86-Year Old Grandma Accused of Pirating a Zombie Game (torrentfreak.com)

An 86-year-old woman named Christine McMillan from Ontario, Canada has been accused of downloading a zombie game she's never heard of. She faces $5,000 in potential damages. From a report on TorrentFreak (condensed): McMillan is one of the hundreds of thousands of people who've been accused of copyright infringement under Canada's "notice and notice" regime. Due to a change to Canada's copyright law early last year, ISPs are now required to forward copyright infringement notices to their customers. In the letter received from anti-piracy group Canipre, she's threatened with thousands of dollars in damages, if she doesn't comply. "They didn't tell me how much I owed, they only told me that if I didn't comply, I would be liable for a fine of up to $5,000 and I could pay immediately by entering my credit card number," McMillan told Go Public. At first, McMillan thought she was dealing with spammers but Cogeco, her Internet provider, confirmed that the email with the settlement offer was legitimate. The power of the settlement scheme lies in the uncertainty people face. McMillan is obviously not happy with the notice-and-notice legislation which she brands as "foolish."

Comments

Probably a witch too!

[Anonymous Coward]

BURN HER!

Re:Probably a witch too!

[Archangel Michael]

She responded, "I'm not a witch, I'm your wife!"

Re:Probably a witch too!

[LinuxIsGarbage]

For those not familiar with the "notice and notice" scheme, the ISP is required to forward the notice to the subscriber, but does not identify the subscriber to the copyright holder without a court order.

So these notices can be safely discarded, as it's not worth the Copyright holder's time to pursue a court order for a relatively low maximum cap ($5,000). This low cap also prevents the absurd cases seen in the states where grandmas are taken to court for $2,000,000 for a couple Lady Gaga tracks. These notices "seem to be effective" in reducing piracy, so for now it prevents more draconian measures.

However the copyright holders try to trick subscribers with threatening language in the notice to voluntarily identify themselves, and give them money.

Re:Probably a witch too!

[Tablizer]

That implies they are mutually exclusive. I'd even argue there's a correlation.

Re:Probably a witch too!

[Anonymous Coward]

She doesn't need a lawyer, a legal template reply is already available: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/08/arkell-v-pressdram.html

I'd suggest anyone getting these shakedown letters reply using the above with a suitable anonymized from: address.

Re:Probably a witch too!

[arglebargle_xiv]

Ah, a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomatoes are ripe. They're so perky, I love that.

thought she was dealing with spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

But, she was dealing with scammers

Re:thought she was dealing with spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

I am impressed an 86 year old grandmother had the general tech-awareness to imagine that as a possibility. Older folks were brought up in a time of much more trust, long before the internet was a thing, and it is very often beyond their imagining that there could be so many people intent on defrauding their fellow humans (That is not an indictment of them, it's an indictment of modern society).

Re:thought she was dealing with spammers

[ISoldat53]

I wonder which grand child was using her computer?

Re:thought she was dealing with spammers

[omnichad]

No - the increase in trust is a symptom of aging. Longer ago, there were snake oil salesmen and no FDA. There have always been scammers around.

this is all just a huge misunderstanding.

[nimbius]

The woman question --and this event-- are simply misunderstood by the public at this point. The purpose of copyright law and pre-emptive, out-of-court, undocumented and largely unaccounted settlements is to punish the very prevalent threat of geriatrics who pirate legitimate software from hard working wholesome developers. The unexpected quirk here is that this woman has accidentally disclosed what is largely understood to be nothing short of a protection payment.

Re:Ha it would be funny

[PPH]

86 years old. She's practically living the game.

Actual Source

[Dangerous_Minds]

If anyone is interested, here's the link to the actual story: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Notice-and-Notice

[corychristison]

The law only states the ISP must forward the notices. The ISP are not to hand over customer details or any personal information unless an actual lawsuit is filed and the information is subpoenaed.

Many Canadians do not understand they have zero obligation to respond, and that by responding is how they get your contact information. All they have is a timestamp and an IP address, and that's all they'll ever have if you never respond.

The Federal Government already tightened up the rules once about what the copyright holders can send in their notices. It seems it needs to be looked into again.

Re:Notice-and-Notice

[orient]

I have received once such a notice from my ISP. It started by saying that an entity claiming to be a copyright holder asked them to forward a notice to me and they are obliged by the law to do it. However, the ISP added that my information hasn't been disclosed to the entity and there is no guarantee that everything stated in the notice is true or legal. Then the notice followed, in quotation marks. Basically, my ISP told me to ignore the notice until I hear something from a court. They never tried again.

Sounds like extortion to me

[misnohmer]

Reading the actual notice (http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3199120-Cogeco-Settlement-Letter-Blurred.html) it sounds like plain extortion. Personally I would go to the local provincial or federal authorities, and if they say it's illegal, demand that they press charges for extortion. If on the other hand they say it's legal, I'd consult with a lawyer how anyone can submit such settlement proposals, then offer an online service for anyone to submit such settlement proposals to everyone. ISP are required by law to forward them so this should make for a fun DoS attack. Everyone offering to settle with everyone for any potential copyright notices ought to jam the system up fairly quickly. After all, you never know when people may want to violate copyrights of a cat video someone made, so just in case, collect $5,000 so if and when they do you won't sue them.

She should pay it then take Canipre to court

[future assassin]

for extortion. This is the same Canipre that has no problems pirating other peoples works https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Well I won't feel safe

[rmullig2]

Until she is behind bars.

Shakedown

[sycodon]

shakedown
noun
shakedown \shk-daun\

: the act of taking something (such as money) from someone by using threats or deception

Spam, Spam, Egs, and spam

[Marxist Hacker 42]

It's still spam even when the government does it. This is no more moral than a Nigerian Prince scam.

Re:just wait for them to run up the legal bill 5K

[HornWumpus]

Folks, this AC is most likely a shill from the likes of rightscorp trying to get you to volunteer information to the scumbags.

The shysters send out letters knowing it's mathematically impossible to get to 1% of the (barratry) cases they just sent letters regarding before the statute of limitations runs out.

It's really just the old send a fake cleaning bill to out of state restaurants scam. You only need about 1% chumps for it to pay off nicely.

Re:just wait for them to run up the legal bill 5K

[johnnys]

You're missing a very important point: Under CANADIAN law, the maximum fine for all of these downloading offenses combined is 5000$, provided she's not downloading these files for commercial infringement. She CANNOT be forced by a court to pay more than 5000$ for all the allegations no matter what happens in court!

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"A copyright holder can instead elect to protect his/her copyright under section 38.1, which allows for "a sum of not less than $100 or more than $5,000 as the court considers just." for all non-commercial infringement, and $500 up to $20,000 for each commercial infringement.[30]"

This is an excellent law: It protects real Canadians from the flood of toxic lawsuits the USA citizens are suffering.

Canada had to put it in to keep the USA from implementing punitive trade barriers, but in the USA they never put a cap on it so people can get screwed over big time by huge lawsuit judgements. In Canada the 5000$ cap means that no copyright owner will ever go to court to attack a person with no commercial infringement since the 5000$ won't even cover the lawyer costs to file the suit. So these nastygrams can be safely ignored.

Karma could use some assistance, maybe?

[leftover]

Every time stories like this come up, with a named perpetrator, it seems righteously karmic that they be subjected to relentless IP problems of mysterious origin. Unfortunately, it seems that Karma lacks admin access to switches and routers around the perps.

Wonder if anyone here could help with that?

Re:Ha it would be funny

[lazarus]

You don't know the half of it...

Re:Ha it would be funny

[PPH]

I'm not going to argue life after death philosophy with anyone named Lazarus.