Canadian Record Industry Presses ISPs in Court

An anonymous reader writes "'Internet service providers have neither an obligation nor, in some cases, the technical means to help the recording industry identify 29 alleged music pirates, a federal judge heard yesterday.' The article continues, 'Shaw Cable, the most defiant company among the pack, poked holes in CRIA's case and accused the music industry of planning an extended fishing expedition for the purpose of forcing individuals into costly settlements before cases ever get to trial. This is the same strategy used by sister organization the Recording Industry Association of America, lawyers argued.'"

Ouch

[Rick Zeman]

Shaw lawyer Charles Scott, of Lax O'Sullivan Scott, said the cable company has a duty to protect the privacy of its customers, not to become a "private investigator" for the music industry by being forced, at its own expense, to analyze and hand over subscriber information

I can hear the next argument: "Hand all of your data over and we'll analyze it...."

Wierd.

[BrainInAJar]

My ISP is actually defending my rights?

What's going on here?.
I figgured that when the lawsuits start flying north of 49, Shaw would be the first to belly up and hand over my name, based on their records so far (I had a few billing issues).

Does Canada have a RICO-like law?

[ArielMT]

I wonder if Canadians can sue CRIA for racketeering like one or two Americans are the RIAA.
RIAA countersued Under Racketeering Laws [slashdot.org].

Re:Retreat and regroup

[ScrewMaster]

No ... any good strategist will tell you, don't let your enemy have anything for free. Make him pay for it. These industry groups have only the legal tools that government grants them, and they've only gotten those because there was no organized resistance. Keep the pressure on: don't let them take anything from you without a hard fight. Shaw is taking the proper stance, because once a precedent is set it's that much harder to correct later.

Re:An (almost) happy Shaw customer

[0racle]

Ya I'm not sure how to feel either. On one hand the support sucks and in recent months I've had outages lasting from 6 hours to 3 days. On the other hand, they seem to actually care about things.

I'm so confused.

Re:Why are ISP logging anyway ?

[Tuffnut]

no logging? are you insane? if they didnt log anything, think of the crimes people could get way with.

Re:wrong

[iantri]

Of course the controversial anti-hate speech laws have some effect on this..

Basically, you can say whatever you want until someone considers it "hate speech", and then there is a good chance that you will not be allowed to say it.

Holocaust deniers can not claim that the Holocaust did not happen, here in Canada.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of opinion..

Case on static IPs?

[barks]

Scott said Shaw, because of the design of its network and its policy for storing customer data, does not have a way of "reliably" complying with such a court order.

I assume dynamic IP addresses might be an issue here - would hate to see poor senior Mrs. Johnson down the street get nabbed for being accused of dl'ing P.Diddy!

Re:the question is...

[Cynikal]

thats where you get into semantics.. who is copying for who? when i share on kazaa or whatever, im not actually making a copy, you are when you download it from me, you're copying it from my computer down to yours.

it is neither ilegal to be the copier, or the lender of the copy.. i dont know the specific wording of the law, but i cant see how borrowing a cd or whatever and copying it can be legal while lending the cd to be copied is ilegal.

a modest proposal (theoretically, or course)

[yagu]

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting anyone go out and do this, but wouldn't it be an interesting scenario to protest and demonstrate against the recording industries' treatment of the customer as a pre-supposed criminal, and show what devastating effects losing the customers altogether can wreak?

For example, wouldn't it be interesting if all owners of CD's just decided after making sure they had ripped and encoded and backed up their existing CD's under the auspices of "fair use" suddenly decided to sell their CD's... say, maybe for $1? Now, of course, the most important thing in this transaction is the seller remember to destroy existing "fair share" stock... :-)

I would think if some organized mass effort like this ever grew legs, the recording industries would maybe understand better the repercussions of their disdain and disregard for the integrity of their customers. (I, myself, have about 1300 CD's )

Just my 01

Re:Unlikely

[Rick Zeman]

The plantiffs (recording industry) would probably not be able ot show the judge that there are reasonable grounds for them to be able to anyalyze records of indivduals that are not associated with the lawsuit. If you are involved in a personal injury lawsuit, you can't subpoena the hospitals entire patient file.

I didn't say it was a valid argument, just a possible counter-argument. To play devil's advocate, what if in your hypothetical personal injury the only information known is that it was Patient 0149381?

Re:Maybe its just me

[An-Unnecessarily-Lon]

By that same right, If I were to leave my garage door open does not mean come on in. At no time was an invitation given. Same holds true with a car with the windows down.

damn you videotron

[WildBeast]

I'm no mp3 downloader and I frankly think that most music sucks but I'll be switching to Bell as a matter of principle.

Re:wrong

[Deliveranc3]

Actually Canada has more restrictive measures in place to limit the press than the U.S.

However we hardly ever use it and they are censored all the time. So we over legislate and underegulate.

They on the other hand lie, then conceal. No complains on this one, Go CANADA.

Broadband Tax?

[qtp]

I thought that Canadians paid a "broadband tax" to cover the cost of "pirating".

Has anyone else here heard of this?

How can the record companies go after someone if they are already receiving a handout from the government to cover that loss?

Am I completely wrong about this?

Wouldn't this be "double jeopardy" if you've paid your share for using broadband, but they are still sueing users?

TELUS Copyright Infringment

[Anonymous Coward]

TELUS recently started to hand out notices of copyright infringment. Its mostly bittorrent ports they monitor but in the copyright notice they actually specify the name of the file and the date / time.

It specifically said it wasnt a legal notice but just a warning that this could be seen as copyright infringment.

Re:the question is...

[Cynikal]

well i wont talk out of my ass by saying that i know for sure, but if we want to split hairs on it, if i were stuck in court forced to defend myself, i would argue that making a file available on my pc for downloading is not the same as making a copy and giving it to someone, as until the downloader initiates a connection, there is no copy being made... the copy doesnt exist until it arrives complete at their computer.

the file is on my computer, just as the cd would be in my house.. the person enters my computer, requestes the file (asks me to borrow my cd), and the file being transmitted to their computer is the process of me lending them the cd, then when the file is complete, they have made the copy themselves, because none of this requires any intervention on my part...

the fact that the copy and send process are in the same step is where the companies are trying to wiggle out a court rulling making it ilegal.. if a p2p process actually moved the file from my computer to theirs, then made a copy, and then moved the orriginal back, there would be no room to split hairs and call it any different than me lending the person a CD.

Quebecers, time to switch over Bell/Cogeco.

[Bilange]

Montreal-based Groupe Videotron Ltee. is the only service provider to say it will fully co-operate.

As another poster said, thats logic since Videotron is owned by Quebecor Media, that owns Archambault [archambault.ca] which already have an legal online MP3 download.

My concern about that is the quasi monopol videotron has about home internet service. Fortunately for us, you can always switch to DSL with Bell's Sympatico (they just announced faster download/upload speeds, im reaching 80k upload). Bell AFAIK dont have any business in the music industry and wont offer help (at least not that easily) to the CIRA or whatever its called.

I dont know bout cables alternatives, though.