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Canadian Copyright Notice-and-Notice System: Citing False Legal information
An anonymous reader writes Canada's new copyright
notice-and-notice system has been in place for less than a
week, but rights holders are already exploiting a loophole to send
demands for payment citing false legal information. Earlier this
week, a Canadian
ISP forwarded to Michael Geist a sample notice it received
from Rightscorp on behalf of BMG. The notice falsely warns that the
recipient could be liable for up to $150,000 per infringement when
the reality is that Canadian law caps liability for non-commercial
infringement at $5,000 for all infringements. The notice also warns
that the user's Internet service could be suspended, yet there is no
such provision under Canadian law. In a nutshell, Rightscorp and BMG
are using the notice-and-notice system to require ISPs to send
threats and misstatements of Canadian law in an effort to extract
payments based on unproven infringement allegations.
It may be illegal to lie for gain, particularly for a corporation, depending on the precise details of the case. They're opening themselves up to criminal charges, not to mention civil lawsuits.
It is not illegal to lie — except under oath.
It is, however, illegal to infringe on copyrights. If the legal lying helps reduce the illegal infringement, I'm fine with it.
But it won't, of course, because the illegal infringers will see the lies and use that to justify their infringement.
What would make a difference is to make legal content available more widely and without restriction. Why should I "buy" a DRM movie download that I can only watch on a designated "approved" device and only as long as the company I "bought" it from is still in business when it's even easier to download it from a torrent, and then I have full use of it on any device forever.
Generally when I want to buy a movie, I'll just buy a used DVD and rip it myself though sometimes if it's something I want to watch right away I'll torrent it and buy it at the same time so I can watch the movie immediately. I believe I'm violating the law in both cases despite the fact that I have physical DVD's for all of my movies.
If I could buy a non-DRM'ed "official" movie in digital form for a reasonable price, I'd rather do that since I'd be guaranteed a high quality copy in my language (that sure beats waiting 3 hours for a torrent to download only to find out that the audio is in Mandarin with no subtitles), but there's no way to do so.