The Author:
James Gannon is a lawyer at the firm McCarthy Tétrault. The views expressed here are his own.
Tag Archives: File sharing
Bill C-11, “Digital Locks”, and Copyright Reform: What Kind of Business Models Do We Want to Encourage?
Posted by on February 1, 2012
Many arguments over the merits of various copyright reform policies often devolve into a debate over competing “business models”. Copyright reform opponents and abolitionists often argue that amendments to copyright law “preserve outdated business models“, while supporters of progressive reforms argue that they are in fact required to protect emerging models of digital product distribution. [...]
Canadian Hosting Provider Cites Weak Copyright Law to Attract Pirate Websites
Posted by on January 4, 2012
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 [...]
Canadian BitTorrent Sites Dominate Rogue Website Lists in SOPA Submissions
Posted by on November 17, 2011
Yesterday, hearings began in the United States House of Representatives on H.R. 3261, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA). Witnesses from the U.S. Library of Congress, Pfizer, the MPAA, MasterCard and the AFL-CIO all voiced support for the Act, which would give judges injunction-granting powers against ISPs to block rogue piracy websites similar to the [...]
Hadopi Issues 18 Month Report
Posted by on October 18, 2011
Hadopi, the French independent government authority in charge of administering France’s graduated response law (often referred to also as “Hadopi”) has issued an 18 month report outlining the progress of the organization’s mission of educating French Internet users and diverting them to legal sources of online digital content. Both a long and short version of [...]
Getting it Right with Cyberlockers and Safe Harbours
Posted by on August 30, 2011
Michael Robertson runs a pair of websites that are clearly designed to help users build libraries of illegally copied music files. Of course, his websites don’t fly pirate flags on the front page or openly mock content owners who ask that their works be taken down like The Pirate Bay, but expert witnesses in his website’s [...]
U.S. ISPs and Content Providers Introduce Copyright Alert System
Posted by on July 7, 2011
Some of the largest American movie, music, television studios have reached a framework agreement with the leading U.S. ISPs on the implementation of a “Copyright Alert System” which would notify ISP subscribers of instances where their Internet account is being used to download illegal content. The agreement also contemplates sanctions against Internet accounts that repeatedly ignore such warnings [...]
Swedish Copyright Reform Proves Ability to Deter
Posted by on June 16, 2011
Last year, I wrote about the remarkable turnaround in Sweden, from a country known as a home and host to many digital piracy websites and their users, to a country at the forefront of copyright reform and, consequently, revitalized cultural industry sales. I noted that this turnaround was likely due to a combination of copyright reforms, [...]
Details emerge on new Dutch copyright law
Posted by on April 12, 2011
Some English-language details are beginning to surface regarding a letter sent by the Dutch Undersecretary of Justice, Fred Teeven, to the Dutch Parliament on the subject of upcoming copyright reforms in the Netherlands. According to a couple of sources, the new Dutch copyright law could contain: Measures to make downloading music and movies for personal use an [...]
Fighting Mobile App Piracy With Shameware
Posted by on April 6, 2011
Piracy of mobile applications is becoming a rising problem for the nascent mobile app development industry. In particular on the Android platform, where the piracy rate for paid apps varies between 43% and 95%, developers are increasingly turning to device manufacturers seeking additional technological protections to abate this activity. It seems like the frustrated developers [...]
Notice and Notice: Rogers’ Numbers Don’t Add Up
Posted by on March 29, 2011
Last week, representatives from Telus Communications, Rogers Communications and Bell Canada testified in what became the penultimate hearing of the Bill C-32 Parliamentary Committee . The hearing focussed on evidence from the ISPs on the effectiveness of the notice-and-notice system (N&N), which would have been codified in Bill C-32. Only one of the ISPs, Rogers, [...]
