Rightsholders ask court for I.D. of customers of 13 ISPs

Three movie studios have gone through the Canadian court system to identify alleged copyright infringers subscribed to 13 Internet service providers (ISPs), but TekSavvy Solutions Inc. is challenging the disclosure on the grounds that the copyright notices weren’t sent in a timely manner. The copyright holders are asking the court to identify the anonymous defendants connected to 353 IP addresses associated with 13 ISPs whom they accuse of uploading their content to the peer-to-peer file-sharing website BitTorrent, according to documents filed by TekSavvy. The three cases ahead of the Federal Court date back to December, when ME2 Productions Inc. claimed its rights to the movie “Mechanic: Resurrection” were being infringed. Then in March, I.T. Productions LLC for the movie “I.T.” and WWE Studios Finance Corp. for the movie “Eliminators” each filed claims. The plaintiffs claim the defendants ignored their copyright notices, as mandated by the notice-and-notice system, after a first and second notice, and did not stop infringing activity. But TekSavvy argued in court documents that the plaintiffs’ claim that the defendants received a second infringement notice seven days after they received a first notice is not true. Specifically, in 9 of the 18 cases against TekSavvy users, the plaintiffs sent a second notice to TekSavvy before the first notice was delivered to alleged infringers. Independent Internet lawyer Allen Mendelsohn said in a phone interview the case is an indication of gaps in the notice-and-notice system. He said the government could consider how notices are administered when it reviews the Copyright Modernization Act, five years after its implementation, later this year. “The procedure is not what it needs to be,” Mendelsohn said. “The regulations need to specify the contents of the notices, how often they can be sent when they can be sent.” “If timing is an issue … maybe we have to start limiting how many notices can be sent for the same alleged copyright violation and maybe there needs to be a timetable for a second notice. I certainly think that would be a help to the system overall,” Mendelsohn said, adding a potential broader policy would look at when copyright holders can go to court after using the notice regime. Problems with the notice-and-notice system have been flagged in the past, including by advocacy groups. On Wednesday, NDP MP and innovation critic Brian Masse raised the issue of the notice system during question period, according to a transcript. “Thousands of Canadians have been receiving shakedown demands from Internet trolling companies using the notice and notice regime to make unsubstantiated allegations of Internet piracy. Canadians scared by the notice pay the demands without ever being found guilty,” Masse said. “The minister has already acknowledged that these scare tactics have no force of law, but he needs to take real action. When will the government fix this by changing the regulations and stopping the shakedowns?” Last month, the Federal Court determined that ISPs could not charge a fee to identify customers until the government sets a fee ceiling, which some said could provide added incentive for copyright holders to go after alleged infringers in court. — With reporting by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Rightsholders ask court for I.D. of customers of 13 ISPs

Broadcast | June 8, 2017

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Rightsholders ask court for I.D. of customers of 13 ISPs

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