Canadian Piracy Crackdown - Vancouversun
 

Company collects data on millions of illegal downloaders in first step to crack down on piracy in Canada


If you’re watching an illegally downloaded movie, someone could be watching you.

A forensic software company has collected files on a million Canadians who it says have downloaded pirated content.

And the company, which works for the motion picture and recording industries, says a recent court decision forcing Internet providers to release subscriber names and details is only the first step in a bid to crack down on illegal downloads.

“The door is closing. People should think twice about downloading content they know isn’t proper,” said Barry Logan, managing director of Canipre, the Montreal-based forensic software company.

Logan said while last week’s court case involved only 50 IP addresses, his company is involved in another case that will see thousands of Canadians targeted in a sweep aimed at deterring Internet users from illegally downloading movies and other digital content.

Logan said his company has files on one million Canadians who are involved in peer-to-peer file sharing and have downloaded movies from BitTorrent sites, identifying them through Internet Protocol addresses collected over the past five months.

Logan said the court decision means Canadians must realize they could be held liable for illegal downloading and statutory damages of up to $5,000.

He said many people ignore the warnings from their ISPs that they are engaged in illegal downloading. Now, he said, they may receive litigation letters about possible court action.

Last week’s court decision involved a Burnaby movie production company that went to court to force Internet service providers to provide names and addresses of subscribers who had illegally downloaded one of its movies.

The Federal Court, sitting in Montreal, ordered several Internet providers to disclose to the Burnaby company the names and addresses of their subscribers whose IP addresses were linked to illegal downloads.

The court case dealt with 50 IP addresses (unique identifiers assigned to computers and other devices on a network) who allegedly illegally downloaded NGN Prima Production’s movie Recoil.

“Canada is a very significant country in terms of peer-to-peer file sharing and illegal downloading of copyright works,” Logan said. “We have quite a significant evidence collection program that has been in place in Canada for a number of months, it doesn’t discriminate between ISPs.”

If ISPs hand over the subscriber data sought through court action, Logan said the copyright holders can seek statutory damages that are capped at $5,000 for non-commercial infringement.

Mira Sundara Rajan, formerly the Canada Research chair in intellectual property law at the University of B.C., said the movie industry in Canada appears to be following the lead of the United States. There, the recording and motion picture lobby was instrumental in the recent creation of a “Six Strikes” initiative, targeting Internet users who download pirated content. The graduated system starts with a notice phase and can lead to repeated offenders being blocked from certain sites. In addition to the six strike initiative, offenders can still be sued by rights holders.

“I think the end game actually is to try and make a dent in the downloading activity,” said Sundara Rajan. “What we are doing is following in the footsteps of an American approach here which has been to try to target individual users and set them as examples of what can go wrong if your illegal downloading activity is discovered.

“I think that it is much more than an issue of trying to get fines in place. I think it is a question of creating an idea of deterrence in the mind of the public.”

Logan said his company is looking for repeat or habitual illegal downloaders. He said they will only be identified by Internet Protocol addresses initially but if a legal action is launched, names will be released in statements of claim.

“I don’t think we have to limit this to just teenagers downloading Justin Bieber’s last record,” he said. “We represent a lot of mature titles that would be of interest to the 30/40/50 crowd.”

Logan said his clients in the industry are turning to the courts for rulings on the implementation of Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act, which was passed in June, and took effect earlier this month. Under the act, rights holders can send copyright infringement notices to Internet providers who in turn notify subscribers who are linked to the IP address.



Thoughts? or more bogus scare tactics by the media?

LOL they are so dumb. Most smart users have move away from public Torrents sites and move to Private torrents or streaming or even newsgroup.

Besdie as far as I know (I work for an ISP company) If any compnay phones or force us to give our customer's info to them, we just tell them to go away if they really want those info they either have to go to court or open a case with the police. Fat chance of that happening.

Good luck with that. It'll be a huge PR hit if they treat this like the music industry.

They only catch the grannies and kids that don't know how to pirate things properly. They'll sue people that didn't know what they were doing is piracy and they'll get torn apart for it in the media because the actual pirates are laughing at them.

don't many people nowdays use a ? does this protect? i imagine it's only either the very young or old who don't, and use public torrent sites

Come at me brah. Brb gonna go download the dark knight in 1080p.
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If you don't have a router, get a router.

Quote Liberty Media Holdings v Tabora as precedent.

Win.

Of course it does, because nobody else cares. The only reason governments 'care' about illegal downloading is because of the pressure put on them by motion picture/music industry who are massive campaign contributors.

its based in montreal.. so who cares.. everyone can continue their downloads

Not so fast.

I just read it, and the situation there is not that straightforward.

Summary: https://www.eff.org/cases/liberty-me...dings-v-tabora

It looks like it was only thrown out because they were trying to go after the provider of the Internet instead of only the downloader.

unsecured wifi for the win!!!
Don't be greedy share your internet!

no more piratesbay?

I've always wondered how they would go after people, especially if multiple members of a family (or even company) use the same IP. Just because the account might be under the dad's name, it doesn't mean he knows that his son is downloading music or movies. Or what if I were to use someone else's unsecured wireless and download stuff through there? That person could now be liable for what I did.

Private torrents, VPN, SSL newsgroup. Yup.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't private torrents be more "dangerous?"

I don't use one, but from what i've read on them, they go very extensively to make sure you stay private, and maintain ratios, etc, so they log everything from IP to dl/ul time/size, etc, etc., where as public torrent sites don't log anything.

So if you were downloading movie X from the pirate bay, you'd be seen downloading movie X, and only that.

but if you were using a private one, and get found, they see that you've downloaded 500 gigs of movies, etc, and how much you've uploaded.

Isn't that how this works?

Nothing to worry about. Everytime when one of these guys call requesting us to give them info of our customers (I work in an ISP compnay) we simply tell them go to the police and get a case wth the police. Only police who have a warrant we are liable to give out customer info to. The rest we simply tell them to go away.

Also, all the warning E-mails we get form the movie compnay, Music industires about our customers downloading thier stuff we simply put the E-mails in a Spam in box and gets empty everyweek with no one reading them. As far as we know, they can't do shit unless they get a warrant from the police which never happens.

^ IIRC, any information the police access, where a login is required is not admissible in court because it is private information.

^ I'm not sure that's true because e-mails and whatnot are very admissible in court.

Unless you mean the police physically opened my email, in which case I dunno.

Details on this?
I only use peer block... Is that even enough?


And on the note of getting caught downloading. Is stealing a movie any different than stealing a DVD at futureshop? Would you be charged in the same way?

If you have a router and get caught couldn't you just replace that ~$50-$250 dollar harddrive with a new one and claim it wasn't you downloading it?

Or do they somehow get your MACid address or something even more badass I'm not aware of?

I thought it was decided in court that an IP address cannot be linked or associated to any one person.

I thought I've my butt covered by enabling protocol encryption :badpokerface:

Does anybody use btguard for their vpn?

Good luck. I'm behind 7 proxies!

i did not know you could cite american cases in canadian courts are precedent :pokerface:

This is going to be interesting