepares-for-crackdown-on-bittorrent-movie-pirates From my point of view it's just a typical money grab move, first lower the "fines" to acceptable levels so no major backlash from public will be involved, then you just go big game hunting (as in big $$).
Canada....would you mind shipping all this reason and common sense down south to the USA?
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
We may have more expensive gas, harsher winters, less specials on Black Friday, but heck, at least we've got common sense.
> notes that recent changes to Canadian copyright law limit liability
> in non-commercial cases to a maximum of $5,000 for all infringement claims.
But that is $5000 in Canadian dollars. How much is that in human dollars?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Does this means $5000 per lawsuit, or $5000 per person forever.
Because if it is just per lawsuit, than they could just sue you separately for every infringement. And if you pirate one song, you have likely pirated 5000.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
* provide legal protection for businesses that choose to use technological protection measures or "digital locks" to protect their work as part of their business models; and,
* give consumers the ability to, among other things, record their favourite TV shows for later viewing, transfer music from a CD to a digital device, and create a mash-up to post via social media.
In other words, stronger protections for (1) to take away (2). They explcitly repeat it under the consumer benefits as "if they are doing so for their private use and have not broken a digital lock." and under concerns of creators as "Consumers will not be able to break a digital lock to exercise these exceptions.". They're also going to hit on all sorts of "enablers" of copyright infringement, but don't worry because they say "Search engines and ISPs will be unaffected by this provision, to the extent that they act as true intermediaries." My guess is that there's no true Scotsman. But sure they capped the non-commercial infringement to $5k instead of $20k now. By the way, did anyone check if they use the US definition of "commercial" where if it has a large enough sticker value they count it as commercial anyway even if you make no money on it?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There has to be something in place to prevent people from outright stealing of music and movies. Artists deserve to be compensated for their work. But this American notion of massive awards to greedy Hollywood studios has got to stop. Is it really fair to bankrupt people because they shared some songs? I never stole any songs but I am so disgusted with the whole thing that I have basically stopped buying music all together. It's mostly internet radio for me these days. I won't give those greedy bastards a nickel.
i say unto you hollystupid go fuckin try to sue me i guarantee you the court cost will be more then 5 grand
and ill hshare every whay i know how to make you pay in court
NOT to mention preying on us disabled well the msot maybe 5 grand but at once you can only get 50$ a month so all those lawyers fees you better want to wait for it.
companies that pursue drm are really after control they can never have. GOG.com sold the Witcher 2 completely drm free on their site when it was released, but the version posted by pirates hours after its release was a cracked drm version bought in a store. Companies should focus on making their Customers happy instead of chasing people that are not going to buy their product even if there is no other way to get it.
Well, DUH!
If there's nobody to bribe politicians, they will do what gets them votes, after all, then this is their main income. They are just like any whores, they follow the money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Go for a walk in the park and talk to people instead of downloading Transformers VII*.
* that's the one with the credits that explode, and then that explosion explodes into two smaller explosions.
I approve any measure designed to restrain judgments to something fair and reasonable.
However, there are more costs to a lawsuit than the judgment.
First, a lawsuit is a public event in which the participants are publicly identified. That's on your "Google record" for life.
Next, it's a really stressful event. I think most people would rather perform surgery on themselves than go through a lawsuit.
Finally, it's going to affect how people respond to you while it's going on. Someone who's currently in litigation has a stigma around them.
So while this is a good thing in part, it may be addressing the smallest part of the actual cost of the lawsuit.
Our politicians are to corrupt, too non-caring, and too much in the pocket of Hollywood and other Corporations to enact legislation like this. The only way this will happen in the US is if someone takes their case to the Supreme Court and the Judges vote against these outrageous fines. Even then I wouldn't ever expect the max fine to be anywhere close to $5000, more like $50-$100,000.00 instead of the millions Hollywood now gets for 24 songs or a few movie titles.
If Canada agrees to the same extradition agreements like the UK has with the US, the IRAA/MPAA Gestapo might prefer to persue criminal prosecution as opposed to civil litigation. Never mind that the laws aren't in place, they can lobby efficiently to get those laws in place relatively quickly.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/11/28/1334200/tvshack-founder-signs-deal-avoiding-extradition?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
If people use torrents to "record their favourite TV shows for later viewing", the law seem to punish you.
With Cable boxes making it harder if not impossible to do this, the law is not helping consumers.
It reminds me of a line from The Matrix:
"How are you going to speak Mr. Anderson, when you have....no mouth?"
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Looks nice on paper, but what is the definition of "commercial"? For-profit or "damage being high enough" (with damage being and arbitrary number pulled out of the plaintiff's rear end)?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe in the FAQ, but not in the bill. While the digital lock bits are fairly terrible, there are some other benefits of the bill. From Geist's blog:
Canadians can also take greater advantage of fair dealing, which allows users to make use of excerpts or other portions of copyright works without the need for permission or payment. The scope of fair dealing has been expanded with the addition of three new purposes: education, satire, and parody.
Fair dealing now covers eight purposes (research, private study, news reporting, criticism, and review comprise the other five). When combined with the Supreme Court of Canada's recent decisions that emphasized the importance of fair dealing as users' rights, the law now features considerable flexibility that allows Canadians to make greater use of works without prior permission or fear of liability.
The law also includes a unique user generated content provision that establishes a legal safe harbour for creators of non-commercial user generated content such as remixed music, mashup videos, or home movies with commercial music in the background. The provision is often referred to as the "YouTube exception", though it is not limited to videos.
Re: the digital locks, it's incredibly stupid to the point where the minister who championed the law actually came out and said that odds are nobody would actually go after most people for doing that anyway.
The tools to break digital locks are still legal in Canada, after all. It's stupid that the restriction legally exists, but for that matter I'm pretty sure videotaping TV shows on cassette, which EVERYBODY did, was technically illegal until this latest copyright law passed. So keep that in mind.
Good luck to you, Canadians. Here's hoping your judges are far less "activist" than our own.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
See what can happen when your country has sensible election and political campaign finance laws.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Holy shit they had some commonsense for a change!
"distinguishing between commercial and non-commercial infringement."
There were plenty of corporations involved. It's not illegal to rip a DVD to put in on your phone, for example. In general, it's illegal to break electronic locks.
The tools to break digital locks are still legal in Canada, after all. It's stupid that the restriction legally exists, but for that matter I'm pretty sure videotaping TV shows on cassette, which EVERYBODY did, was technically illegal until this latest copyright law passed. So keep that in mind.
It was never illegal. Canadian copyright law has said that making a personal copy of copyrighted material has been legal since before VCR's and cassette recorders existed to begin with. What's illegal in Canada, until quite recently, is "making available". Distribution. If you were to use a duplicator/editor to remove the commercials and then hand out copies of the recording at the local flea market, then you'd be up the creek for copyright infringement, but never if you were to simply record a broadcast for personal use.
The current law, C-11, changed that, but it's still nowhere near as onerous as US laws on the matter.
I honestly don't see how stealing a blu-ray quality rip of a movie via torrent is any different from stealing a blu-ray from a store.
Sure, some might say that they use torrents of movies to evaluate whether or not they like the product, and if they don't like it they won't buy the product, but they still have possession of the product regardless. That's like stealing a bag of popcorn, eating it, and then saying you don't like it so you won't pay for it.
Really, the only things I can imagine that companies would WANT to have torrented are things that have addictive properties and will guarantee sales of some sort in the future, like slot machine games, gay pornography, or copies of Windows.
... I'm pretty sure videotaping TV shows on cassette, which EVERYBODY did, was technically illegal until this latest copyright law passed. So keep that in mind.
If it's for personal use then it's called "time shifting" and it's legal in Canada. If it was illegal then every cable company that sells/rents a PVR is breaking the law.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
In Canada it's illegal for a business to donate money to a politician.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
"How much is that in human dollars?"
Canadians, like most of the other people in the world, think they are human. Are you implying that they aren't?
Oh wait ... I just noticed your sig. Never mind.
You should have seen the proposed copyright laws dating back to the Liberal government of the early 2000s. RIAA and MPAA were pushing really hard for a super-DMCA, and were still putting on the pressure over the last few years. But every once in a while, making a helluva lot of noise can accomplish something. I wrote my MP three letters over the last five years detailing out how the media industry-backed legislation would significantly harm consumers, remove choice and open up even minor infringement to destructive lawsuits.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
True, provided you break no digital lock to do this
So you can't take a snippet of video from a DVD or Blu-Ray or other stream and use it for your fair dealing, which makes the exception fairly pointless.
So yes, the rights are enshrined in law. However, the digital lock part overrides that law - so even if you wanted to share a 30 second video, if it involves breaking a digital lock (again, no mention how "weak" the lock has to be, like DVDs), you can't do it.
So yeah, they're very generous. It's just you can't do anything with them because of the locks.
I suppose we can use the analog hole still as selective availability is still not around, yet.
And would connecting a device that converts protected content to unprotected format be considered a digital lock? I mean, if I take my blu-ray player, connect it via HDMI (&HDCP) to an HDFury (HDMI (with or without HDCP) to analog component video converter) and record that using a component video digitizer (e.g. Hauppage HD-PVR), did I break a lock?
This latest round of "possible crackdown" stories _is_ the story itself -- frighten the masses into obedience. The legal system can only deal with a limited number of objectionable people. The rest have to be frightened/corralled into compliance.
With some norms, most people are happy to comply because they see the reason and rationale for it. Even if they don't like someone, most are unlikely to attack or steal from them because someone else is likely to do the same to them. The law can [barely] deal with the exceptions. When exceptions become common, as in the US alcohol prohibilition, and drug prohibition [borderline], the law fails in spectacular and mission-jeopardizing manner [discretion/corruption].
With something as ephemeral and esoteric as copyright monopoly grants, it is very unclear who is being harmed and by how much. Sure, it is easy to see harm from unauthorized identical copies being sold at retail. But far less obvious for downloading a TV episode/song that was broadcast yesterday.
So the monopoly grant-holders have to frighten everyone. Sometimes by head-on-pike examples.
"If there's nobody to bribe politicians"
Or more simply, implement a completely transparent registry of all lobbyists, who they *really* represent, and all their meetings:
https://ocl-cal.gc.ca/eic/site/012.nsf/eng/home
Go ahead and try to bribe, or strong-arm. Someone *will* notice. There's people who's only job is to watch the list and report on it.
In general, damages in Canada are limited to real damage. ie: your fender is damaged in a car accident then it is strictly body shop charges (assuming no injury).
A record company would have to show real loss which is typically the actual lost sale and not some imaginary extension to what might have happened. Criminal fines are different though but it is fairly well established that people are fined somewhat proportionate to the crime.
In other words, there is nothing new here with regards to not allowing disproportionate punishment.
The max liability amount is $5000 for infringment claimes EXCEPT hockey. That amount reaches into six figures.
I can hear Harry saying.... "50 dollars and time served. next case council?"
Karma: Neutered
Theoretically. Elections Canada seems to be engaging in much foot dragging regarding investigating apparent instances of that during the last election involving Dean Del Mastro receiving donations from his cousin's company funneled through employees.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
those poor welfare and disability people the max one can take off a check is 25/month on welfare and 50 on disability so youd have to literally sue everyone at once ot make your payments to a lawyer...
the only people they will go after is you min wage garnishable suckers
What would happen if a publisher decided that they wanted to undermine another publisher's profits on competing works by distributing them for free, under the pretext of "non-commercial infringement"?
In particular, what if they hired somebody to distribute them from his or her home? With nothing to officially trace the reason for the distribution to the company that did this, there'd be no reason to assume commercial infringement, and so the very worst that could happen is a $5,000 fine... evidently, according to what I'm reading here, for *ALL* infringement. This effectively, if I understand this law correctly, allows the person to commit as much "non-commercial" copyright infringement as he or she wants without further penalty.
I wonder how long it will be before they plug that hole?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
We need to stop blaming Corporations for being greedy, as people are greedy by nature. We need to stop blaming Representatives for being greedy, as people are greedy by nature. Most Corporate greed is damaging because of laws written in their favor.
The best way to solve this problem isn't to patch it. We need to get rid of Representatives as we know it. We need random representation. Use statistics, scientific polling, and the general population. Then the Corporations and Special Interests would have to lobby everyone. Which is called marketing. Which I am fine with.
Actually it is. DMCA has a provision stating that it is illegal to circumvent copy protection that controls access to the work. Therefore, it can be argued that ripping a dvd, which removes the embedded DRM, is technically illegal, unless the producer of the work grants the right to do so. As it is also illegal to traffic in software designed to circumvent DRM, on can only come to possess it by theoretically illegal means. Meaning that, in the strictest legal sense, should you copy a dvd to your phone as, say, an avi, without the express approval from the producer of the work, then you have actually broken 1 law and been the procurer of illegal goods. Note, I don't condone DMCA or anti-piracy legislation. I myself believe that piracy is a means of rebellion to the end of capitalistically controlled government implemented sanction against consumers and citizens. Passing laws such as DMCA that limit a legitimate users ability to use the works or products they buy in the means that best suits them is certainly cause for revolution against the institutions that allow for such blatant and through disregard of a citizens right in favor of a businesses profits, in my opinion.
and hten you have to show up ill come by myself and guess what you needing a lawyer means you just spent nearly 3-4 grand
and even if you win 5K
on disability the most you can take form me is 50$ a month
in other words you have to sue a lot of people ot make it worth it and do it class action wise ergo 80 or so to barely break even
and they like targeting the poor and disadvantaged the 50$ rule was placed for this very reason....to not harm the person overtly....
funny how that works...
welfare people its only 25$ so really not worth it
so you get friends pay a guy to get net access on welfare and if he ever gets nailed no one is really out much for ever and 200 months to pay it back is hilarious and the seocnd time you can just add 200 more months and so on ya cant take more ten the 25 or 50
so all the laws in the land cant mess with that...you change this and it will mean heavy handed overpayment rules be changed
and doing that your gonna see an uptake in crime as those not into downloading suddenly get boiinked for more cash then rent wont have a home and thus will steal to make ends meet
so changing that law wont help no one either...
remember the poorest people spend 100% of there incomes in the community
rich people put it in a bank and it don't do anything for you or the nation.
this is why i call hollywood economic terrorists.
I will not comply. I also do not use bittorrent to get my movies and TV shows. I use automated tools like Sick Beard and Couchpotato to do it for me. Strickly speaking, I am only downloading, not "sharing" and as I wasn't the one who broke the digitial locks, I'm also not liable for that "crime" either. The studios can take a flying fuck at a rolling donut for all I care.
TFA is talking about Canada. DMCA is a US law, not Canadian.
To my neighbors north of the 49th, I apologize for Hunter's ignorance of geography.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
And what if the media had DRM?
Can you remove it to make your excerpts?
Sorry man, the word 'not' was meant to be 'now', as in "it's now illegal". I feel bad after you posted that nice long paragraph (even though it is about the uS laws). I beleve there;'s an exclusion in Canada for phones, btw,
Once again, Canada leads with sensibility. Can you hear the rear-ends of the RIAA/MPAA folks puckering up now, at the idea the US might do the same. Not soon enough, IMHO.
I called mine. I don't think he wants to talk to me anymore.
And don't do like Finland where murder/torture/rape fines are orders cheaper than the ones for pirating.
While the max $5k / infraction seems obvious, I'm not sure how to calculate infractions.
For example, let's say I get busted for 2 Disney movies and cracked EA game. Would I be facing max fines of:
- $5k - one trip to court = 1 infraction
-$10k - 1 infraction from Disney, one from EA
-$15k - one for each Disney movie, one from EA
- something else (eg because of the EA crack)
Anyone with insight or experience in the Canadian intepretation?
Can they apply new law to old incidents in Canada? That would be sort of a shocker.
But sure they capped the non-commercial infringement to $5k instead of $20k now
Sir, a bit of clarification is needed here, the old law stated that the cap was 20k per infringment, 5 songs would be a potential maximum of $100k.
The new law has a cap on all infringements to $5k, so it no longer matters if you downloaded 1 song or 300 songs, it is capped at $5k.
Common sense prevails, and this will effectively put a stop to nearly all consumer lawsuits for infringement as it just won't be worth the expenditure any more.
I suspect they will send demanding letters for several thousand dollars, but will end up settling for a few hundred instead.
I think those guys have been hit by massive budget cutbacks like Elections Canada was, to make sure they're ineffective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
However, even at that it amounts to thousands of dollars, not millions or hundreds of millions.
Have you seen the amounts passed around in US politics? Its shameful when you consider that these millions are spent on lining a politician's pockets rather than actually helping the American people.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I wrote in too. In fact, every time I do a vanity search, my comments on Copyright still show up in Google at the government's website.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
... by distinguishing between commercial and non-commercial infringement.
They have to. Non-commercial infringement has zero loss attached to it, despite feeble attempts to do so. You cannot prove that each download represents a lost sale, but you can prove that a significant number of downloads are stuff unavailable for purchase and that a not insignificant number of downloads are made by people completely unwilling (or unable) to pay for their entertainment. All these downloads thus has no lost sale attached and thus no profit loss.
Commercial infringement are where people buy the pirated version instead of the legal version, perhaps to save a bit of money. There's a clear financial loss here and thus it is a completely different thing.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
And to you good sir, I apologies for you being a none understanding dick. While I may have been wrong, there is a decent way to address it instead of assuming my stupidity just to bolster your own ego.