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    Default Court orders Canadian Internet service to name illegal downloaders

    For all you that illegally download movies.

    http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/ca...422/story.html


    A Canadian Internet service provider has been ordered to hand over the names and addresses of about 2,000 customers who allegedly downloaded movies online.

    A Federal Court decision released Thursday compels Ontario-based TekSavvy to identify the customers allegedly linked to downloads of films by the U.S. production company Voltage Pictures, which is behind the likes of "The Hurt Locker," "Dallas Buyers Club" and "Don Jon."

    As a result, those TekSavvy customers could eventually receive a letter from Voltage threatening legal action. Under the federal Copyright Act, statutory damages for non-commercial infringement range between $100 and $5,000.

    "It's going to be up to the courts to decide what the appropriate penalty is," said Voltage's lawyer James Zibarras, who called the court decision "great" and "well balanced."

    "I think to date rightsholders' interests have been ignored and really what this does is adjust the pendulum a bit.

    "Obviously the public has almost become accustomed to downloading movies for free and it's being done on a massive scale. And of course the public loves justifying what they're doing and when someone tries to stop it they invariably want to come up with arguments as to why it should not be stopped."

    But while the court sided with Voltage's efforts to go after copyright violators, it sought to protect against the company acting "inappropriately in the enforcement of its rights to the detriment of innocent Internet users."

    "On the facts of this case, there is some evidence that Voltage has been engaged in litigation which may have an improper purpose. However, the evidence is not sufficiently compelling for this court at this juncture in the proceeding to make any definitive determination of the motive of Voltage," wrote judge Kevin Aalto.

    Aalto ordered that before Voltage can send a letter to the alleged downloaders, it must return to court to get the wording of its communications cleared by a case management judge.

    "In order to ensure there is no inappropriate language in any demand letter sent to the alleged infringers, the draft demand letter will be provided to the court for review," Aalto wrote.

    "Any correspondence sent by Voltage to any subscriber shall clearly state in bold type that no court has yet made a determination that such subscriber has infringed or is liable in any way for payment of damages."

    Voltage was also ordered to pay any costs that TekSavvy incurs in identifying the customers in the case, as well as legal fees.

    The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, which had intervenor status in the case, said it was "quite pleased" with the decision and expected Voltage wouldn't see any financial incentive in going after downloaders, particularly since it must pay TekSavvy's "substantial" costs.

    CIPPIC director David Fewer said his read of the decision is that the court would not be eager to assign penalties at the higher range of what the Copyright Act allows.

    "If Voltage is asking for figures in excess of ($100) I think the court is going to shut them down pretty darn quickly," Fewer said.

    "And if that's the case I think Voltage is done because this is no longer a viable business model. And that's what the whole copyright troll thing is about, it's about using the court process to get settlements that are in excess of what you could get for (actual) damages to scare people into settling."

    Fewer said he was happy that the court will vet any letters that Voltage sends to alleged copyright offenders, since they're typically designed to scare people into settling a case.

    "A lot of people just pay the settlement rather than deal with the uncertainty and the anxiety of the claim — and the model is predicated on that," he said.

    "Certain people are risk averse and it's cheaper to settle rather than to hire a lawyer to deal with it, even if you are innocent."

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    Nothing will happen. Just a scare tactic and there are tons of ways to mask and hide your actual informaiton.

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    Originally posted by firebane
    Nothing will happen. Just a scare tactic and there are tons of ways to mask and hide your actual informaiton.
    How many people actually do it though?

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    Originally posted by firebane
    Nothing will happen. Just a scare tactic and there are tons of ways to mask and hide your actual informaiton.
    Did you read the article? They have ip addresses of illegal downloaders and teksavvy is being forced to give the names matching to the ip addresses.

    It's a little late for hiding your info.

    On the flip side, it will be hard to prove they actually downloaded. I would just factory reset my router and keep wireless unlocked for a while if this ever happened to me.

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    Originally posted by sabad66
    Did you read the article? They have ip addresses of illegal downloaders and teksavvy is being forced to give the names matching to the ip addresses.

    It's a little late for hiding your info.

    On the flip side, it will be hard to prove they actually downloaded. I would just factory reset my router and keep wireless unlocked for a while if this ever happened to me.
    You can fuck your router up however much you want, but it'll cost you more $ to fight them in legal fees than for the settlement. And if you do lose, it'll be a lot more expensive than your settlement, which is why the courts are treading carefully to ensure that it's not going to be abused in the future like the US lawsuits with the shitty porn.

    But hey, if the penalty is only $100, it's well worth it right? haha
    Originally posted by SEANBANERJEE
    I have gone above and beyond what I should rightfully have to do to protect my good name

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    Originally posted by rage2

    You can fuck your router up however much you want, but it'll cost you more $ to fight them in legal fees than for the settlement. And if you do lose, it'll be a lot more expensive than your settlement, which is why the courts are treading carefully to ensure that it's not going to be abused in the future like the US lawsuits with the shitty porn.

    But hey, if the penalty is only $100, it's well worth it right? haha
    I always think back to those cases a few years ago where 15 year old kids in the US were getting $50k bills in the mail.

    If it's just a $100 then definitely not worth it. I guess I need to take my own advice and read the article myself

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    Originally posted by rage2

    You can fuck your router up however much you want, but it'll cost you more $ to fight them in legal fees than for the settlement.
    Isn't it small claims court because the max is $5k? Couldn't you just self-represent? If 2000 people decided to self represent in court, that seems like it would be significantly more in lawyers fees then it would be worth for the company.

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    I have read previous letters they sent and there is usually a request to not delete any data and they will have it forensics go through your drive if it goes to court.

    So just use an SSD drive that supports TRIM. You can't recover deleted files off of it. Get the letter, delete the files. Evidence gone.

    There are known issues with the 3rd party they used to collect the ips, their gathering methods have identified printers as torrenting before so if you go to court they will likely need corroborating evidence.

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    TekSavvy? Aren't those the guys that used Georges Laraque for that ridiculous commercial? TekSavvyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

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    The morality play for the provider.

    Just like the bankers, do you side with the courts and give out the information, or do you simply have a catastrophic failure in your IP logging server, protecting your customers.

    Bankers will almost always side with the customers unless they are faced with real jailtime. Bankers know very well that one you bow $1 to a lawsuit over a customer, the lawyers will be back for billions the next day, and for the rest of your life.

    I'd expect the provider to consider who is actually paying the bills, and who you side with in the long run may just end up throwing more litigation at them. If you have any brains at all, you can see which side is by far the more important side.

    The choice is clear from my perspective. Whooops, I dropped the IP logger... Oh well, cannot comply due to incompetence. Sue me for incompetence I guess.

    In short: The customer is always right, the lawyers are always wrong. Mess with that and your company won't be alive long.
    Last edited by ZenOps; 02-21-2014 at 07:31 PM.

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    If I download the movie, delete the torrent, watch the movie and delete it right away, am I safe?
    Originally posted by GTS Jeff
    You know those bored stay at home moms who's entire lives revolve around driving their kids to soccer, various cleaning accessories, and worrying about neighbourhood rapists? The kind of people that watch the View and go "uh huh..." Those unfulfilled people who try to fill the void in their empty lives by writing whiny letters to the editor complaining about shit that no one really cares about?

    Well imagine if instead of writing that letter to the editor, she just posts on a car forum for car enthusiasts. That's Kritafo.

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    Originally posted by dj_rice
    If I download the movie, delete the torrent, watch the movie and delete it right away, am I safe?
    I really doubt they care. Like Rage said, they want just the IP to trace back to a legal entity to file a lawsuit to.

    Anything else after that is just you mounting a defense which will cost you more than the settlement in our legal system.

    You can say you don't have it.
    You can say someone stole your wifi.
    You can say whatever you want.

    You just have to pay some lawyer 100hr or waste your own time in court to defend it.

    Or just pay $100 if that's what the studio is asking for. We won't get screwed like the US but expect more studios to do this to increase revenue.
    Last edited by Xtrema; 02-22-2014 at 12:51 PM.

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    I look forward to seeing what Anonymous does to the servers and data of the companies involved in this....

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    Originally posted by Xtrema


    I really doubt they care. Like Rage said, they want just the IP to trace back to a legal entity to file a lawsuit to.

    Anything else after that is just you mounting a defense which will cost you more than the settlement in our legal system.

    You can say you don't have it.
    You can say someone stole your wifi.
    You can say whatever you want.

    You just have to pay some lawyer 100hr or waste your own time in court to defend it.

    Or just pay $100 if that's what the studio is asking for. We won't get screwed like the US but expect more studios to do this to increase revenue.
    Maybe. But at 100 bucks a pop they won't make much after legal fees. Will likely loose money.

    I think they will ask the court to send $5000 letters, will get told no. And ask for a different number and back and forth. Its a range so they will have to look at what justifies the max penalty. Certainly a person seeding for 30 minutes while they download is not the same as a guy who seeds 10 movies for a month.

    Will be interesting to see what the court says they can ask for and if the number will vary from person to person depending on what other info they have aside from an ip.

    You could just limit your client to one upload client per torrent and set your seed ratio to 0 so it stops sharing once the movie is downloaded. They catch you by downloading a small bit of the torrent you have up and run a hash check on it. If you are not seeding they can't get that from you.

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    .
    Last edited by Cos; 12-28-2016 at 09:26 PM.
    Originally posted by adam c

    Line goes up, line goes down, line does squiggly things and fucks Alberta
    "The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones"

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    What's this "seeding" you guys speak of?
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    Originally posted by Cos
    i have no basis for my opinion but I don't think they care. I've heard some people claim they only seed while downloading and still get a letter. Chances off getting caught would increase over time but I don't think penalties will change.
    Voltage certainly does not care but the courts will. The law has a range, and my guess would be if voltage can't show how long a person was seeding and to how many people the court will likely err on the side of caution and green light the minimum $100 fines.

    And if that happens I don't think voltage will pursue it.

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    Pay ~40$ for a terabyte of news groups with SSL encryption and never worry about receiving letters. Problem solved. No seeding, always max download speeds even for new uploads.

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    Originally posted by pheoxs
    Pay ~40$ for a terabyte of news groups with SSL encryption and never worry about receiving letters. Problem solved. No seeding, always max download speeds even for new uploads.
    $40/TB seems high, no?

    Most people pay $10-11/mo for unlimited SSL encrypted DL at 100% of their internet bandwidth. I don't know why everyone doesn't do this, it is so far superior to torrents there is no comparison, and encrypted with the same method as downloading a bank statement.

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    Originally posted by Mitsu3000gt


    $40/TB seems high, no?

    Most people pay $10-11/mo for unlimited SSL encrypted DL at 100% of their internet bandwidth. I don't know why everyone doesn't do this, it is so far superior to torrents there is no comparison, and encrypted with the same method as downloading a bank statement.
    That's for a block account non expiring, I typically only use a terabyte a year so for me it's 4$ a month with ssl. For my usage it makes more sense to stick to block accounts over unlimited monthly ones.

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