Canadian Broadband → Hurt Locker P2P Lawsuit Comes to Canada

They are actually testing the law. This is why they asked only for 10 IP. It is very wise cause they wont face any opposition cause its a small number. What is bad is that when they asked court order to request the identification no one was there to defend privacy....

BYW, They did the same in the US but started with 5K IP and they are now all over the country.

imagine people downloading non-stop for months filling terrabytes HDD. They will loose eveything if they ask 3000$ to settle for EACH tittle. you copie.....

This IP identification is a crap thing, my WI-FI router was(cause I just stoped it) of free access to the neighborhood....

I feel like i have a sword of damocleses over my head now.

Like many of us. But an IP is not a person. One can clone an ip address as well as a mac address, one with a wifi network can be hacked easily even with a security, on can be hack and computer used as a zombie, one can get guest and guest can download with one computer without one knowing. There are many way you could defend yourself. Any how it's not because they have your ip that they will do anything. Like many said, they will first try to settle out of court. Try a scare tactic. If they see you fight back they might drop the case knowing that it will cost them more sueing you than settling. It's time billc c32 pass it will limit how much money they can ask you for personal infringement to under 5000$ which seems more "logical"

This is not the studio filing a case to RCMP and the individuals get dragged into a criminal court. This is the studio hired lawyers trying to sue the individual for damages.

The biggest question in my mind:

Would the bill C32 (if/when passed) affect the damages seek by a Civil suit against the individuals for copyright infringement or it is only applicable to a criminal court?

IMO the only way to avoid ever being in this situation is to get a completely anonymous internet access so that it is impossible for them to even trace it back to you. This is only possible with cable as far as I know and a prepaid credit card that's funded by cash only. If this is doable then its certainly better than any VPN or usenet solution out there.

Edit: And a self install option would be handy too, so even a tech can't be a "witness" in a sense.

Not yet anyway, but I am sure the powers that be are working on something truly devious to make that come to pass.

There's already a court ruling in the US that effectively dismisses an IP address as identifying information in and of itself.

»www.globalregulatoryenfo ··· fy-user/

Copyright trolls rely on FUD to make money.

The first and most reliable line of defence is resistance. The last thing they want is a discovery, let alone a trial.

The first words out of my mouth would be something akin to "pick a jury" as I began leafing through the Rules Of Civil Procedure.

What I do find odd is that they chose Quebec as the launching point.

Mike

yeah but FUD could not work here because of the following : In Canada, section 11(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states: "Any person charged with an offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal". On the contrary to the states where you are Guilty till proven innocent. The burden of the proof is then on the prosecution ( those accusing ) which only has a log as proof ? So if there are still any doubt in what they are claiming the judge would have no choice to give a non guilty verdict. You would have to play with UD ( not that the F would not work really )

PS : FUD = Fear, uncertainty and doubt

>"Any person charged with an offence

As I have said multiple times, right now this is in a Civil Court. (At least for the states,) it operates under a different set of rules and different level burden of proof.

Someone can sue you for damages even when you didn't actually commit a crime. I could be using someone's parking spot for 10 minutes and caused the "owner" to trip and broke his leg because his fat ass has to walk over to the far end visitor parking and be sued for that.

>What I do find odd is that they chose Quebec as the launching point.

Yeah. I seem to recall a few pro consumers rulings coming out from the Quebec courts.

On the other hand, that's Videotron golfing country.

In a civil action the threshold is decided on a balance of probabilities or if one version of events is more likely true than another version.

Interesting to see whether they proceed in general division or small claims in Ontario with the $25,000 cap on damages now.
If small claims their cost awards even if successful will leave them holding the bag against a vigorous defence.

You see in Quebec 7000$ is the maximum small claim you could do: »www.justice.gouv.qc.ca/e ··· m#amount that link is very interesting.

The question still pose how to prove you did for 7k of damage with a log and how much is it costing them for theses procedures.

$7K max? Small claims court? What made you think this is going to small claims court?

Because we were talking about small claim court. I was just adding stuff on the subject.

And being as it is civil court, would they have access to your computer as evidence?

Because that would really be a huge factor. If they can confiscate your computer at the moment they serve you the summons, then find a copy of the movie that they are interested in, then the argument about whether your IP is sufficient for ID is meaningless. They already have hard evidence.

However, I'd imagine that a big part of the process is going to be them trying to show that your IP is sufficient for them to confiscate your computer and search it.

But if it gets to the point of searching your computer, they are already losing money. Paying a computer forensics company to search your hard drive will cost $7-$10K. Add in the cost of the lawyers and they are already losing money even if they win.

No, in order for this to be worthwhile for them at $7K per judgment, they have to be able to convict on IP address alone. Or, if they have to search your computer, they'd have to win damages of >$250K to make it worthwhile. And I really don't see how any judge would award >$250K in damages for downloading a movie. Even those guys in Pacific Mall selling bootleg DVD's got relatively light fines, and they are directly profiting from infringement.

I would gladly invite them to search my computer. I have 5 at home. 5 Times the time it take for a forensic to find that movie and 5 times the fees. kaching !

Static is right. Can civil court order a warrant to seize computer ? To my knowledge only criminal court are able to do that. This is not a criminal case it would be a civil case.

That's part of the discovery process. Getting the court order to the subscribers info behind the IP address is one part of that. I would assume that the court would also order the defendants to "cooperate".

Unlike criminal court, I think the defendant and the plaintive(s) can agree on having an independent third party to examine the hard drives on your computer instead of handing it over directly and only disclose files/contents that are relevant to the case. (e.g. your other linux .iso files outside of the case are still safe.)

I seem to remember reading something about how for a long period of time (prior to 1940 or something), there was no penalty for non-commercial infringement. So you couldn't be found guilty of infringement unless you were profiting from it, which makes a lot of sense. Charging someone tens of thousands in fines because they didn't want to pay $5 for a movie is grossly disproportionate. But if they are ripping you off and selling it, that's a different story.

The primary purpose of copyright law is to prevent other companies from profiting from your content without paying you. It's not really intended to be used against individual consumers who are only copying something for convenience, or because no realistic alternative exists.

The entire concept of copyright is broken when it comes to digital goods. If everything has a copyright from the moment it's created (it does), you'd technically need permission and a license to move every single byte of data on the internet. That is obviously impossible and non-existent, so copyright is already a unrealistic fantasy as it is.

I know this might seem extreme given the current obsession our society has with owning and controlling every idea and thought anyone creates, but I think that copyright should only apply to cases where it is clear you are directly making money off reselling the work of others. And even then, that should only result in binding arbitration to determine a fair price. No individual person or company should be legally allowed to prevent the distribution of content or ideas. They should be fully entitled to profit from it, but not stop it.

In practice, this is not much different than how the piracy world operates now. You can get any content you want for free. But if you decide to pay for convenience and security (iTunes), you expect a level of quality and service that requires the provider have an official relationship with the source. So the market is already solving this problem.

Not to give our enemies any ideas, but this whole process would operate much smoother for them if a whole bunch of producers from different industries (software, movies, music, books) organized into a copyright collective, and pursued users that way.

Rather than trying to show that I pirated a single movie, it would a lot easier to show that my IP had shown up in dozens and dozens of different torrents and P2P servers. So they don't necessarily know exactly what I have, but they know I'm very active. Then they get access to computer, search it, and charge me for everything I can't produce a legitimate license for. They charge a much lower per-infringement fine, but the total amount is similar (~$15K). That money is then distributed as required to the members of the copyright collective.

But the thing is, I think they'd have a hard time finding many companies willing to sign on. Most progressive content producers realize that piracy is not all bad in a world where the biggest problem is obscurity, not piracy. They'd rather have a 50% piracy rate, and 2 million customers, than 0% piracy and 5 customers.

The danger of C32 is while it put a cap (*) on the punishment on the non-commercial aspect of copyright infringement, now that becomes a criminal code.

It would mean that now our law enforcements might now drafted into working for the copyright holders for non-commercial case. i.e. they no longer have to pay law firms for fishing out people to sue, but at the same time, the protection racket scheme would not work.

* not sure if that also put a cap on what the copyright holders can sue you for in a civil case. I would assume that the judges would take that amount into consideration however.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and only read about US cases.

I remember reading that as well, and I don't see how this is remotely practical. Virtually every single person I know pirates a fairly significant amount of content. Those that don't, only don't do it because they lack the technical literacy to do it, otherwise they would.

So by criminalizing it, you are just over-persecuting the few people you can catch, in order to try to deter the entire remainder of the population. But it's just going to make people learn to cover their tracks a little better.

It would be akin to criminalizing masturbation, and just as effective.

I think everyone that is technically literate knows that this war on piracy is a lost cause, and it's only a matter of time before everyone just gives up and accepts it. The unfortunate part is that until that happens in 10 years from now, corporations are going to go around destroying people's lives because they don't like the direction a few bits moved over a wire.

I don't think it's odd. Canada's law of court is common law, but Quebec's is civil law.

If they started anywhere else, and lost, then the precedent is set and they lost the game. But if they lose in Quebec, they might still have a chance winning against someone else. I guess they're just fishing to see how Canada's courts will re-act to it first. And if they win, then they had to the rest of Canada, and if they win there, then it's easy money after that.

You are definitely right. I can say the same. Virtually everyone I know does that. Today even people without alot of technical knowledge can do it. Downloading torrent is so easy once you know where to look and what software to use. It's as simple as using office. Go to that website download the torrent file, run it in the software that download it .. enjoy ! The people not doing it in my case are people not so computerish. They dont tend to use computer alot. Who around you beside maybe you gradma ( and again she could) hasn't download an mp3 a game or a movie. It would be interesting to see a firm do a poll on who has downloaded stuff illegaly i'm quite sure the results would be suprising. By making it a law it will get harder for them to catch people because they will tend to protect theselves better using many schemes such as vpn, seedbox, newsgroup etc...

I think you may be going after this from the wrong direction.

Every notice I've ever seen talks about illegal distribution, NOT downloading.

The evidence provided always describes how an infringing act has occurred and how some copyrighted works has been made available from such and such an IP address at such and such a time.

This is a war on Bittorrent more than anything. If you aren't sharing, you don't have much to worry about, at least up to now.

Geo

My question is : Are they running after people that "distributed" the movie lately or do they even go after those who did 3 or 4 years ago. Logic would tend that they go after those sharing it lately as those kind of cases weren't that problematic 4 years ago as they weren't monitoring that much.

If a judge in Quebec says you have to hand over your hard drive as "evidence" that you downloaded copyrighted goods, and you do, does he have the authority to force you to divulge your truecrypt password to the court? How strong is the "right to remain silent" in a civil proceeding such as this?

It is even easier. Opera has torrent client build right in.

In this case even if you have hundreds of movies and illegal software they are looking for Hurt Locker. It's there your screwed it's not that a good thing. Voltage is look for someone who share hurt locker on their computer . The rest is irrelevant for the prosecutor. In this case if you were asked by a judge to "cooperate" I believe you would have to give your password. Thus for those who have the movie illegaly and are client of those ISP i would suggest that you delete the movie immediately as well as any traces of it and wipe your blank hard drive space with an algorythm that does a minimum of 35 pass such as gutmann before you get a subpeona or a claim. That way they may have your ip but the will never get a trace of the movie. Even forensic will have hard time finding it.

I guess it wasnt such a bad idea for me to create that Truecrypt hidden partition/volume after all

Unfortunately even those hidden partitions are easy to find with the right tool. If it's encrypted that's another story. You could still find it but what's inside is a piece of unreadable garbage unless you have the decrypting key which is your password.