Piracy Case Could Change Canadian Web Landscape

meatheadmike writes to tell us that a recent Canadian court case brought against the Canadian Recording Industry Association by isoHunt Web Technologies, Inc, could drastically change the web landscape in Canada. "The question before the British Columbia Supreme Court is if a site such as isoHunt allows people to find a pirated copy of movies such as Watchmen or The Dark Knight, is it breaching Canadian copyright law? 'It's a huge can of worms," said David Fewer, acting director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa. 'I am surprised that this litigation has gone under the radar as much as it has. I do think this is the most important copyright litigation going on right now.'"

Bad news

[MrEricSir]

If you can download their movie for free, Terrance and Phillip are going to go bankrupt.

and your browser runs Google...

[thedonger]

...and your OS runs your browser, and your bios loads your OS, and your hardware is the platform on which your bios runs, and your hardware uses electricity, which is generated by the power company by burning coal, which is mined from the earth. So really, this all the fault of the planet.

Re:Laws and stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone yells and jumps about over copyright. And while in truth yes, it will have an effect on our lives and how we conduct business, the law will never settle the matter. No matter how many judgements, treaties, proclaimations, arrests, convictions, and everything else we throw at it, it cannot change the fact that the internet is global. You can't stop the signal, nobody can. We can't simply dismantle the network, and try as we might to control what goes over it, if a connection can be made someone will figure out a way to get the data through. The internet doesn't care about copyright. It exists to transmit information between people, and nothing will ever deny that power. Not as long as it exists.

We might bear witness to a fifty year war on copyright, pirates, and blah blah blah, but the problem will never go away. The signal will always be there, someone will always have a copy, and eventually the economic drain that will come from fighting this war will bankrupt its supporters. Eventually. It might not happen in five years, or twenty, but it will happen.

This post sort of makes me want to hack the Gibson

HACK THE PLANET!!!!

Re:Different jurisdiction, same story.

[KillerBob]

This is Canada. We don't make noise. We write letters. And only if it's about something that's really really annoying.

It's also not really something we need to worry about in Canadian copyright law... all the ISOHunt people need to show is that they are not actually making the files available themselves. In Canadian copyright law, it's ok to copy/share materials as long as it's not for material gain, and you're not distributing on a large scale.

Re:Laws and stuff

[CannonballHead]

Hope you didn't illegally download that 2x4. ;)

Re:and your browser runs Google...

[Bureaucromancer]

Or maybe this all indicates that the coal mining company is supporting piracy? Sue the power company.

Re:Can somebody explain what it's all about?

[commodore64_love]

No he was right. "Ill-i-gal" is how they speak in Canada.

Re:Not quite...

[corychristison]

Followup question: if I borrow a CD from the library and rip it, is it legal for me to keep it?

Absolutely not. You didn't pay anyone the right to even use it (at least that's how I think they might see it in court)

But if you rent a BlurRay movie from Blockbuster or Rogers Video and are forced to 'rip' it to your Linux PC to play on your 40" TV screen (as you have a BD drive in your PC, but do not own a standalone player) and just happen to *forget* to delete the copy off your hard drive after you return it could be a different story.

For some reason that seems to happen to me 2, sometimes 3 times a week. ;-)