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Piracy Canada

Canadian Anti-Piracy Firm Caught Infringing Copyright 61

Posted by Soulskill from the of-pots-and-kettles dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Canipre, a Montreal-based intellectual property enforcement firm, yesterday issued a press release announcing an infringement monitoring program designed to take advantage of the Canada's new copyright notice-and-notice system. Yet a new report indicates that the company may itself be engaged in copyright infringement, with a director's blog posting dozens of full-text articles from media organizations around the world, often without attribution and some that are subscription-only content."
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Canadian Anti-Piracy Firm Caught Infringing Copyright More

Canadian Anti-Piracy Firm Caught Infringing Copyright

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  • Same ole, same ole ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara.jane.hud ... minus physicist> on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @10:25PM (#48751843) Journal
    "Do as we say, not as we do." History repeating itself, they're trying to get more customers to run what basically will amount to an extortion racket.

    • Re:Same ole, same ole ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by davester666 ( 731373 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @11:40PM (#48752175) Journal

      We just made a simple mistake. You did it on purpose!

      • Re:Same ole, same ole ... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @12:18AM (#48752295)

        I'd expect from a company that claims to be the crusader for copyright to understand it. Guess it either means that they themselves don't give a shit about what they claim to protect, they just want to milk it for money. Or even an expert on it can't understand it 'cause the friggin' crap is borked beyond repair.

        You decide.

        • I'd expect from a company that claims to be the crusader for copyright to understand it.

          The part they infringed upon is easy to understand (downloading and redistribution of stuff they find online, exactly what many lawsuits are fought over, and specifically what they always tell the public is not OK to do), so misunderstanding the matter is indeed not likely. So it's likely the first: they don't give a damn.

        • Re:Same ole, same ole ... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by jythie ( 914043 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @08:27AM (#48753593)
          Understanding and respecting the spit are two very different things. If you look at the various studios that are pushing hardline copyright enforcement, they generally have massive internal problems with copyright violations themselves. However they tend to have the legal staff to either buy off the offended party after the fact or run them into bankruptcy via the court system. They see copyright as THEIR tool to use against others, not something that has to be respected or followed when it come to peons. Very similiar to military power actually...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Altrag ( 195300 )

          I'm going to take some from column A.

          It might be hard to prove a copyright infringement to the level needed for prosecution based only on an IP address and a file name, but copyright infringement is boneheaded easy to "detect" if you're sitting there watching when it happens (and doubly so when you're causing it to happen.) You don't even need to be a lawyer to realize that "derp copying something without permission is infringing the copyright."

          The only times it would be even remotely questionable is if th

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            But flat out copying articles from webpages without explicit permission or even attribution is almost certainly not a grey area, no matter how basic your understanding of the law.

            There's also fair use/fair dealing which does allow some copyright infringement such as the quote of your copyrighted post above. A very gray area.
            Also our Conservative government recently was planning to amend the copyright act to allow more use of copyrighted material as they want to use stuff for their attack ads and the copyright holders were saying no so they were/are making it legal. This government is a law and order government and every time they get caught breaking the law, they change the law to m

    • Re:Same ole, same ole ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @12:05AM (#48752255)

      This [wired.com] is ten+ years old now, but Orrin Hatch is still a sitting senator. Good to remind ourselves stuff like this happened.

    • Or... They are trying to get themselves fined/punished which they intend to use as reference for suits brought forward by them...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, that is what happens if you let criminal organizations run the show....

  • Hypocrisy? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bhlowe ( 1803290 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @10:29PM (#48751863)
    Hypocrisy on the net, in politics, or in real life is about the most common "scandal" you can find. But its fun click-bait.

  • It's not copyright infringement... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Subm ( 79417 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @10:42PM (#48751919)

    "We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."

    • "We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."

      "We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."

      "We're okay. It's not copyright infringement. It's theft."

      Technically, it's not theft if he wrote all those articles himself.

      This kind of thing actually happens quite often. When a journalist is about to miss a deadline, he goes to a PR dept or an advocacy group. The PR department, which is staffed by former professional journalists (except that they're being paid far better than their counterpart), effectively write a unique article for the struggling journalist, and with a nudge and wink tell him or her, that he can just use the article in its entirety and take

      • And no, before someone says it, that kind of article can't look like it's just another press release with too many buzzwords.

        Are you joking, 95% of mass-media articles are rehashed/reprinted press releases from their sponsors, the other 5% are editorials extolling the virtues of the companies that provided the press release, that's how the news industry have always made their money - sponsors. However that does not give anyone the legal right to republish the full article from the media outlet, doing so is a clear case of infringement, actually it's willful infringement considering what he does for a living.

        The proper thing to

        • Re:It's not copyright infringement... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @06:24AM (#48753233)

          If Rupert had his way, supplying a link to one of his rehashed press releases would require a payment to him

          Spain is trying that out right as we speak. I'm gearing up to laugh heartily when that entire concept explodes spectacularly in their face, and they're forced to rescind their ridiculous laws.

          • Last I heard, it was already blowing up. Instead of rescinding the laws, however, they've doubled down and tried to make it mandatory for Google to link to them. In other words, they want to force Google to pay these sites and Google won't be able to drop them no matter what.

      • Re:It's not copyright infringement... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @03:42AM (#48752843)

        Technically, it's not theft if he wrote all those articles himself.

        Close, but not correct: "it's not 'theft' if he owned the copyright on those articles, or has a license to distribute them".

        Having written something yourself doesn't mean you own the copyright on it: e.g. if a journalist writes an article for the newspaper he works for, the copyright usually goes to the newspaper. Another situation where you may not distribute your own stuff, is if you write something, and then license it on exclusive basis to someone. Though in this case it may actually be breach of contract rather than breach of copyright.

        In both cases, however, the author should be very well aware of what he may or may not do with his own work.

  • once before when they first appreaed on the scene? Something to do with their website and the desing or something.

  • The copyrighted infringement items removed and links supplied.

    Less than a page of text it must of been a huge article with the infringements included.

    • Ha, wrong link I hit the third link which reported the infringements which itself has the links of quoted used.

      My bad, ignore

  • Headline vs. Summary (Score:4, Funny)

    by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @11:06PM (#48752039)
    "Caught in Infringement"

    "...may itself be engaged in copyright infringement..."

    I guess the headline was deemed to be more eye-grabby.

    • If it was a headline from them about someone they thought was infringing, do you think they'd worry about the niceties? It wouldn't be "alleged", or "may", it would be "Obvious Pirate is Pirating Content"

  • Welcome (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    to Quebec.
  • Surely this is "fair use" isn't it? ;-)

  • You wouldn't... (Score:4)

    by klingers48 ( 968406 ) on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @12:10AM (#48752269)
    ...Re-blog a handbag...

  • Revolving door criminals (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07, 2015 @12:38AM (#48752377)

    This isn't the first time canipre have been identified as "thieves":

    http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/05/15/2110243/anti-infringement-company-caught-infringing-on-its-website

    I believe it's time we throw the book at these commercial pirates. They clearly aren't learning from their mistakes!

  • Ok, there's a lot of nonsense on here about Hypocrisy... but I suspect he didn't even realize he was infringing.

    But there's still plenty of room for getting him good here. Often the people they claim are pirates don't know they're pirating either... but they don't think that's an excuse. And your grandma ends up torrenting that movie for 6 months and thousands of people download it... they think those are all violations as well.

    So Slashdot his site... hundreds of thousands of people read those "pirated" new

    • Ok, there's a lot of nonsense on here about Hypocrisy...but I suspect he didn't even realize he was infringing

      You're more trusting than I am. Grandma looks after 15 cats and writes the church newsletter, this guy runs a company that tracks down people on the internet and tales them to court for infringement. I (reasonably) suspect willful commercial infringement by someone who (IMO) has a broken moral compass and a natural talent for manipulating the justice system.

      BTW - It's true, "we're all hypocrites in our own way", but this arsehole's extreme sense of entitlement still gets up my nose.

      • I (reasonably) suspect willful commercial infringement by someone who (IMO) has a broken moral compass and a natural talent for manipulating the justice system.

        Not to mention a view of copyright that essentially says "Nobody can copy my stuff without my permission. Everyone else's stuff is fair game for me to copy, though, as I see fit."

    • I'm sorry, but I would like to stand in friendly relations to you but ratchet up the rhetoric where it needs to go on this kind of stuff.

      "...suspect he didn't even realize he was infringing". No. Just no. But before we get to the big ticket reason why, let's go to an extremely important edge case why.

      Look at YouTube. Look at the multi millions of things posted by random accounts. (Who really identifies with handles like grap3fruuit77 anyway?!) Account posts a song, let's say it's Justin Bieber, because th

  • I am shocked, shocked to find that copyright infringement is going on here!

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