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Thursday October 10, 2013 |
Industry Canada and Canadian Heritage launched a consultation
yesterday on the rules associated with the Internet service provider
notice-and-notice system that was established in Bill C-11, the
copyright reform bill enacted in June 2012. Responses to the
consultation are due by November 8, 2013. Most of the bill took effect
in November 2012, but the government delayed implementation of the ISP
rules, with expectation of a consultation and regulations to follow. It
has taken nearly a full year, but the consultation was sent to
undisclosed stakeholders with the promise to bring the notice-and-notice
system into effect "in the near future."
The notice-and-notice system allows copyright owners to send
infringement notices to ISPs, who will be legally required to forward
the notification to their subscribers. If an ISP fails to forward the
notifications, it must explain why or face the prospect of damages that
run as high as $10,000. ISPs must also retain information on the
subscriber for six months (or 12 months if court proceedings are
launched). Copyright owners may also send notifications to search
engines, who must remove content that has been removed from the original
source within 30 days. The notices must meet a prescribed form that
includes details on the sender, the copyright works and the alleged
infringement.
Despite some expectation that the consultation would place several
issues on the table - form issues for notices, data retention, and costs
for notices among them - the language used in the consultation letter
suggests that the government is likely to simply bring the rules as
articulated in the law into effect with no further regulations at all.
It states:
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Friday June 14, 2013 |
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Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore tabled the WIPO Internet Treaties (the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO
Performances and Phonograms Treaty) earlier this week in the House of
Commons, starting the process of Canadian ratification of the treaties.
The move does not come as a surprise since Bill C-11, which received
royal assent just over one year ago, was designed to bring ensure
Canadian law conformed to the treaty requirements. While there were some suggestions that the next step is formal notification with WIPO in Geneva, there are actually several steps required in Canada that will likely mean the treaties won't be in force in Canada until early 2014 (I wrote about the treaty ratification process in 2008). First, the treaties are subject to a waiting period of 21
sitting days. During that period, MPs may debate the treaties in the
House, raise questions, or bring motions related to the treaty. The 21
sitting day period started on June 12th. Since the House is scheduled to
break for the summer next week, the period will not be completed until
the first week of October. Once this process is completed, the Minister
of Foreign Affairs may then seek legal authority, through an Order in
Council, for Canada to prepare instruments of ratification of the two
treaties. Once the instruments of ratification are deposited with WIPO,
there is a further three month delay from the date of deposit.
c-11, copyright, ratification, wct, wipo, wppt Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareFriday June 14, 2013 |
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Tuesday December 11, 2012 |
Given recent reports that a Montreal-based company has captured data on
one
million Canadians who it says have engaged in unauthorized file
sharing, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before
widespread file sharing lawsuits came to Canada. It now appears that
those lawsuits are one step closer as TekSavvy, a leading independent
ISP, has announced that it has received a motion seeking the names and contact information of thousands of customers (legal documents here).
To TekSavvy's credit, the company insists that it will not provide
subscriber information without a court order and it has sent notices to
affected customers.
The notifications have generated considerable online discussion with some recipients indicating that they have been wrongly targeted. Others wonder what comes next. As I suggested in my posts on this issue, the next steps likely include the following:
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Tuesday December 04, 2012 |
The Canadian Internet community has been buzzing for the past week over
reports that a Montreal-based company has captured data on one million
Canadians who it says have engaged in unauthorized file sharing. While
that represents a relatively small percentage of Internet users in
Canada, the possibility of hundreds of thousands of lawsuits over
alleged copyright infringement would be unprecedented and raise a host
of legal and policy issues.
My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes the prospect of mass lawsuits will be of particular interest to the
federal government, which just completed a major round of copyright
reforms. The new copyright bill established a cap on damages that was
explicitly designed to dissuade would-be litigants from targeting
individuals. In fact, during hearings into the copyright reform bill,
Members of Parliament were given assurances that the industry had no
desire to launch file sharing lawsuits.
c-11, copyright, file sharing, statutory damages Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareTuesday December 04, 2012 |
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