Piracy Archives

Why is the EU asking the ECJ to review ACTA and does it matter?

Last week the European Commissioner for Trade, Karel De Gucht, released a statement announcing that the EU will refer the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The ECJ will be asked to assess whether ACTA is incompatible – in any way – with the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and information or data protection and the right to property in case of intellectual property.

What reason did the Commissioner give to explain the referral to the ECJ?…

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Keeping The Pirate Bays at Bay: using blocking orders to curtail infringements

The UK High Court appears likely to order UK ISPs to block the notorious BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bay. In the just released opinion in the Dramatico Entertainment Ltd & Ors v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd & Ors [2012] EWHC 268 (Ch) (20 February 2012) case, Justice Arnold ruled that users of the site as well as its operators infringe copyright. Users who download copies of sound recordings violate the right of reproduction. Users who make sound recordings available for downloading make them available to the public and are liable for communicating the sound recordings to the public.…

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Reining in the rhetoric on copyright reform

This blog post is a longer version of the article entitled This Bill is no SOPA published in the Financial Post today.

While recent attempts by the usual suspects making hysterical predictions about copyright reform in Canada have been ratcheted up yet again, this time the claims are so outrageous that they can perhaps best be described as having “jumped the shark”. Canadians are being told that Bill C-11, an act to amend Canada’s outdated copyright law, could be used to shut down popular web sites like YouTube, fundamentally change the Internet, sabotage online freedoms, and hog-tie innovators.…

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Do linking sites infringe copyright?

A UK judged ruled on Friday that the 23 year operator of the TVShack.net linking website could be extradited to the US to face a trial for alleged criminal copyright infringement. In rendering the decision the UK court made some important findings about the scope of UK copyright law. They included the ruling that organizing and providing hyperlinks to infringing content from a linking website can infringe the making available right.

The accused, Richard O’Dwyer, owned and operated the site that offered to the public free downloading and/or streaming of thousands of copyrighted movies and television programs, without authorization from the copyright holders.…

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Copyright law 2011 –the year in review in Canada and around the world

Yesterday, I gave a talk at the Law Society of Upper Canada’s 16th Annual Intellectual Property Law: The Year in Review program. My talk canvassed developments in copyright in 2011. My slides are shown below. The associated paper prepared in collaboration with Glen Bloom, with the help of others, is available here.

My slides and/or the paper summarize the following copyright cases from Canada, the USA, UK and Europe:

CANADA

Re: Sound v Motion Picture Theatre Association of Canada 2011 FCA 70

Reference re Broadcasting Act 2011 FCA 64

Crookes v. …

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Canada is market for TPM trafficking and bittorrent indexing sites says USTR report

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) issued a Special 301 Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets. In the review, the USTR identified markets that typify the problem of marketplaces that deal in goods and services that infringe on intellectual property rights and help to sustain global piracy and counterfeiting. Canada was listed in several of these markets.

According to the USTR “The scale and popularity of these markets can cause economic harm to U.S. and other IP right holders. …

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Hyperlinking and ISP liability clarified by Supreme Court in Crookes case

The Supreme Court released its reasons in Crookes v. Newton 2011 SCC 47 yesterday. The legal issue in the appeal was whether hyperlinks that connect to allegedly defamatory material can be said to “publish” that material. The majority of the Court concluded that a hyperlink, by itself, should never be seen as “publication” of the content to which it refers. Although the case dealt mainly with that issue the Court gave expansive reasons which will have significant impacts on future cases involving Internet defamation, freedom of expression on the Internet, and the liability of ISPs for dissemination of defamatory or infringing content.…

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Copyright Bill C-11 gets second reading in the House of Commons

Yesterday Bill C-11 was given second reading in the House of Commons. The statements by the Government and opposition parties can be found here.

For the record, Industry Minister Christian Paradis said the following in speaking about the Bill in the House:

Mr. Speaker, as you know, this is the second time that the government has introduced this bill. During the previous Parliament and for almost a year, the Copyright Modernization Act—then known as Bill C-32—was carefully examined and debated by parliamentarians and stakeholders.

…

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Belgium ISPs ordered to block The Pirate Bay

On September 26, 2011, the Antwerp Court of Appeal ordered two Belgium ISPs to block The Pirate Bay. The ISPs, Telenet and Belgacom, were ordered to implement DNS blocking on 11 domains to do this.

The legal basis for the order was Article art. 87, §1, al.2 of the Belgian Copyright Act. This provision transposes Article 8(3) of the EU InfoSoc Directive 2001/29/CE. This Article provides that

“Member States shall ensure that rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe a copyright or related right.”

…

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Some observations on Bill C-11: The Copyright Modernization Act

Last Thursday the Government of Canada introduced into the House of Commons Bill C-11, an Act to Amend the Copyright Act. In a press release describing the Bill, Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Christian Paradis, stated that the Bill will ensure that Canada’s copyright laws “are modern, flexible, and in line with current international standards” and will “protect and help create jobs, promote innovation, and attract new investment to Canada.”

In the press conference announcing the Bill at the Ottawa office of software producer bitHeads Inc.,…

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