Canadian File Sharing Plaintiff Admits To Copyright Trolling 87
An anonymous reader writes "Canipre, a
Montreal-based intellectual property rights enforcement firm, has
admitted
that it is behind the Voltage file sharing lawsuits involving
TekSavvy in what is described as a 'speculative invoicing' scheme.
Often referred to as copyright trolling, speculative invoicing
involves sending hundreds or thousands of demand letters alleging
copyright infringement and seeking thousands of dollars in
compensation. Those cases rarely — if ever — go to court as the
intent is simply to scare enough people into settling in order to
generate a profit. The Canipre
admission is important because it is consistent with
arguments that the case involves copyright trolling and that the
Canadian Federal Court should not support the scheme by ordering
the disclosure of subscriber contact information."
the appropriate response (Score:5, Interesting)
Turn over all the subscriber info to Canpire immediately. Let them send out demand letters. Then send out letters to all those subscribers explaining the exact nature of Canpire's business, on the theory that there's a least a handful of those subscribers with money, good lawyers, and short tempers ;-)
Interesting business model (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Send out threatening letters
2) ???
3) Profit!
I call that a Racket as in Racketerring... [wikipedia.org]
Traditionally, the word racket is used to describe a business (or syndicate) that is based on the example of the protection racket and indicates a belief that it is engaged in the sale of a solution to a problem that the institution itself creates or perpetuates, with the specific intent to engender continual patronage.
So you have companies asking people to pay for protection or immunity from further civil or criminal prosecution. All they have to do is just pay up.
I don't know if Canada has Racket laws, but in the US we do have the RICO law [wikipedia.org] which has been effective in going after organized crime, especially around Rackets such as this.
Re:Fraud? (Score:4, Interesting)
In addition, their actions have been found to be a fraud upon the courts in some cases.
Applying to the courts for an order to identify people on the grounds you will sue them, and then extorting payments instead, makes the initial application fraudulent.
In the U.S. and the U.K., this has led to legal or law-society actions against the fraudulent plaintiffs. In Canada, as we just passed a law to limit such suits, it may lead to stronger measures.
--dave