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Canadian ISP Fights Back Against Copyright Trolls
An anonymous reader writes "Distributel, an independent Canadian ISP, has fought
back in a file sharing lawsuit by opposing a motion
to disclose the names of subscribers alleged to have engaged in file
sharing. The company did not oppose a similar request in November
2012, but says in court documents filed on Friday that several
factors led to a change in position after it received another
request for more names. Those concerns include evidence of
copyright trolling, privacy issues, and weak evidence of actual
infringement by its subscribers. The decision to fight back points
to mounting ISP frustration in Canada with file sharing lawsuits
that come after the Canadian government sent clear signals that such
actions were unwelcome."
From part 11 of the "Statement of faccts" in that motion :
Now I've seen many of the summaries for a lot of these motions (not one against them 'till now, since most ISPs offer resistance with a wimper) and not once have I seen an ISP actually explain what an IP is with layman-friendly clarity and how fickle a method of identifying a user it is. If this is how everyone treats IP addresses, there really wouldn't be any standing for disclosure of personally identifying information on any user unless law enforcement is already conducting surveillance on that IP.
But that's not what happened here.
They (copyright/troll folks) basically used a piece of software that flagged (apparently) content matching some signature of theirs to a bunch of addresses with no corroborating evidence like which P2P network was being used, if that, pseudonyms (although, I was under the impression most networks don't require them now), protocols or anything remotely grounding their assertion that their copyright was violated.
This is basically a fishing exepedition and this time, the ISP called on it. I don't know what they're normally like or if they offered resistance like this in the past. TFA says they didn't fight a notice back in November 2012. But these guys asking for subscriber info has no standing at all. Kudos to them for standing up to this!
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
Yes, they are trolls.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Nope.
Suing people is big business. It costs more to defend yoruself then to settle and porn companies in particular delight in threatening people with public lawsuits to scare them into settling regardless of evidence.
FTFA:
a notice claiming that subscribers could face up to $20,000 in damages
Considering the law now features a cap of $5,000 for non-commercial statutory damages would this not count as extortion?
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
ping the IP, re-verse dns, and send the drone.
Else, in TOS/AUP, put down, "we will defend our network with machine guns"
No. See TFA.
The decision to fight back points to mounting ISP frustration in Canada with file sharing lawsuits that come after the Canadian government sent clear signals that such actions were unwelcome."
Umm...*whose* actions, exactly? The ISPs? The lawsuit-bringers? The file-sharers? All of the above?
I'm not usually one to harp on poorly-written submissions, but this confuses a major component of the story, at least for those unfamiliar with the current details of domestic Canadian politics.
I don't blame the submitter, however.
I blame Canada! :-P
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
More likely they don't care about the amount of the settlement. What they want is to be able to skip the entire legal process and charge people just on their whim. It's so expensive to go through the courts and more often than not they don't get the results they want - ie the amount of money is so high they have absolutely no hope of ever getting that money
...don't you mean people trying to defend their IP?
One man's "defense" is another man's extortion....
Considering that they lie about the actual damages, and lie about the potential damages, and use questionable 'evidence' to hit people up for the cash, yes they are trolls. Asking for a hair less than it would cost an innocent defendant to go to court is a sure sign as well.
Um, this is Canada, remember?
Our laws, and to some extent our legal and political philosophies, are distinct from other countries, in particular the United States where (so I hear) suing people is a profitable source of business. In Canada it doesn't work that way. The courts tend to drag their feet at the best of times, but especially when they detect a profit motive. It's a bit strange, moral agency arising from ineffectiveness, but there it is.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
It's odd, but they only seem to be targeting the small ISPs. First Teksavvy, and now Distributel. It's odd that they aren't going after Bell or Rogers. Either they figure the little guys won't have the money to hire lawyers to fight (Teksavvy didn't) or there's something more nefarious going on. My theory is that they are in kahootz with the big ISPs who paid them off to either keep quiet, or payed them off to go after the little guys to scare people away from using smaller ISPs.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The US court system is full of feet dragging as well. The profit is made by threatening to sue in order to get a settlement. They won't make money in court, but they can scare would-be defendants into settling for a few grand each in order to not be named as a defendent and to not bear the costs of a court case.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I understand the principle. And I gather that it's effective in the US. Doesn't mean the rest of the world functions in the same way.
I can tell you from having lived and worked in several countries and in several languages that the American mindset is not to be found outside the US. In the same way as most developed nations take universal health care as a given, so there's a general assumption that society's institutions exist to serve society's ends. They don't particularly operate in the service of free enterprise, and most people would be astonished if you were to suggest that they should. That, it seems, is a particularly American position. I'm not judging it as good or bad - it's brought about good outcomes as well as bad ones - and of course I'm not saying that every American takes this position, but it is certainly particular to the US.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Perhaps in the US it is big business. In Canada, the maximum fine (and settlement) is $5000 *total* for any and all works pirated up to the point of punishment, so long as the defendant is an individual and not a corporation. The government has recommended the minimum fine of $100 be used in all but the most egregious repeat cases.
Voltage has already found the cost of acquiring the information on each IP address outstrips the likely amount they will recoup. They're pissed about that already.
People defending their IP become trolls when they start with the millions upon millions of John Doe warrants.
To put things in perspective, when a burglar steals my precious (to me) thingamabob, it doesn't give me the right to perform an armed door-to-door search of my neighborhood, and my hometown. Nor does it give me the right to expand that search to neighboring towns, if I don't discover my thingamabob in my own hometown.
Further, the court cases make many of those "defenders" into trolls. In perspective, my precious thingamabob is only precious to me. Market value of my thingamabob is only ten bucks. You can get one at Wally's World of Whacky Weird Shit brand new for fifteen, and my used thingamabob is depreciated. The ONLY thing that makes it precious is, that it is MINE. So, if/when I discover the thief, comparable behaviour to these "defenders" would be to ask the judge to imprison the thief for life plus sixty years, to be served consecutively.
Jim Baen, of Baen books put things in perspective, when he said that "pirates" are comparable to children stealing penny candy. You don't gun down a child for stealing a piece of bubble gum! At most, you talk to the kid's mommy, and let her know how her little precious behaves when she is not watching.
Defending IP? No, not at all. If I had knowledge that I needed to defend, I'd lock it up, in my head, so that no one could take it from me.
The business model is broken, and a lot of very intelligent people have already made that observation. The people defending the business model are those who lack both intelligence and imagination.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
That's the reason a certain corporation published stories online, then "assigned" the right to "protect" that IP to another company. Then they sued anyone who used even a sentence from the articles as reference. Because they didn't care about settlements, right?
Maybe you're not keeping up with current events?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"And I gather that it's effective in the US. Doesn't mean the rest of the world functions in the same way."
It seems to me that your statements are the underlying premise of TFA. Someone is attempting to manipulate your legal system in a manner similar to what the US tolerates - and the ISP is fighting back!
Two thumbs up!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You know that in at least one of these Canadian cases the "people" trying to defend their IP didn't even ask the ISP to have their customers cease and desist sharing their intellectual property? The ISP offered to do so over a month ago. To date the troll has not acted on that offer. I wonder what a judge would think of that?
To get around the $5000 damage limit they are attmpting to sue for commercial infringement. Why? Likely because the threatening letter to the defendant is a lot scarier. No honor or bona fide attempt to protect anything going on here.
It's even more sleazy and disreputable than that (which is one of the reasons this troll is likely to lose). The letter said "Law A allows up to $20K in damages" and then a little while on, it said "In addition, Law B allows up to $5K in damages". The clear implication is the recipient could be on the hook for twenty-five grand.
The bit they forgot to mention? Law B was actually a modification to law A, reducing the maximum damage award from $20K to $5K. The motion calls this "a clear misrepresentation of the law" - in other words, a lie.
I also like the bit where the ISP says "we cross-referenced their GeoIP info with our records, and we found almost every single one was wrong". Then the ISP says well, they've provided zero information about how they do their investigation, they haven't proved it's accurate. So all we really have to attest to how accurate it is, is all the proof of their ineptitude.
File sharing should occur over a secure connection, such as SSH. End of story.
Some things to consider in Canada:
First, in general, the losing party pays legal costs of the successful party. The amount is usually from 50% to 60% of what the successful party should have paid its lawyers.
Second, foreing plaintiffs may be required to post “security for costs” before they proceed with an action. This is to protect the costs of a successful defendant.
Third, courts are ill-equipped to deal with multiple defendants, especially if there is a likelihood that they may be self-represented. It is diifuclt to see how a court would allow a lawsuit against hundreds of unrelated defendants identified only by IP addresses obtained by a third party (an ISP).
With the new changes in the copyright law, it only takes one case of non-commerical infringement to set damages at $100 for the whole “trolling” enterprise to be a questionable proposition. On the other hand, if the target defendant collecting on judgments in Canada is usually difficult and expensive unless the debtor has real estate. So all that makes the Canadian legal landscape somewhat inhospitable for US-style litigation.
In Distributel's case, it looks like this is the second motion they were served with. They did not oppose the first one and it looks like as a result of the first disclosure, only threatening demand letters were sent. There were no actions before the courts.
Following this case and the Voltage vs. Does case (involving the ISP Teksavvy), reminds me of the UK case of the ACS Law firm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACS:Law) where the lawyers set up loval shell corporations to own the rights (to avoid security for costs likely) and then send around 40,000 misleading letters to customers identified by IP addresses from ISPs not opposing motions for disclosure. The firm collected about a million pounds in several years. The lawyer behind it was eventually suspended because of the misleading demand letters and it seems his case killed any future litigation in the immidiate future. It remans to be seen whether this will play out in Canada.
As usual you (a general you, referring to the kind of people making arguments along the line of yours) base your reasoning on one or more flawed arguments and then expand it way past the litmus test of ridiculousness.
Your first error was to latch onto the word "stealing". It went downhill from there, I'm afraid.
The business model is broken, and a lot of very intelligent people have already made that observation. The people defending the business model are those who lack both intelligence and imagination.
Or have a vested interest in perpetuating and expanding the business model as it now stands.
Fuck you, douchebag.