Canadian Copyright Law Caps File-Sharing Lawsuits at $5000

Anti-Piracy laws in Canada have made the front page, much of it not so good, but some of it is reasonable. 


The Entertainment industries have again been trying to hammer down on the Pirating trolls. The Daily Dot reports that a Canadian "Forensic" Anti-Piracy firm called Canpire has provided evidence in the NGN Prima Productions case, in which NGN is trying to claim cash settlements from alleged sharers of its action movie "Recoil". So far, there have been 50-100 IP addresses that have been identified, and the company intends on pursing them. Canpire also threatens to ID a million more illegal downloaders in the future. Already a country where file-sharing is legal, on what grounds will these pirates be charged? and how accurate is the data retrieved by Canpire? 

Typical right? But what's new?

A new law called Bill C-11 has passed, which reforms digital copyright laws, particularly for pirated music/movies. The law would limit non-commercial cases of infringement to a maximum of $5000 and a minimum of $100. Notice the word "non-commercial", this means the 13 year olds downloading One-Direction songs aren't going to have to go to jail (possibly a bad thing? jk). Although this is much better than the U.S. maximum penalty which is at $150,000, people don't want to see a letter saying they are going to court for illegal or "negligent" downloading.

Not long after this law was passed, Voltage's case of suing pirates for sharing their movie "The Hurt Locker" has been abandoned. There was no statement given for the reason, but a good inference is that the new C-11 copyright reform will make the penalties not even worth pursuing. 

In my opinion, Bill C-11 seems to be pretty reasonable and deters both sides from their bad habits: Pirates getting their "free" content are going to be annoyed with court hearings and menial fines, and large entertainment corporations in the industry won't be getting large sums of money for suing teenagers on the internet. It's actually a phenomenon how much money entertainment companies make from suing, yet still claim ridiculously large net losses.

Consumer/Producer Attitudes still need to change, and we aren't close to a real compromise, but it's nice to finally see some a baby step toward an appropriate legal policy that puts a cap on frivolous piracy lawsuits.

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