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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.
Criminal Code of Canada 346(1)
Every one commits extortion who, without reasonable justification or excuse and with intent to obtain anything, by threats, accusations, menaces or violence induces or attempts to induce any person, whether or not he is the person threatened, accused or menaced or to whom violence is shown, to do anything or cause anything to be done.
I thought it was see something, shoot something.
I've already received a notice and my ISP did exactly that. Here's the full text of the message I received:
Hello,
TekSavvy has received what the Copyright Act calls a "notice of claimed infringement". It listed an IP address and time. Our systems indicate that the IP address listed in the notice was likely assigned to your account at the specified time. We are therefore legally required to forward the notice to you. The notice is reproduced, unaltered, below.
First, though, there are some things you should know:
(a) We haven't told the sender who you are. Your privacy is paramount to us. We don't track, or know, what you do. We do know what IP address we assigned to you within the last 30 days. But we don't provide personal information like that to anyone unless a court orders us to -- and we have not done so here. The notice was simply received by us, and we have forwarded it electronically on to you.
(b) We are an intermediary that is required to forward this notice to you. We do not, and cannot, verify its contents or its sender. However, a private party's notice does not mean there has been any legal ruling. Only a court can do that.
(c) It is good practice to make sure you secure your account. Your wireless router should be password-protected; the password should be changed regularly; and those who have the password should maintain good virus protection. Your MyAccount allows you to check your bandwidth usage: do so regularly, and make sure what is happening and what you think is happening line up.
(d) We retain IP address information for 30 days. If your modem has not been powered off during that period, then we may have IP address information going back to the last time you did. In addition to requiring us to forward this notice, the Copyright Act also requires us to retain the records matching the IP address and time to your account for six months. If the people who sent the notice apply to a court, they can require us to hold it for longer.
We have provided some links below. The notice, which we are required to forward unaltered, follows.
Copyright Act (see, especially, sections 41.25-26):
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca...
TekSavvy:
http://teksavvy.com/en/why-tek...
https://myaccount.teksavvy.com...
Automated translation (you may need to copy and paste):
https://translate.google.com/?...
http://www.bing.com/translator...
--- Forwarded Notice of Infringement follows:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Notice ID: XX-XXXXXXXXX
Notice Date: 04 Jan 2015 03:52:22 GMT
TekSavvy Solutions, Inc.
Dear Sir or Madam:
Irdeto USA, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as "Irdeto") swears under penalty of perjury that Paramount Pictures Corporation ("Paramount") has authorized Irdeto to act as its non-exclusive agent for copyright infringement notification. Irdeto's search of the protocol listed below has detected infringements of Paramount's copyright interests on your IP addresses as detailed in the below report.
Irdeto has reasonable good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of in the below report is not authorized by Paramount, its agents, or the law. The information provided herein is accurate to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, this letter is an official notification to effect removal of the detected infringement listed in the below report. The below documentation specifies the exact location of the infringement.
We hereby request that you immediately remove or block access to the infringing material, as specified in the copyright laws, and insure the user refrains from using or sharing with others unauthorized Paramount's materials in the future (see, 17 U.