Canadian Court Tries to Dampen Copyright Trolls In P2P Lawsuits

An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian federal court has released its much-anticipated decision in Voltage Pictures v. Does, a case involving demands that TekSavvy, a leading independent ISP, disclose the identities of roughly 2,000 subscribers alleged to have downloaded movies without authorization. Michael Geist notes that the court was sensitive to the copyright troll concern, noting that 'given the issues in play the answers require a delicate balancing of privacy rights versus the rights of copyright holders. This is especially so in the context of modern day technology and users of the Internet.' In order to strike the balance, the court required full court approval of the content of any demand letters and bold warnings that no court had found a recipient liable for any damages."

Comments

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

A court with a shred of common sense regarding patent/copyright law...

Erm, what?

[Notabadguy]

Could someone translate that crappy summary into English for me?

Re:Erm, what?

[davecb]

The case management judge will make sure the suit goes the way the law allows, without the opportunity to extort settlements. The does will have the chance to defend themselves, and the troll will have to spend cubic yards of money to make a case, or give up and go home.

I expect one attempt to proceed to see if they can frighten someone into pleading guilty, but if the does band together, a roughly 0% chance of success for the troll, whether or not any individual doe is arguably guilty.

--dave
A nerd, not a lawyer

Re:Erm, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

In short: The court must approve the contents of a copyright claim letter before it can be sent AND it must come with a warning stating that no court has ever convicted anyone of copyright charges.

Re:Erm, what?

[Mashiki]

Summery:
* Teksavvy must reveal identity of alleged infringers.

* TSI gets all legal costs, admin costs & disbursements.
** TSI gets paid before Voltage sees even a single name. No money, no names.**

* Any/all letters from Voltage MUST be approved by both the Court & CIPPIC, so as not to provide false information to defendants, and coerce them into settlements.
* Letter will include a statement that 'no Court has yet found any recipient of the letter liable for infringement and that recipicies should [seek] legal assistance".
* Every letter to an alleged infringer will get a copy of the judge's order.
* Any subscriber can request a full copy of the order, for which the Plaintiff (Voltage) must pay for.

* Voltage will only receive Name & Address attached to specific IP addresses of the alleged infringers, and nothing more.
* There will be a special Judge assigned to this case, and will 'monitor, as necessary, the conduct of Voltage in its dealings with the alleged infringers."

* If Voltage splits a subscriber out of the herd (so to say), the special judge will keep hold of the new case.

* Voltage cannot make statements to the media, releasing defendant names or addresses.

Re:Erm, what?

[FuzzNugget]

I already did in my submission of this article:
http://slashdot.org/firehose.p...

1. Any "demand letters" sent out must be reviewed and approved by the case management judge.

2. Letters must include a copy of the court order and clearly state, in bold text, that no court ruling has established liability for payment or damages by the recipient.

3. TekSavvy may only disclose subscribers' names and addresses.

4. Voltage Pictures must pay Teksavvy's legal costs before the release of subscriber details.

5. Any further action brought against subscribers must be case managed.

6. Subscriber information must be kept confidential and not disclosed to the general public, the media or anyone not directly relevant to the case.

Re:Erm, what?

[Mashiki]

For those interested here's the CIPPIC information.

Re:Erm, what?

[noh8rz10]

The does will have the chance to defend themselves, and the troll will have to spend cubic yards of money to make a case, or give up and go home.

An evocative image, so I was driven to do the math. It's not necessarily a lot of money! A cubic yard of US pennies is worth USD $5233.09. I'm assuming you stack them in rolls so they're touching triangularly like bowling pins, not square like beer bottles. You can squeeze in ~16% more this way. Note this has a volume of 1 cubic yard, but wouldn't be exactly cubical.

That's only part of the story.

[Yaztromo]

In addition, the court also found that Voltage Pictures has to pay TekSavvy for all costs associated with gathering the data, and that they'll be limited to $5k in damages per person found to infringe.

May sanity reign!

Yaz

Re:That's only part of the story.

[Notabadguy]

I particularly like the part where the demand letter to subscribers will include a copy of the court order and "clearly state in bold type that no court has yet made a determination that such subscriber has infringed or is liable in any way for payment of damages."

No pulling the wool over peoples' eyes. I still don't get the summary though.

Re:That's only part of the story.

[Yaztromo]

$5000 per infringer (not per infringement) is the maximum. The minimum is $100, and I've heard word that the court is more likely to impose the minimum. The plaintiff either has to prove actual damages, or can apply for statutory damages, between $100 - $5000 at the judges discretion. The copyright act stipulates that the judge needs to consider whether the infringement was for non-commercial purposes, whether it was for private purposes, and whether it would constitute hardship for the defendant to pay.

Yaz

Re:That's only part of the story.

[JMJimmy]

In Canada the loser generally pays fees so it's still viable, just delays when they get their money. Many are just in it for the quick buck (just like movies, first 45 days of release are where the money is - they have little interest in the long tail) but big studios may see this as a long term cashcow.

Improper purposes (:-))

[davecb]

"there is some evidence that Voltage has been engaged in litigation which may have an improper purposes".

And he assigned a case management judge to supervise in concert with the interveners. Polite, Canadian, and organized so that an honest suit would go forwards, but a troll would find themselves caught between making a loss or committing contempt of court.

Re:Improper purposes (:-))

[dakohli]

Well stated, from Voltage's point of view

But of course, behaving like a "good-faith plaintiff" does not fit in with the revenue model. The whole original plan was to try and scare people into settling without going into a courtroom. Because, as soon as you get in the courtroom, there are Judges and sometimes Juries who you can never completely control. Costs also increase. So, you pick a test case you think you can win, prosecute the shit out of that one, even though you know you'll never get any real money, the judgement is the prise. Keep it really high, so that when you get your next batch of infringers you can threaten them with complete destruction. That way, more people will be inclined to settle without you every having to go back in the Courtroom again.

Of course, the Canadian rules have broken this model. Now, they have to pay for the list of names. They will have to pay to bring someone in to actually sue to make the point, and determine how the Canadian Courts are actually going to award damages. With a max infringement level of $5000, this is going to be close. Even if they are awarded some court costs, there will be few big payoff days. I suspect they are hoping that one of the secret treaties (TPP maybe) will force the Canadians to change the rules and come back to a more US style of play, and actions like this will be more placeholders to "prove" that litigation like this is truly important.

Re:Improper purposes (:-))

[davecb]

I depend critically on copyright to protect my book income, and am a good-faith plaintiff (via my publisher), but we do not have a credible reason to go after people who download individual copies. In fact, we make copies of "Using Samba (O'Reilly) available with every copy of the samba program.

The people I worry about are professional crooks, who print pallet-loads of the book and sell them cheap. Ditto unauthorized translators, because I don't get royalties for massive quantities of books. Historically, publishers like mine have been able to use the courts in their traditional form and file individual suits to stop unauthorized printings.

To get value from grandma (assuming she's a sysadmin grandma) we make the book available on-line, as part of a subscription service. This allows us to benefit from her just wanting to refer to it for a few days, or wanting to print out the section from Chapter 3 on setting up XP. She knows she can find it in the samba download, but it's easier to spend a few dollars and save the time. Just like it's worth the price of a professionally-printed book that she can make notes in, put yelow stickes on and read in the bathtub.

Class actions are a relatively new development, and were originally permitted so as to allow large numbers of individual plaintiffs to band together to sue a single malefactor. Allowing a single plaintiff to sue very large numbers of possible malefactors is unusual. The courts are suspicious of it, and wonder if it is legitimate to sue more than one grandma for $8,000, or even $100, for a blue-ray that costs $8.00 Canadian on Amazon (down from $20.99)

The balance between an honest plaintiff and one engaging in "speculative invoicing" is the subject of learned debate amoung the legal profession in Canada: for a non-learned discussion, see http://www.slaw.ca/2013/01/16/... I had the honour of editing this GTALUG submission to the larger debate.

So, to answer your question, I'm not comfortable asking Grandma for any money after the fact. I want her to go to Amazon, pay $8.00 up front and stream a legitimate copy of the movie. If I find a publisher making it available for $2.00 who isn't paying me royalties, I'll sue them.

Let me guess

[the eric conspiracy]

This gets Canada back on the Copyright Shit List?

So what does it take for a Merican to get Canadian citizenship anyway?