The Unintended Consequences of Fighting Online Piracy

When the Copyright Modernization Act was passed in 2012 with Bill C-11, most observers acknowledged that stronger enforcement mechanisms were needed for online piracy. However, even at that time there were concerns about the measures undertaken to address these concerns. Most controversial were the notice-and-notice provisions that came into force on Jan. 2, 2015., which require ISPs and website hosts to convey notices of copyright infringement allegations to customers using their services. The almost immediate effect was thousands of these notices being provided to Canadian consumers, many of them making demands for monetary settlement. The system was also subject to abuse, with copyright trolls sending out mass letters in hopes of some easily scared consumer paying up to avoid any legal entanglements. Perhaps fortunately, the vast majority of these notices were ignored from a legal perspective, possibly resulting in some behavioural modification. There was an assumption that…

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