Canadian ISP Fights Back Against Copyright Trolls 66
An anonymous reader writes "Distributel, an independent Canadian ISP, has fought
back in a file sharing lawsuit by opposing a motion
to disclose the names of subscribers alleged to have engaged in file
sharing. The company did not oppose a similar request in November
2012, but says in court documents filed on Friday that several
factors led to a change in position after it received another
request for more names. Those concerns include evidence of
copyright trolling, privacy issues, and weak evidence of actual
infringement by its subscribers. The decision to fight back points
to mounting ISP frustration in Canada with file sharing lawsuits
that come after the Canadian government sent clear signals that such
actions were unwelcome."
Re:Trolls... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, they are trolls.
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Nope.
Re:Trolls... (Score:5, Insightful)
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More likely they don't care about the amount of the settlement. What they want is to be able to skip the entire legal process and charge people just on their whim. It's so expensive to go through the courts and more often than not they don't get the results they want - ie the amount of money is so high they have absolutely no hope of ever getting that money
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That's the reason a certain corporation published stories online, then "assigned" the right to "protect" that IP to another company. Then they sued anyone who used even a sentence from the articles as reference. Because they didn't care about settlements, right?
Maybe you're not keeping up with current events?
Re:Trolls... (Score:5, Insightful)
Our laws, and to some extent our legal and political philosophies, are distinct from other countries, in particular the United States where (so I hear) suing people is a profitable source of business. In Canada it doesn't work that way. The courts tend to drag their feet at the best of times, but especially when they detect a profit motive. It's a bit strange, moral agency arising from ineffectiveness, but there it is.
Re:Trolls... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Trolls... (Score:5, Informative)
I can tell you from having lived and worked in several countries and in several languages that the American mindset is not to be found outside the US. In the same way as most developed nations take universal health care as a given, so there's a general assumption that society's institutions exist to serve society's ends. They don't particularly operate in the service of free enterprise, and most people would be astonished if you were to suggest that they should. That, it seems, is a particularly American position. I'm not judging it as good or bad - it's brought about good outcomes as well as bad ones - and of course I'm not saying that every American takes this position, but it is certainly particular to the US.
Re:Trolls... (Score:5, Interesting)
"And I gather that it's effective in the US. Doesn't mean the rest of the world functions in the same way."
It seems to me that your statements are the underlying premise of TFA. Someone is attempting to manipulate your legal system in a manner similar to what the US tolerates - and the ISP is fighting back!
Two thumbs up!
Re:Trolls... (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps in the US it is big business. In Canada, the maximum fine (and settlement) is $5000 *total* for any and all works pirated up to the point of punishment, so long as the defendant is an individual and not a corporation. The government has recommended the minimum fine of $100 be used in all but the most egregious repeat cases.
Voltage has already found the cost of acquiring the information on each IP address outstrips the likely amount they will recoup. They're pissed about that already.
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...don't you mean people trying to defend their IP?
One man's "defense" is another man's extortion....
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Considering that they lie about the actual damages, and lie about the potential damages, and use questionable 'evidence' to hit people up for the cash, yes they are trolls. Asking for a hair less than it would cost an innocent defendant to go to court is a sure sign as well.
Re:Trolls... (Score:5, Interesting)
People defending their IP become trolls when they start with the millions upon millions of John Doe warrants.
To put things in perspective, when a burglar steals my precious (to me) thingamabob, it doesn't give me the right to perform an armed door-to-door search of my neighborhood, and my hometown. Nor does it give me the right to expand that search to neighboring towns, if I don't discover my thingamabob in my own hometown.
Further, the court cases make many of those "defenders" into trolls. In perspective, my precious thingamabob is only precious to me. Market value of my thingamabob is only ten bucks. You can get one at Wally's World of Whacky Weird Shit brand new for fifteen, and my used thingamabob is depreciated. The ONLY thing that makes it precious is, that it is MINE. So, if/when I discover the thief, comparable behaviour to these "defenders" would be to ask the judge to imprison the thief for life plus sixty years, to be served consecutively.
Jim Baen, of Baen books put things in perspective, when he said that "pirates" are comparable to children stealing penny candy. You don't gun down a child for stealing a piece of bubble gum! At most, you talk to the kid's mommy, and let her know how her little precious behaves when she is not watching.
Defending IP? No, not at all. If I had knowledge that I needed to defend, I'd lock it up, in my head, so that no one could take it from me.
The business model is broken, and a lot of very intelligent people have already made that observation. The people defending the business model are those who lack both intelligence and imagination.
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The business model is broken, and a lot of very intelligent people have already made that observation. The people defending the business model are those who lack both intelligence and imagination.
Or have a vested interest in perpetuating and expanding the business model as it now stands.
Here's an ISP that seems to know what an IP is (Score:5, Interesting)
From part 11 of the "Statement of faccts" in that motion :
Now I've seen many of the summaries for a lot of these motions (not one against them 'till now, since most ISPs offer resistance with a wimper) and not once have I seen an ISP actually explain what an IP is with layman-friendly clarity and how fickle a method of identifying a user it is. If this is how everyone treats IP addresses, there really wouldn't be any standing for disclosure of personally identifying information on any user unless law enforcement is already conducting surveillance on that IP.
But that's not what happened here.
They (copyright/troll folks) basically used a piece of software that flagged (apparently) content matching some signature of theirs to a bunch of addresses with no corroborating evidence like which P2P network was being used, if that, pseudonyms (although, I was under the impression most networks don't require them now), protocols or anything remotely grounding their assertion that their copyright was violated.
This is basically a fishing exepedition and this time, the ISP called on it. I don't know what they're normally like or if they offered resistance like this in the past. TFA says they didn't fight a notice back in November 2012. But these guys asking for subscriber info has no standing at all. Kudos to them for standing up to this!
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Oops, "facts". That spelling issue again.
It's okay, the copyright troll referenced in this article seems to lack an understanding of them as well.
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Oops, "facts". That spelling issue again.
It's okay, the copyright troll referenced in this article seems to lack an understanding of them as well.
ZING!!
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not once have I seen an ISP actually explain what an IP is with layman-friendly clarity and how fickle a method of identifying a user it is
I agree - we often hear what it isn't, but never what it is. How about this? An IP address is like a street name. Just because someone on Main Street has done something suspicious, it doesn't mean everyone on Main Street is to blame.
Re:Here's an ISP that seems to know what an IP is (Score:4, Insightful)
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But Slashdot bans people based on IP address. Does that mean that Slashdot itself is ignorant?
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Yes. The solution would be much better addressed by a micro-payment for new accounts rendered in computational protein folding.
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But Slashdot bans people based on IP address.
They do? You sure wouldn't know it by seeing all the spammers clogging the journal system.
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Moreover, bit rot caused by heat and intergalactic cosmic radiation have been shown to mis-route internet communication. Domain names are slightly more resistant to this effect which can only be mitigated by world-wide adoption of ECC RAM, since affected they appear to be misspelled. However when am IP addresses is affected there is no outward tell.
You can reliably say that the force of the inherit cosmos ensures plausible deniability in the digital age, and that by extension anonymity is a force of nature.
extortion? (Score:5, Interesting)
FTFA:
a notice claiming that subscribers could face up to $20,000 in damages
Considering the law now features a cap of $5,000 for non-commercial statutory damages would this not count as extortion?
Re:extortion? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a $20,000 ceiling for commercial infringement and $5,000 for personal. Does this mean that the entertainment industry is going to claim all infringement in Canada is commercial?
Here's my tip folks. If you get a letter that claims you could be on the hook for up to $20k, retain a lawyer. Might cost you a few hundred bucks, but with these companies now prepared to jump to commercial claims, I imagine they'll be prepared to walk away from any defendant who retains a lawyer.
Perhaps interested Canadians should band together to create a legal fund to fight such civil suits.
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It's a $20,000 ceiling for commercial infringement and $5,000 for personal. Does this mean that the entertainment industry is going to claim all infringement in Canada is commercial?
It means that until they've conclusively decided it's not commercial - which they won't until they're at trial looking at what they can actually prove so they're technically not lying - they're going to say up to $20k because it's a much bigger, scarier number. Besides, it could theoretically limit their options later and lawyers never give an inch without good reason. Just like in the US they sue for $150k/work, not because they'll actually get that but because that's the upper statutory limit.
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Except that in Canadian cases the judges get pissed when lawyers level a blanket accusation of commercial infringement across the board at a collection of IP addresses. The judges are likely to decide that motions for your side should be denied where possible because you are obviously seeking profit through extortion, something they don't see as a proper use of the court system.
Judges in Canada are not elected, as well as being well paid government employees who are intentionally held seperate from the poli
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No, don't feed the lawyers, I am one, but you do not need a law licence to reply "Go piss up a rope, I will defend and take costs in cause"
MFG, omv
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Extortion, harassment, intimidation, racketeering, predatory litigation ... take your pick. I'm sure they're are several more I've forgotten.
For once, I underestimated these sleazeballs (Score:3)
The bit they forgot to mention? Law B was actually a modification to law A, reducing the maximum damage award from $20K to $5K. The motion calls this "a clear misrepresentation
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Umm... (Score:3)
The decision to fight back points to mounting ISP frustration in Canada with file sharing lawsuits that come after the Canadian government sent clear signals that such actions were unwelcome."
Umm...*whose* actions, exactly? The ISPs? The lawsuit-bringers? The file-sharers? All of the above?
I'm not usually one to harp on poorly-written submissions, but this confuses a major component of the story, at least for those unfamiliar with the current details of domestic Canadian politics.
I don't blame the submitter, however.
I blame Canada! :-P
Strat
Re:Umm... (Score:4, Informative)
I found the summary easy enough to understand, though that's perhaps due to my knowledge of the current stare of copyright in Canada.
Basically when the last copyright bill was shovelled through parliament the government promised that it wouldn't lead to individuals being charged for private infringement. To try to guarantee that they put in place a cap of a maximum of $5,000 for ALL past infringements combined making the act of sending a lawyer after someone potentially more expensive then you could possibly recoup in court. (Also note that is a maximum, and the minimum is substantially less. The court is unlikely to award everyone the maximum penalty as that wouldn't differentiate between someone copying a few movies, and copying every movie ever made)
Why only target the small ISPs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why only target the small ISPs (Score:4, Insightful)
It's odd that they aren't going after Bell or Rogers.
Rogers and Bell are "content producers."
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Roger's has officially rolled over and plays ball with the troll's. They have a system where they will automatically forward a legal letter or something.
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Roger's has officially rolled over and plays ball with the troll's. They have a system where they will automatically forward a legal letter or something.
Scurrilous behaviour, and I'd be changing ISPs if I were a Rogers customer and had confirmation of this. Not that I infringe; I just think it's no part of an ISPs business to actively aid and abet in the extortion of its own customers. Of course, Rogers has never sided with its own customers.
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No they send you an email and that's it. I have received three and am still with them. It's literally the minimum any company can do to ensure that they don't get wrapped in to this.
Rogers and Bell have not played ball with any of these situations. Them as well as Videotron were asked to provide names with the whole Hurt Locker fiasco and only Videotron obliged. Rogers and Bell told them to get a warrant otherwise go and take a hike. Hell I downloaded Hurt Locker to see what all the hoopla was. Didn't get a
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No. In Australia, they tried suing a big ISP (Third Largest) that has an antipiracy policy (If you report piracy to us, we will hand the information on to the police) and found themselves in the highest court in the land being told that to get the information they were demanding, it would cost them $200 per user. Also, that this information must be sought in a timely manner or they would have to pony up for the ISP to cache the logs and traffic streams.
ISP smiled sweetly with it's hand out and racketeer
Use technical means (Score:1)
Canadian legal landscape; Distributel case (Score:4, Interesting)
First, in general, the losing party pays legal costs of the successful party. The amount is usually from 50% to 60% of what the successful party should have paid its lawyers.
Second, foreing plaintiffs may be required to post “security for costs” before they proceed with an action. This is to protect the costs of a successful defendant.
Third, courts are ill-equipped to deal with multiple defendants, especially if there is a likelihood that they may be self-represented. It is diifuclt to see how a court would allow a lawsuit against hundreds of unrelated defendants identified only by IP addresses obtained by a third party (an ISP).
With the new changes in the copyright law, it only takes one case of non-commerical infringement to set damages at $100 for the whole “trolling” enterprise to be a questionable proposition. On the other hand, if the target defendant collecting on judgments in Canada is usually difficult and expensive unless the debtor has real estate. So all that makes the Canadian legal landscape somewhat inhospitable for US-style litigation.
In Distributel's case, it looks like this is the second motion they were served with. They did not oppose the first one and it looks like as a result of the first disclosure, only threatening demand letters were sent. There were no actions before the courts.
Following this case and the Voltage vs. Does case (involving the ISP Teksavvy), reminds me of the UK case of the ACS Law firm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACS:Law) where the lawyers set up loval shell corporations to own the rights (to avoid security for costs likely) and then send around 40,000 misleading letters to customers identified by IP addresses from ISPs not opposing motions for disclosure. The firm collected about a million pounds in several years. The lawyer behind it was eventually suspended because of the misleading demand letters and it seems his case killed any future litigation in the immidiate future. It remans to be seen whether this will play out in Canada.