Copyright laws: Canada, DRM, and our case

Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 3:05 am

In a time where the laws become increasingly anti-consumer, copyrights are being extended for eternity. As a Canadian, my hope is that we don't make the same mistakes with copyright laws as the US did in this internet age.

In the midst of copyright reforms in Canada, it's nice that a large ISP like Telus is giving a counterpoint against those from the entertainment industry. In particular, I find this excerpt from Telus' letter most resounding:

Telus wrote:

The letter expands on the issue of the "Notice and Notice" regime. "This made-in-Canada regime has proven to be the most practically effective approach to addressing the vast majority of online copyright infringing activity (i.e. through P2P file-sharing.) In addition, appropriate, reasonable ISP compensation for administering the Notice and Notice regime will impart important and necessary discipline on the system, thereby ensuring its continued effectiveness and success by discouraging the voluminous level of automated, illegitimate and time-wasting claims which US ISPs have complained about for some time and which Canadian ISPs are increasingly facing."

We have dealt with requests from many copyright owners. Some cooperates with us as per our copyright policy, while some are... well, spammers. The kind that sends over 200 takedown requests to us and our upstream ISP in a day, with 1 item in each email which are so obviously auto generated. We can't ignore them because our US based ISP are legally required to take action if we don't. Needless to say, the laws and the copyright takedown process is broken in the US.

An amusing snippet from one of our responses to a copyright agent:

We wrote:

We invite you to review the information contained within our copyright policy[1]. The reason for us refering you to this policy is probably because the email you have sent us does not contain information necessary for us to take appropriate action.

...

Unless UMG has recently become the intellectual owner of pornographic material, I can't bring myself to believe that UMG is the owner of ALL links referenced by your office, Mr. Benjamin.

We would appreciate if you sent only links to materials that YOU OWN to be considered for filtering from our site.

As per the DMCA, we're returning this notice to you and giving counter-notice that you are NOT the copyright owner for all of the allegedly infringing links that were referenced. Please, when your list no longer contains such gems as "[JAVFANS] [JAV] Tokyo f**k Teens Vol.2", return it to us and we'll gladly comply with your takedown request.

Have a great weekend.

1. http://www.isohunt.com/dmca-copyright.php

There is hope yet that Canadian copyright laws will remain more sensible in not being completely slanted towards copyright owners and open for abuse. We are planning to move to a new cluster we are developing for hosting in Canada, I'll update when it's ready for prime time.

In terms of DRM, 2 interesting links:
* A Working Economy Without DRM?
* 30 Days of DRM

The Slashdot article has some insightful comments, restating what many of us already know: there's no DRM that cannot be broken, and it's a futile attempt to preserve a dying business model. While a new business model needs to be established in rewarding creativity and its production, locking up virtual goods purchased by customers and not giving the key won't work. I have ideas of models that might work, but only if copyright owners would listen.

And about our case with the MPAA, some good news. We filed motion for transfer from New York district court to California, where my lawyer is and is closer to me (and to Hollywood too). It's not too often that case transfers are actually approved, so one victory for us for round 1. If people from the MPAA are reading this, I'm not picking a fight however. If you want to talk, you know how to reach me.