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ISPs and Movie Industry Prepare Canadian Pirate Site Blocking Deal (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A coalition of movie industry companies and ISPs, including Bell, Rogers, and Cineplex are discussing a proposal to implement a plan to allow for website blockades without judicial oversight. The Canadian blocklist would be maintained by a new non-profit organization called "Internet Piracy Review Agency" (IPRA) and enforced through the CTRC, Canadaland reports. The plan doesn't come as a total surprise as Bell alluded to a nationwide blocking mechanism during a recent Government hearing. What becomes clear from the new plans, however, is that the telco is not alone. The new proposal is being discussed by various stakeholders including ISPs and local movie companies. As in other countries, major American movie companies are also in the loop, but they will not be listed as official applicants when the plan is submitted to the CRTC. Canadian law professor Micheal Geist is very critical of the plans. Although the proposal would only cover sites that "blatantly, overwhelmingly or structurally" engage in or facilitate copyright infringement, this can be a blurry line.
"Recent history suggests that the list will quickly grow to cover tougher judgment calls. For example, Bell has targeted TVAddons, a site that contains considerable non-infringing content," Geist notes. "It can be expected that many other sites disliked by rights holders or broadcasters would find their way onto the block list," he adds. While the full list of applicants is not ready yet, it is expected that the coalition will file its proposal to the CRTC before the end of the month.
"Recent history suggests that the list will quickly grow to cover tougher judgment calls. For example, Bell has targeted TVAddons, a site that contains considerable non-infringing content," Geist notes. "It can be expected that many other sites disliked by rights holders or broadcasters would find their way onto the block list," he adds. While the full list of applicants is not ready yet, it is expected that the coalition will file its proposal to the CRTC before the end of the month.
Coming soon!
And this is why the first amendment is so
This will go over like a lead balloon, and you can bet your ass there will be a lawsuit very shortly here.
So Canada is going to block YouTube? That will go over well.
Might as well paint a giant "hack me" sign on your back.... once hacked, what would be some fun domains for us to block? gc.ca? rogers.com? bell.ca?
Oh what fun it will be!
May I ask what was wrong with the original submission of this story? https://slashdot.org/submissio...
Daily read for tech news: Freezenet.ca
So they want to give everyone motivation on to learn how to use a VPN? That's nice of them!
Shouldn't that be IPRAA, y'hosers?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is almost as bad as Google preventing Amazon devices from accessing YouTube.
I thought these companies were the ones who wanted Net Neutrality?
Surely this must be Trump's fault somehow.
When companies are the judge, jury and executioner.
Why else would they form a coalition to bypass judges?
They are trying to legitimize mafia tactics to the point where the government can't even get involved.
"That's a nice site you got there. You know me and my buddies got this list. It would be a shame if your site wound up on it."
Then when a child is able to get to undesirable content just sue your ISP! It's entirely their fault your precious snowflake discovered something horrible on the internet.
You know I'd prefer that the unwashed masses not learn how to use VPN. We invited them on the internet and now they've ruined it. I say it's about time we slice off a chunk of net for them to turn into the AOL of their dreams and leave the rest of us alone.
USENET, TOR, and the general Internet itself were all fairly chill places for awhile and then the masses arrived bringing their rats, feral dogs, and venereal diseases junk the place up. Now USENET is spam and warez, TOR is full of CP, and the internet is about to be carved up into cable packages. Fuck let the stupid people do their stupid people shit away from the rest of us.
America is to blame here? Because Canada can't govern themselves. Must be the evil Americans.
"implement a plan to allow for website blockades without judicial oversight."
At present, the CRTC enforces net neutrality - pricing may be based on bandwidth and transfer, but not content.
It'll be interesting to see what happens if the ISPs actually try this, because the CRTC isn't all that strong a regulatory body from the consumer perspective, and nobody complains about illegal content being blocked.
Somewhere, though, somebody's site will be incorrectly blacklisted and there will be a lawsuit that could be a major headache for Bell, Rogers, or Telus.
How long before every well funded group of SJW will demand to add sites to that ban list?
Copyright infringement often starts with all kinds of talk about books, movies, reviews, comments on the internet.
Movie review sites?
Books about faith and cults?
History sites?
Political sites?
Law sites that list details about a nations crime rate?
Sites that review political books?
That could induce a person to consider copyright infringement after reading about a problematic book or movie.
Block the problematic site and the temptation for copyright infringement is removed.
The SJW get to ban sites they don't like and the risk of copyright infringement is removed.
Win, win for censorship.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
while you were sucking his dick.
I was with an ISP which, earlier this year, started blocking TPB. Gave me the push I needed to switch to a different ISP which conveniently also costs $5 less per month.
I have a feeling that, if this happens, only the big players will implement it. A lot of the smaller guys see it as a big selling point that they don't do any traffic shaping and such, and some of them even offered free SSL tunnels as part of their basic service back when the big players were trying to throttle torrent traffic over the bulk bandwidth which they sold to the smaller companies.
If not, I suppose there's always VPNs.
LOL - it's not though.
Apparently not Canada...
the CRTC is government and them reinforcing an block can end up in a court case over government censorship
I was under the impression that tampering with telecommunications was illegal in Canada, punishable by imprisionment.
Can someone explain to be how these acts could be legally conducted?
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
My ISP was court ordered to block The Pirate Bay, but fortunately the Tor browser has no problems accessing it.
"The new proposal is being discussed by various stakeholders including ISPs and local movie companies."
yet its not being discussed by the most important stakeholder, the citizens. i am gladly waiting for this to work its way through the system. When it does i will be on top of my elected representatives (and campaigning politicians) especially those of the liberal party due to their leaders claim of respecting net neutrality.
The whole with out judicial order is what scares me the most and hopefully other politicians listen to Geist. This will have unintended consequences and with out any checks and balances through the legal system it will be abused by who ever controls the non profit company.
What's that you say...?
In the US you have a self-interested corporatist shill name Pai, who sits at the FCC. In Canada we don't need that. Instead we have corporations using market blackmail to achieve the same aims.
Think about it, if you are allowed to block whatever you want without oversight and regulation you are in fact killing Net Neutrality. Whether copyright bypass or digital sharing occurs or not. Whether this power to censor falls in line with some corporatist entity in the US, be it movies etc. The reality will be blocking whoever they want, which could include VPN's and of course whatever website that provides streaming services, "legal" or not. Why stop there?
This will insure that the only entities that can provide access to media will be those involved who can profit from it directly. Those entities are the signatories behind this "needed change".
This is Canada's version of Goodbye Net Neutrality. At least the corporations behind this "needed change" are shilling their own "proposals", for the moment. I love how government officials always claim that too much regulation and red tape is getting in the way of moving the economy forward. But they ask us to forget that once they (corporations) have used government to enact some policy which only suits their needs and shareholders, these are the same people who tell us that government is no longer needed. Umm until another monopolistic maneuver requires the same "useless" government. I give you the FCC with the shill Pai.
Dial up modems anyone?
Why isn't this considered collusion to prevent a new competitor from being able to compete in the market?
I can only imagine who will sit on the board of directors of this "new non-profit organization called "Internet Piracy Review Agency" (IPRA)"
I can also only imagine the amount of scope creep that will happen, as they start to expand into all sorts of areas.
I would totally not support this, not that it matters.
Normally, only government can act in totality. However; there are circumstances where a corporation or a group of them can act in such a way as to enforce a totality.
If, for instance, there were only one way to express free speech, and that was the internet. Increasingly, this may in fact be the case. If a group of corporations can thusly deny free speech, then it has usurped the power of government. If the government supports the corporation in this regard, then the corporation is simply a government proxy or extension, with little or no distinction.
This kind of thing was bound to happen as studios became more data aware and carriers became content holders.
This is especially bad for Canadians as we already pay a fee on media that goes to compensate the content management and maybe even content producers that is supposed to allow personal backup.