James Gannon's IP Blog

There has been a lot of press lately in the U.S. about their proposed IP enforcement law, the Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”). As I previously noted, when creator groups were asked which websites they intended to target with SOPA’s site-blocking provisions, the groups were clear that legitimate online businesses would be unaffected by the new law. Instead, they provided detailed lists of “rogue” wealth-destroying websites, which include a number of Canadian-hosted BitTorrent websites.

Investigating a little further into how these BitTorrent websites are operated shows that it’s no coincidence they chose Canada as a base of operation.

For instance, consider Torrentz.eu, which was ranked last year as the 2nd most popular BitTorrent site in the world, edging out fellow Canadian-based IsoHunt. Both the motion picture industry and the recording industry mentioned Torrentz.eu as a target site for SOPA enforcement. The website is hosted by a company called Amanah, which operates here in Toronto, about a block away from my office.

It’s not hard to see what made Torrentz.eu choose Amanah as its web host. In fact, Amanah seems to tout Canada’s weak copyright laws as a selling feature of its hosting services, promising pirate websites that they won’t be hassled if they host their sites on Amanah’s Toronto-based servers.

For instance, in the Overview page of its website, Amanah notes as one of the 3 key features the fact that it operates in a “DMCA-Free Zone”:

Why Choose Toronto Dedicated Server Hosting at 151 Front Street West?

151 Front Street West is the carrier hotel of choice for more than 150 telecommunications companies – and it’s easy to see why:

• 9 unique fiber optic networks with more than 7000 strands of fiber optic cable.
• 25 diverse entrances.
• Located within a DMCA Freezone.

On the Location page, it again repeats the fact that it is located in a “DMCA Free-Zone”:

Why Choose Amanah?

• Quality Enterprise Dell Servers
• Quality 151 Front Street Location
• Quality 100Mbps Bandwidth Included
• DMCA Free-Zone
• Canadian & USA IP(s)
• Dedicated KVM Virtual Media Features

Even on the main page of its website, Amanah boasts one of its key selling features that hosted websites will enjoy “no more fighting with DMCA restrictions”. Under US copyright law, copyright owners may send DMCA takedown requests to websites or web hosts that make their content available without authorization. The websites and web hosts must then either take the content down or send a counter-notification to the copyright owner.

Amanah’s business model seems to be to use its Canadian location to entice American websites that face a high volume of DMCA takedown requests to relocate to Canada where Amanah will refuse to forward takedown requests to the websites. Current Canadian law does not require websites and web hosts to take down infringing content upon notice, as is the case in the US and the EU under what is known as “notice-and-takedown” systems.

Bill C-11, the Canadian Copyright Amendment Act, would do little to change the situation for Amanah and its “rogue” site customers. Bill C-11 would introduce a “notice-and-notice” rather than “notice-and-takedown” system into Canadian copyright law, which would require a web host to simply forward notices of infringement to websites that host infringing content. There would be no direct consequence under Bill C-11′s notice-and-notice system if a hosting company like Amanah or a website like Torrentz.eu fails to take down any infringing content even after thousands of such notices have been received. Little wonder that Canada continues to have a reputation as a haven for these wealth-destroying websites.