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Federal Court of Appeal Court Upholds Canadian Pirate Site Blocking OrderErnesto Van der Sar, 26 May 10:02 PM In 2018, Canada's Federal Court approv

Federal Court of Appeal Court Upholds Canadian Pirate Site Blocking Order Ernesto Van der Sar, 26 May 10:02 PM In 2018, Canada's Federal Court approved the country's first pirate site-blocking order. Following a complaint from major media companies Rogers, Bell and TVA, the Court ordered several major ISPs to block access to the domains and IP-addresses of pirate IPTV service GoldTV. There was little opposition from Internet providers, except for TekSavvy, which quickly announced that it would appeal the ruling. The blocking injunction threatens the open Internet to advance the interests of a few powerful media conglomerates, the company said. Soon after, the landmark case also drew the interest of several third parties. There were copyright holder groups that argued in favor of site blocking, but also the Canadian domain registry (CIRA) and the University of Ottowa's legal clinic CIPPIC, which both oppose the blocking order. Appeal Dismissed In March the Federal Court of Appeal heard arguments from both sides and today Justice George R. Locke issued the final judgment, which dismisses the appeal. In a 42-page reasoning, Justice Locke considers whether the Federal Court has the power to grant a blocking order, if that order violates freedom of expression, and whether it is just and equitable. On all issues the Court sides with the copyright holders. Copyright Act TekSavvy argued that site-blocking shouldn't be used as a remedy because it isn't specifically mentioned in the Copyright Act carefully constructed in Parliament. Copyright holders should rely on the notice-and-notice system instead. However, Justice Locke disagrees. "The fact that Parliament has put in place a regime to notify an alleged copyright infringer that its activities have come to the attention of the copyright owner does not suggest that this represents a limit on the remedies to which the copyright owner is entitled," the reasoning reads. According to the Court, there is no doubt that the GoldTV Service infringes the plaintiffs' copyrights. And after an injunction against the service itself failed to have any effect, a site-blocking injunction is warranted. Net Neutrality TekSavvy also argued that site-blocking would violate net neutrality. According to the Telecommunications Act, ISPs are not allowed to control or influence the content on their network without approval from the CRTC. Again, the Federal Court of Appeal sees things differently. "In my view, the general wording of section 36 of the Telecommunications Act does not displace the Federal Court's equitable powers of injunction, including the power to impose a site-blocking order," Justice Locke writes. The reasoning clarifies that TekSavvy isn't "controlling or influencing" anything when it complies with a court order. On the contrary, it is being controlled or influenced by the order. Freedom of Expression The freedom of expression defenses didn't fare much better. The Court of Appeal sees no errors in the original verdict and concludes that this factor was sufficiently considered. This includes any potential over-blocking problems that may occur. TekSavvy's arguments that the blocking order not 'just and equitable' were dismissed as well. This includes the burden that a constant stream of blocking amendments and dozens of new blocking cases will cause. Justice Locke agrees that problems may eventually arise in the future, but these will be dealt with then. They are no reason to deny the blocking order. Finally, the Federal Court of Appeal wasn't receptive to the suggestion that copyright holders should consider other non-blocking options first, such as seeking help from Cloudflare or payment providers. There is no basis to conclude that these options would be effective, according to the Court. All in all, Justice Locke concludes that the appeal should be dismissed and Justices Nadon and LeBlanc concur. "Having found no error in the Judge's conclusion that the Federal Court has the power to grant a site-blocking order, and having likewise found no error in his analysis of the applicable legal test, I conclude that this Court should not interfere with the Judge's decision," Justice Locke writes. Update: Responses The Canadian domain registry CIRA, which intervened in this case, is disappointed with the outcome. "Many Canadians will be disappointed by today's ruling," CIRA president and CEO, Byron Holland says. "While it is important to underline that the court did not open the door for ISPs to block of their own volition, we believe fundamentally that there are more proportionate responses to copyright infringement than the GoldTV precedent prescribes." From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Comcast Subscriber Receives DMCA Notice for Downloading Ubuntu Andy Maxwell, 26 May 11:41 AM Two decades ago, the BitTorrent protocol revolutionized peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing. The content-agnostic system allowed people to efficiently share and download even the largest files and soon grew to become the dominant method of transfer for millions of file-sharers. Over the years, people have shared all kinds of content using torrents and it quickly became associated with mass copyright infringement of movies, TV shows, music and everything in between. However, BitTorrent is also used to distribute large volumes of data with the blessing of rightsholders, with the sharing of Linux distros a prime example. Indeed, large companies such as Ubuntu owner Canonical actively encourage the distribution of their packages via BitTorrent, even going as far as operating their own tracker. This is effectively a green light for users to obtain Ubuntu using BitTorrent and is universally considered to be entirely safe. However, a development yesterday caused mass confusion when a user was accused of copyright infringement via a notice from his ISP. Anti-Piracy Firm Sends DMCA Notice Against Comcast User Posting to Reddit's /r/linux sub-Reddit, a forum with more than 656K subscribers, 'NateNate60' reported the unthinkable. After downloading an official Ubuntu ISO package (filename ubuntu-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.iso) he says he received a notice from Comcast's Infinity claiming that he'd been reported for copyright infringement. "We have received a notification by a copyright owner, or its authorized agent, reporting an alleged infringement of one or more copyrighted works made on or over your Xfinity Internet service," the posted notice reads. NateNate60 wisely redacted the notice to remove the 'Incident Number' and the precise time of the alleged infringement to protect his privacy but the clam was reported filed with Comcast on May 24, 2021. "The copyright owner has identified the IP address associated with your Xfinity Internet account at the time as the source of the infringing works," it continues, adding that NateNate60 should search all of his devices connected to his network and delete the files mentioned in the complaint. Detail of the Allegedly-Infringing Content and DMCA Notice The allegedly infringing content is the 64-bit Ubuntu 20.04.2.0 LTS release but the first big question is whether the file is actually the official release from Canonical. Given that the listed hash value is 4ba4fbf7231a3a660e86892707d25c135533a16a and that matches the hash of the official release, mislabeled or misidentified content (wrong hash, mislabeled file etc) appears to be ruled out. Indeed, the same hash value is listed on Ubuntu's very own BitTorrent tracker and according to NateNate60, this is where he downloaded the torrent that led to the DMCA notice. It doesn't get much more official than that. According to the DMCA notice sent by Comcast, the complainant wasn't Ubuntu/Canonical but an anti-piracy company called OpSec Security, which according to its imprint is based in Germany. TorrentFreak has contacted OpSec for a comment on the DMCA notice but at the time of writing the company is yet to respond. Implications of the DMCA Notice It is certainly possible for someone to fake a DMCA notice (and also cause outrage by choosing controversial content such as Ubuntu) so we have also contacted Canonical for its take on the claims being made. While we wait for the company to weigh in, it seems possible that this is some kind of error, one that could be easily triggered by someone cutting-and-pasting the wrong hash value into a BitTorrent monitoring system. That being said, there can be consequences even when erroneous DMCA notices aren't properly handled. Presuming the notice is genuine (albeit sent in error), Comcast needs to be informed that mistakes have been made. The ISP has a repeat infringer policy and given the current hostile environment, terminating users is certainly on the agenda. Indeed, the notice states just that. "We remind you that use of our service in any manner that constitutes an infringement of any copyrighted work is a violation of Comcast's DMCA Policy and may result in the suspension or termination of your service and account," it warns. Arguably unwisely, however, NateNate60 says he isn't going to take the matter up with Comcast. "I really don't want to risk them shutting off my Internet access over this stupid thing so I'm probably just going to ignore it," he wrote on Reddit. Again, we need to wait for responses from OpSec and Ubuntu explaining why this notice was sent but not contesting an erroneous DMCA notice has implications. For example, should NateNate60 suddenly get another couple of similar notices (regardless of whether they are genuine or sent in error), Comcast may feel that in order to retain its safe harbor under the DMCA, terminating the account might be its only option. At that point the damage has been done and it could prove even more difficult to get the account reinstated. Also, if this notice is indicative of a broader issue, it seems unlikely that NateNate60 will be the only recipient of a 'strike' against his account for downloading/sharing official Ubuntu torrents. Raising the issue quickly will allow the parties to see what went wrong here (if that's indeed the case) and prevent it from happening again. We'll update this post when Canonical and OpSec Security respond to our requests for comment. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©2021 TorrentFreak | Office 21338 PO Box 4336 Manchester, North West M61 0BW United Kingdom Web Version   Preferences   Forward   Unsubscribe     Powered by Mad Mimi®A GoDaddy® company