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Why Copyright Trolling In Canada Doesn't Pay
An anonymous reader writes "In the aftermath of the Canadian
file sharing decision involving Voltage Pictures that includes
an order to disclose thousands of subscriber names, the big question
is what comes next. Michael Geist examines
the law and economics behind file sharing litigation in Canada
and concludes that copyright trolling doesn't pay as the economics
of suing thousands of Canadians for downloading a movie for personal
purposes is likely to lead to hundreds of thousands in losses for
rights holders."
A studio enforcing their copyright against personal-use downloads might be a somewhat crappy and ill-advised practice, but it's not "trolling". To me if you were going to call something "copyright trolling" it would be more like using copyright letters to silence people, aka SLAPP, not using copyright the way it was intended, to prevent people other than the owner from making copies of the entire media as a substitute to buying it from the media holder.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Sure you do. And when those damages amount to $20, and your legal costs amount to a few thousand, it's just not profitable as a business model, which is what it is used as in the states.
wasn't this to compensate media companies for data copying?
why pay a blank media tax and also restrict what they do online, re: copying?
look, if you start out assuming I'm guilty and force a penalty fee on me, I see no reason to not make the best of it and copy as much as I can, just to make USE of the money you forced out of me.
canada: you used to be cool. what happened?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
It's also important to recognize that it's only profitable in the US because here, copyright laws haven't been updated to account for widespread personal copyright infringement. They were written with the intent of shutting down direct piracy for profit: copying a movie to thousands of tapes and reselling them for profit. That's why the penalty is so severe. Since the law doesn't qualify piracy, however, everything qualifies for this penalty. That's why jumping on a torrent for a movie can get you a fine for $250,000 and five years in prison, but walking out of Target with half a dozen games, CDs, or movies only gets you (in my state) up to a $500 fine and 3 months in jail.
The punishment here so grossly exceeds the severity of the crime, it's actually laughable.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Personally I find I don't have much of need to pirate content now that I have Netflix. Sure there's some movies that aren't available, but I'm not the kind of person that just "has to" watch a specific movie. If a movie isn't available for agreeable terms, then I just simply won't watch it. If there's a movie that I really want to see and it isn't avaialble on Netflix, I can go to the theatre, rent it from iTunes/Play/Cable Company/etc, or even buy the DVD.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Not only that, but suing for $20 isn't going to be a threat to someone. Saying "if you don't settle with us for $3,000 and signing a one-sided statement saying you are a dirty, stinking pirate then we'll sue you for $10,000,000" is a threat that would be unsettling for most people. In the case of the former, you could fight it and the music companies would need to pay for thousands of lawsuits. In the case of the latter, people get scared (rightfully so since fighting a multi-million dollar lawsuit is scary business) and wind up settling. This means that the music industry doesn't need to pay massive legal fees and can make an example out of anyone foolish enough to take them on.
If personal copyright infringement (as opposed to pressing and selling DVDs) was limited to some reasonable multiple of the actual market cost of the item, copyright law could be used as intended (to fight said DVD press operations) and not to bankrupt home users based solely on an IP address in a list.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
They probably know. It's not about money (they've been getting record profits), it's about control.
That's the whole point ... damages are negligible. They shouldn't be able to sue for thousands because you skipped paying them 25 cents in royalties. The law in Canada is based on fairness (doesn't always work out that way, but it's based on that).
And yet the content companies act as though Netflix is Public Enemy #2 (right after pirates). They seem to think that putting their content on Netflix will kill their ability to make tons of money off of the content by selling it to customers multiple times. This might be true to an extent, but the more content they make available via Netflix (and other, similar services), the less incentive people have to pirate. Yes, there will always be people who pirate. You could offer movies in a DRM-Free format for $1 each and some people would insist on pirating it instead. My advice to the content companies would be to forget about those people. They aren't potential customers. However, the guy who wants to watch Game of Thrones online, is willing to pay money for it, but finds that piracy is the easier (or only) option is a potential customer that you lose by not making your content readily available.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Apparently I'm actually one of the IP addresses named in the original suit. Funny thing is, I don't know, nor have I downloaded any of Voltage's list of crappy films. They actually have 'The Hurt Locker' (which I haven't seen) in their list but the rest are pretty much B movies. What's even more funny is that the time during which I was alleged to have downloaded some of their stuff was the same time I was in Europe on a two week vacation. There were people looking in on our house and we also have neighbors and such who use our wifi so certainly others might have downloaded movies but not me.
A fun fact about Canadian jurisprudence is that typically the loser pays court costs so if they DO try to take me to court, I think I might exhaust ever single possible legal argument, drag the whole thing out as long as I can before dropping that bombshell. I'm pretty sure that being on the other side of the Atlantic in the middle of the Adriatic on a cruise ship with no internet access proves that I didn't download anything... If I can cost Voltage a fortune in legal fees then it will be a good day.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Canada just changed the law. There is a massive distinction between copyright infringement for commercial and non-commercial purposes. In Canada, the penalties are still massive if you're profiting off of someone's copyright.
Copyright infringement for non-commercial purposes have a low fixed cap.
Mind you, you would have known this if you actually followed the updating of the Canadian copyright law.
I think most people pirate because its easier to click a torrent and down comes the movie, and 10 minutes later you're watching it.
why else is Netflix so popular?
Of course there's always someone who does it because its free, and many more who say they'd pay a small amount but wouldn't when push comes to shove. But the majority would pay a reasonable amount to download, especially if there was cheaper options for, say, older movies so the latest blockbuster could subsidize them.
Available for purchase is one of the reasons I used to use software like Limewire, or, in actuality, not available in my country. Living in Canada, iTunes US and iTunes Canada had different collections of music available for purchase. I could find a song on iTunes US, but not available on iTunes Canada, and because I do live in Canada, I could not easily order it off of iTunes US. If the right's holder decides to maintain the rights to a song, and not allow me to purchase it legally in my own country, then why should you be allowed to sue for copyright infringement, considering you're not making it available for me to purchase legally? I would like to see copyright reform in the sense of by maintaining the copyright in say, a country like Canada, but you're not willing to release the copyrighted material for whatever reason, then say, after a period of 5 years, you must sell or give up the copyright. It never made much sense to me for a rights holder to not allow a consumer to legitimately purchase a song, and then bitch and complain when the frustrated consumer finds other means to acquire the same song that you refused to make available for purchase.
Don't worry, Harper is working hard to fix that
I've got better things to do tonight than die.