Canadian Piracy Rates Plummet As Industry Points To New Copyright Notice System

An anonymous reader writes: Canada's copyright notice-and-notice system took effect earlier this year, leading to thousands of notifications being forwarded by Internet providers to their subscribers. Since its launch, there have been serious concerns about the use of notices to demand settlements and to shift the costs of enforcement to consumers and Internet providers. Yet reports indicate that piracy rates in Canada have plummeted, with some ISPs seeing a 70% decrease in online infringement.

Comments

Or they're just proxying their connections

[Karmashock]

... I mean... there are some VPNs that are literally free.

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is hilarious that they are so naive that they think rates dropped.
They fuck the industry up, people find a way around it, they fuck it up more, people route around that.
They will NEVER win.

It will get to the point where people will seriously move back to sneakernet methods, aka, literally travelling outside to meet people to share files.
Or mesh networks. They are only pushing people further and further away from control. Instead they could create decent services that don't want to screw you over and rip you off. Yep, never happening.

And they will still not win over that because good luck creating a police state without the majority of the population absolutely shitting on you after having their freedoms taken from them after a lifetime of being free to go about their business without checkpoints everywhere.

You bet your ass people will fight to protect their downloads. This is the internet damn it, people fight over lesser things.
Obviously not the fat sweaty nerd types, they'll likely have a stroke before any of this happens, likely with a penis attachment hanging from them and some anime VN dating game.

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[JMJimmy]

The numbers are based on nothing more than whatever the anti-piracy goons feel like putting out. It comes with the support of Voltage who sees notice and notice as a way to send out their demand letters for free and not face the Canadian court system which has held up their litigation and placed appropriate restrictions on the information.

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[Anonymous Coward]

"They will NEVER win."

You are a fool if you believe that. They have won. You just don't understand what their true goal is.

The real goal is to shift control from the individual citizens and corporations, into the hands of government and mega corporations; in that effort, they were successful.

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[lgw]

It will get to the point where people will seriously move back to sneakernet methods, aka, literally travelling outside to meet people to share files.

This has always been the primary way movies were shared. As the saying goes, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magtape. People exchanging multi-TB drives full of ripped movies accounts for most of the bytes shared, at least according to some /. story we once had. And in some cities there are popular blind drops - where you put your favorite rips on a USB key, go to the niche in the wall in the park, and swap yours for the one that's there - potluck, but I guess its fun to see what you might get at random.

You bet your ass people will fight to protect their downloads. This is the internet damn it, people fight over lesser things.
Obviously not the fat sweaty nerd types, they'll likely have a stroke before any of this happens, likely with a penis attachment hanging from them and some anime VN dating game.

Come now, this will be an online fight, a battle of crypto and steganography, and in a fight like that I'd bet on the fat nerds who really want copies of that next anime VN dating game over the entire NSA!

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[Adriax]

Probably more like 7% reduction in people who pirate. And most of those would be kids who lost their in room PCs when mommy and daddy got the notice.

People don't all pirate the same amount, so changes in infringer numbers don't equate to an identical change in traffic amounts. The industry knows this and uses both interchangeably depending on whichever supports their case the best.
Here, as always, there is little to no context so we don't know the actual effect of the notices. We just have to take them on their word.

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[Merk42]

I think it is hilarious that they are so naive that they think rates dropped. They fuck the industry up, people find a way around it, they fuck it up more, people route around that. They will NEVER win.

True, it is impossible to win against a group of self-entitled individuals who feel they deserve everything for free.

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[Karmashock]

How do you figure that they have more control now than they did before?

You do know the internet started as a government funded initiative right?

If anything, the powerful interests are losing control... not gaining it.

Offer a counter argument. Explain why I am wrong in some sort of rational way that can be interpreted. Simply making these bald statements is not auditable and therefore technically not an argument.

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[penix1]

True, it is impossible to win against a group of self-entitled individuals who feel they deserve everything for free.

You shouldn't talk about copyright holders like that... They are people too...

The point is that a copyright holder doesn't deserve the life+70 or whatever the ever expanding length of copyright is for a work. How is that promoting the science and useful arts? How is that benefiting the public domain which is the sole reason for the existence of copyright in the first place? What other job do you know of where a person can keep getting paid long after they quit the job outside of these government grants of monopoly?

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[Penguinisto]

You do know the internet started as a government funded initiative right?

If anything, the powerful interests are losing control... not gaining it.

I disagree, and one need look no further than Facebook. Most of the political distraction/messaging being passed around positively reeks of being astroturfed by competing mega-interests. Also, consider that the proletariat is too easily distracted, ignorant, and tribal, so getting them to ask the wrong questions means you never have to worry about the answers.

The control is still there and stronger than ever - just that they're now using new methods to do it.

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[Merk42]

OK cool, I made a thing and have $1,023 to spend on a total of 10 years of copyright protection. So I guess people totally wouldn't pirate it that for a decade, right?

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[Karmashock]

As to facebook, it is losing interest not gaining it.

Are certain social media outlets sanitized? Yep. But consider what existed before that for the sorts of people that use face book? They have MORE ability to exchange information with each other than they did before.

Do they have as much as I do or you do? No. But then we are not limited to facebook. We are more comfortable moving through a more democratized cloud of social groups where it is effectively impossible to censor us.

So all things are relative. Do some people operate in more limited communities? Yes. But they're LESS limited than what those same people had before and we have suffered no reduction in our freedoms.

So the over all trend is strongly towards things opening up more because every person in their own context is getting MORE access.

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[Anonymous Coward]

You're either very young or very naive, or a combination of both. If you're an adult, tough, I'd seek help because you're delusional. We're moving towards less freedom, more and more surveillance and a general understanding that we're better off censoring ourselves. Think how many things you can say today that would not only be perceived as "wrong" but actually cause you very serious trouble. One wrong word uttered and you can find yourself unemployable if not the target of the State's rough attention. We're not getting more access, we're getting more surveillance. It's going to get a lot worse.

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

This sounds convincing until you realise that the overwhelming majority of content being shared illegally on-line is less than five years old.

People aren't really ripping Star Wars to protest against long copyright periods. They're ripping Age of Ultron so they can watch it for free.

People aren't downloading cracked versions of Donkey Kong. They're downloading cracked versions of the latest Assassin's Creed.

These things would have been illegal under even the earliest and shortest periods of copyright protection. These are titles that took hundreds of people and millions of dollars of investment to make, and the law effectively requiring people to contribute in return for their copy does promote the useful arts by making such projects financially viable.

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[BoberFett]

Some of us who are against copyright as it exists now might be more amenable to enforcing copyright if it had such a stipulation.

As it stands, the fact that people think everything should be locked up for what is essentially forever, many of us have zero respect for copyright because downloading Steamboat Willy carries exactly the same punishment as downloading a movie released last week.

Don't you agree that's rather ridiculous?

Re:Or they're just proxying their connections

[SuricouRaven]

Fourteen years was the original term, and seems quite reasonable - if a commercial work hasn't brought in enough money in that long, it isn't going to bring in much more with a longer term.

how do they account for alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

i used to download movies. i received several notices from the service provider (comcast) that it's illegal. now i use watchfree.to to stream movies for free. so, some of those people might just be shifting to alternatives and the reduction might be less than 70%.

Re:how do they account for alternatives?

[Technician]

With some services, movies can be captured. Streaming or saving look the same.

Taxes?

[Needs2BeSaid]

I was under the impression that "piracy" was legal in Canada since they tax the hell out of all media related items.

I guess not.

Re:Taxes?

[kcwhitta]

As a Canadian, last I checked it was legal to download here but not to upload (i.e. distribute).

Re:Taxes?

[mark-t]

That "tax" (the actual proper term is a "tariff") is to subsidize private copying, not piracy.

Re:Taxes?

[ArcadeMan]

But there's nothing to subsidize is you're making a private copy of something you've already bought/paid a license for, unless you think I should have to pay for a DVD twice because I keep a ripped copy for a media server?

Re:Taxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

And that tariff was applied to all media regardless of whether it was used for private copying of music.

Burn a cd or dvd with some of your pictures or personal data on it? The tariff was charged on that blank media and given to the recording industry.

And this shit goes all the way back to blank cassette tapes.

Re:Taxes?

[Lumpy]

Yep, a few years ago I used to send a LOT of CDR's and DVDR's to friends in Canada I would trade for Cuban Cigars.

Re:Taxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are thinking of the blank media levy which they still charge and can't decide how to spend (literally they've been keeping the money from that tax since they started it in the 90s)

Cassette tapes? Yup
CD-Rs? Yup
MiniDisc? yup
Hard drives?
Flash Drives?
MP3 Players?

Laws changed around file sharing which made it illegal in most circumstances recently, as well it is illegal to circumvent DRM, so you can legally backup a Blu-Ray as long as you don't violate DRM restrictions (so if it is a movie or TV series or otherwise locked by DRM you can't make a backup).

They get you coming and going

Re:Taxes?

[JaredOfEuropa]

You would think so, and you'd be right. Except that politicians beg (or rather: insist) to differ. Same here in NL, downloading was made illegal but the taxes remained in place. Over here they even renamed it to the "home copy levy". There's a levy on all storage media (hard disks, blank DVDs), which is for "compensating authors and artists for copies made of music and movies from legal sources for private use". And since downloading stuff from the internet is now illegal, this means that this fee is levied solely on CDs and DVDs that you already own. Fuckers.

Re:Taxes?

[dmatos]

Downloading of copyrighted music files is legal in this country, because we pay a tariff on blank media.

However, the tariff only goes to pay for music. Downloading of any other form of copyrighted material is not covered by the tariff. This includes television shows, movies, video games, ebooks, and even audio books.

So you're partially correct, yes. But not totally, and not applicably to what people think of when they talk about downloading these days.

In other news...

[meta-monkey]

"In an unrelated story, VPN services have seen a 3000% increase in Canadian customers."

Re:In other news...

[meta-monkey]

But it's pretty trivial to follow instructions to set up a VPN. So I'm willing to bet a post made the rounds in Canadian "music sharing enthusiast" forums (also high schools, colleges) that read something like:

1) Download a bittorrent client that uses SOCKS v5 (I like Deluge).

2) Go to privateinternetaccess.com and pay them $6.95/month.

3) Go to Preferences in your bittorrent client and fill in the connection information from your VPN account into the SOCKS authentication fields in the "Proxy" tab.

4) Trade, uh, Linux ISO files and COMPLETELY LEGAL THINGS.

Just saying, if somebody gets a notice, they're going to go searching for a way to not get notices, and while "duh VPN" is something techy, it's not a hard script to follow.

Re:In other news...

[SuricouRaven]

I use another approach.
1. Find a friend who pirates a lot too.
2. Swap retroshare keys.
3. Goto 1.

Correction

[wodencafe]

a 70% decrease in [the detection of] online infringement. FTFY.

Alternatives

[phorm]

It doesn't hurt that Canadian Netflix etc has been improving their content, and the cable monopolies recently had to change to a-la-carte packaging for their services as well. There's also seems to be a bit of a dearth of great movies, so maybe there's less to pirate.

Re:Alternatives

[iONiUM]

Also 1/3 of all English-speaking Canadians use US Netflix, so I am sure this is also helping.

I know it's helping for me personally, as the first thing I do when I want to watch something is check Netflix.

Re:Alternatives

[Jason Levine]

The content owners seem to treat Netflix as if it were just a baby step up from piracy, but in fact Netflix (and services like it) are the content owners' best weapon against piracy. Imagine if Netflix were given free reign to stream every TV show over a week old and every movie over a month old (from all content owners). Even if they raised their prices, Netflix would be quicker and easier to use than any pirating software out there. Sure, some people would still pirate, but those people would pirate no matter what. For the rest of the users, you would see a massive drop in piracy.

And yet, content owners keep content off of Netflix and plan on how best to kill off the service.

Re:Alternatives

[MightyMartian]

Piracy really doesn't scare the big studios that much. What does scare them is Netflix becoming the gatekeeper to their products.

Or

[Anonymous Coward]

If they made content cheap and ad-free (Netflix, not Hulu) then not only would detectable piracy go down, but also all piracy would go down, and legitimate purchases would go way up. People aren't opposed to paying a reasonable amount to get what they want. People hate paying too much (fees), or forcibly (ads), or for stuff they don't want (bundling). Why is that so hard to figure out? Oh, right, I forgot about distributors (aka dinosaurs afraid to move on).

Re:We're just getting sneakier....

[Anonymous Coward]

Just don't use public-facing torrents. Talk to your friends, I'm sure one of them knows a way into a decent private tracker. Or just google around and find a good one that opens periodically for signups (though referral-only ones are better :p).

I pirate tv all the time (and other things very occasionally but more often than never) - I've just learned, never download *anything* from piratebay, etc, unless it's majorly super-obscure.

Shifted to PVR or just not watching

[MyNameIsJohn]

I watch roughly the same amount of hours of TV shows/week and go out to see the same amount of movies/year (around 5-7?). The change was I switched from downloading TV shows after they have aired to PVR'ing every series I might want to watch. No more movies are watched, if anything I watch less if I download less. I changed to the PVR instead of downloading because I was worried about exposure to those legal notices and I am too lazy to do a vpn, though I would if I had to cancel my cable

The bottom line is I do not have any extra money for more content through 'legal' means.

I am capped out on entertainment spending and its getting less and less by the year if not month.

If I have extra dollars they will go to new sports equipment, a dinner out, extra food to have friends over...

We DO NOT have any more money to give them, if anything there is less, so they can cut their prices by 10%, I still might cut the cord. These services are the first to be cut in the budget, not the last.

Questionable numbers

[Guspaz]

Bell Canada shows a 70% reduction, and Rogers shows a 15% reduction... and yet they are comparable ISPs of similar size who share the majority of their territory.

Re:Questionable numbers

[Guspaz]

Neither Bell nor Rogers have throttled anything for years. Both abandoned their practices voluntarily after regulatory pressure, and more recent regulation (the ITMP framework) essentially forbids throttling as Bell and Rogers had originally implemented it.

Re:Questionable numbers

[Guspaz]

Notice and notice has only been in effect a few months. Bell and Rogers both stopped throttling in 2012 (although Bell announced they'd stop in very late 2011).

I got one of those..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. and it did give me pause. A bit of researched showed that the max they could sue me for is $5000 and that they would likely not bother. Their best course is to FUD you into a settlement.

What about increase in sales?

[houghi]

So even if people pirate less waht does that mean for the sales numbers?

Did they increase, because people absolutely want the content, regardless?
Did it stay the same, because people who pirate are not willing to pay, no matter what?
Did it decrease, because people use pirate software as a test to see if they like it and now are unable to make a choice?

Re:We're just getting sneakier....

[Guy From V]

VPN sessions are most likely strongly encrypted insulating against any snooping on your connection...any cookies needed for the session are ephemeral keyfiles. Make sure your connection terminates quickly enough if the tunnel is broken and watch for DNS leaking. No logs could betray any data that would be of any use, some VPN companies say they don't keep logs (probably true, don't bet your life) and you can change server/IPs in a couple clicks. If you are paranoid, connect Tor through a VPN tunnel but this can be risky unless you watch what you are doing. Most VPNs are very safe, much safer than not having one at least.

Sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see, the article says that piracy rates have dropped 70% according to "CEG TEK".

Fair enough, so who or what is a "CEG TEK"?

CEG TEK International (formerly Copyright Enforcement Group) is a Los Angeles-based copyright monetization firm. The company also conducts and releases studies about piracy of motion pictures, music, and other forms of digital media.

So, draw your own conclusions.

http://fightcopyrighttrolls.co...

Re:I now just wait a week after a movie is on torr

[future assassin]

When I download lots of old stuff 5.10,20 and etc years I leave upload limit open so people can get it. For anything brand new, I now wait a bit, turn off uploads and download to my hearts content.

Surely that's the wrong metric though

[91degrees]

Piracy may well be down.

Are sales up?

The only reason piracy is illegal is because it affects legitimate sales. If people are not getting media for free, but still aren't buying it (for whatever reason) then this is a net cost to the economy.

Here's my theory

[msobkow]

My theory is that with Crave TV and such coming on the market, people don't need to pirate everything that they used to.

There is also a new IP TV provider in Canada that isn't tied to the internet infrastructure provider. That may have something to do with it as well.

Why content owners don't like Netflix

[rduke15]

The problems content owners have with Netflix could be what I heard from one of them (in Europe):

- They pay very little

- They give absolutely no information about how many viewers watched the content.

For content owners, Netflix is pretty useless. For smaller movies, it may be more expensive to find and package the content to deliver than what Netflix will pay. (It is in fact time consuming to hunt down the movie files at the right framerate in the right encoding, audio matching the framerate in the wanted languages and mix versions (5.1? LtRt?, both?), subtitles in the right format and with times adjusted for variable logos etc.)

Does someone know if Netflix in the US is also so strangely secretive and also pays so little? After all, they do know exactly how many viewers watched what and when, how many interrupted without watching to the end, etc. They just don't share it per movie with the movie's owner (or rather distributor).