The phenomenon of the movie and music industries making money from suing Internet pirates is far more common in the U.S. than in Canada.
But one man says he’s about to change that.
Barry Logan, managing director of the anti-piracy company Canipre, said he can identify the Internet protocol (IP) addresses of a million Canadians who illegally downloaded copyrighted movies, the Vancouver Sun reported Tuesday..
“The door is closing. People should think twice about downloading content they know isn’t proper,” Logan said.
He’s riding momentum from a case last week in which a movie company convinced a court to force Internet service providers to name 50 people accused of downloading Recoil, a 2011 movie starring Steve Austin and Danny Trejo. Now that they’ve been identified, Recoil’s production company plans to sue them for statutory damages.
However, the stakes in such suits are much lower in Canada than in the U.S. Stateside, it’s possible to be sued for, say, $675,000 for pirating 30 songs—but they play a different ballgame up north. According to famed Canadian copyright expert Michael Geist:
[R]ecent changes to Canadian copyright law limit liability in non-commercial cases to a maximum of $5,000 for all infringement claims. In fact, it is likely that a court would award far less—perhaps as little as $100.
Still, no one wants to see any letter saying they’re being taken to court for illegal downloading. Especially considering that in the U.S., at least, such cases often falsely flag innocent people as pirates, and ask them for a settlement fee anyway.
Logan said his case is branching from Canadian companies’ tendency to prosecute piracy of content aimed at young folks.
“I don’t think we have to limit this to just teenagers downloading Justin Bieber’s last record,” he said. “We represent a lot of mature titles that would be of interest to the 30/40/50 crowd.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story implied that Canipre files lawsuits on behalf of copyright holders. In fact, the firm provides evidence for such lawsuits and works with public law enforcement.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons
