Canadian ISP Defends Decision Not To Oppose BitTorrent Copyright Trolls

After being targeted by Voltage Pictures, the company behind the Hurt Locker and thousands of copyright troll lawsuits in the United States, Canadian ISP TekSavvy chose not to oppose the studio in court at yesterday’s hearing. TekSavvy CEO Marc Gaudrault said that after looking at the issue from every possible direction, he ultimately decided that the ISP could not get involved in disputing the merits of the case. Instead, TekSavvy gained a delay in proceedings to further notify customers.

As reported last week, Canadian anti-piracy company Canipre has been working with rightsholders to monitor BitTorrent networks for alleged infringers.

One of Canipre’s partners is Voltage Pictures, the company that launched a huge campaign in the United States targeting thousands of alleged sharers of the movie The Hurt Locker. Voltage’s settlement project has now spread to Canada and the first unlucky targets are customers of the ISP TekSavvy.

Voltage Pictures are claiming that around 2,000 TekSavvy users have been monitored sharing around two dozen of their titles including Tucker & Dale vs Evil. They asked the ISP to hand over their personal details so they can be approached for settlement, TekSavvy refused and the whole thing went to court in Toronto Monday.

However, while TekSavvy have gone out of their way to keep their customers informed (leading observers to believe that they would end up fighting Voltage Pictures to defend their customers’ privacy) yesterday’s proceedings weren’t to go that way at all.

TekSavvy CEO Marc Gaudrault said that after spending a considerable amount of time the company had come to a decision that it would not to oppose the motion for discovery filed by Voltage.

“Everybody should know though that we have looked into all angles to determine what our position should be in this situation and after spending a significant amount of time and soliciting a considerable amount of advice from numerous respected sources, we found that we simply could not comment on the merits of the case,” Gaudrault explained.

The TekSavvy CEO says the company’s primary responsibility is to ensure that customers being targeted by Voltage Pictures get “adequate notice” but added that the best way for people not to become involved in the case “is to simply not engage in such [illegal file-sharing] activities.”

After learning there would be no fight, there was a backlash among some users which prompted a response from Gaudrault.

“If there was more I could do to protect your privacy, I would do it. I just don’t have a hook,” he said. “Whatever behavior our customers engage in is not for us to scrutinize. If we wade into that, we are essentially going against Net Neutrality principles that we fought for.”

Gaudrault said that new Canadian copyright laws had tied his hands. He said that the Copyright Modernization Act shelters ISPs from liability from infringement based on the fact that they are mere intermediaries and nothing more. Getting further involved in the merits of the case could jeopardize that.

“The law is the law. I can’t defend against the law. The laws are there to defend against bad things. If we defend against laws, that makes us bad. We don’t do that. We’ve never done that,” he said.

But already the ISP’s decision is coming under scrutiny.

Writing on the Excess Copyright blog, lawyer Howard Knopf says that despite the ISP’s openness, questions will arise as to why TekSavvy isn’t opposing the motion as ISPs Shaw and Telus did (with success) in a music industry lawsuit dating back to 2004.

“In this regard, it is interesting to compare Voltage’s material with the BMG et al material filed in 2004 that was rejected by the Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal at that time as inadequate in a very comparable situation, as a result of which we now have clear and binding appellate case law,” Knopf wrote.

One success that did come out of the hearing is that the judge apparently took notice of a letter filed by the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic which requested a delay in the court hearing Voltage’s motion for discovery.

CIPPIC argued that there had been insufficient time from the filing of the motion to yesterday’s hearing date for defendants to “learn of the motion, retain, be advised by and instruct legal counsel,” and insufficient time for “CIPPIC to prepare and file an application to intervene in the motion.”

Despite opposition from Voltage the hearing was adjourned until January 14, 2013. In the meantime TekSavvy could potentially change its mind on the decision not to oppose the motion but given Marc Gaudrault’s decisiveness since the weekend, that seems unlikely. Should that remain the case, any opposition will have to come from CIPPIC and the defendants.

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thedude321

Another ISP bites the dust. I think we are going to have countries that are MPAA supporters and anti-MPAA.

Eventually, countries like the US and Canada will have to revolt against these MPAA freaks.

I mean, really? Its like your right share has been delegitimised by someone else’s birthright.
- bobmail
  
  You don’t lose your right to share, don’t be stupid. You don’t have the right to share someone else’s works to start with, you lost nothing, except protection against your own illegal acts.
  - BuddhaFacePalmed
    
    I don’t know what world you live in, but sharing has always been a human right, the right to share your toys with the neighbor’s kids, even might he be a righteous basterd
    - 0omg
      
      dont mind him … probly a paid copyright troll
  - chip
    
    When I pay for something, I have the right to do with it as I wish, up to and including giving it or sharing it with another individual. It’s called property rights, and it’s much older than copyright. Copyright doesn’t even apply to regular citizens, it’s meant to apply to businesses, with access to printing presses. The law simply hasn’t changed with the times, and somehow you think that regular people, doing what they want with their personal property, as they have for centuries, for ~millenia~, is somehow wrong now? Do a little research and look at the history books, son. You’re way off.
    - Guest
      
      What your saying is idiotic at best. It’s like me saying, “Perhaps I should share a bullet with your head, after all property rights allows me to do what I want with my property after I pay for it, right?”
    - chip
      
      It’s nothing like that at all, as what you are drawing a parallel to violates others’ rights. Intellectual property (God I hate that term) is a form of property. As such, when I buy a dvd, I have the same rights to do whatever with that property as I see fit, just as I would if I had bought other forms of property, such as a chair. I could give it to a friend, I could let them borrow it, I could create a blueprint so as to manufacture other chairs in the same format, using it as a master copy, and using my own materials and effort.
      
      But keep trying, you’ll get there some day.
    - Ping
      
      Check the fine print on that software you buy, you don’t own any of the intellectual property on it. You simply purchasing the ability to use the media for the purposed specified in the ToS. You weren’t purchasing something physical you purchased a ticket to use it, like an amusement park, not like a chair.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      That’s a valid argument, except for the fact that when I buy a dvd, I still have a piece of property that is mine to do with as I wish. They can choose to make whatever license agreements they wish (and have, for decades now) but it doesn’t stop the public from doing whatever they want with their property, same as it ever was.
      
      In fact I seem to recall (though I don’t have the data ready at hand) rumblings that such EULAs were unenforceable because they’re essentially contracts of adhesion, they’re unconscionable and a violation of some standard or other for commercial transactions.
      
      Besides all of that, though, it has been ruled that breaking DRM is perfectly legal for the purposes of format shifting. So, regardless of the Licenses, I have the right (and freedom!) to rip my dvd to watch it on my laptop, ipod, etc.
    - BuddhaFacePalmed
      
      Which is why we need to relook at our EULAs of our softwares. The regular peeps like you & me don’t look at fineprint, we don’t go over the insane details that they may have insert in a EULA that we do not read anyway. they could have put in a detail which says you must sacrifice your firstborn on the aniversary of installing this software and you wouldn’t know.
      
      When’s the last time any regular installer of software really read the EULA? And what happens when we don’t agree? We don’t get to use it?? Imagine, I just spent $60 on Crysis 3. But because I refuse to agree on the detail that what I bought is an ability to play a game, ignoring the fact it’s not like a ticket, not a rental, & definitely mine, I can’t install the game??
    - OccamsKatana
      
      I’ll post this for you as well, You need to sit in a corner and think about this for awhile.
      
      You’ve never shared a comic book when you were a kid? Listened to
      someone else’s new cd at their place? Lent out a movie? Hummed a bloody
      song in public? Let me call you a fucking hypocrite, and if I’m wrong,
      you have my permission to call me stupid as well.
      
      If
      those items are yours EXCLUSIVELY, then they are bound to you
      exclusively, forever. Don’t you dare throw them out, lest someone else
      find them….. that would be them sharing your property without your
      permission. Or are you more of the thinking that you bought it, you can do with it as you please?
    - Wallace
      
      “What your saying is idiotic at best. It’s like me saying, “Perhaps I should share a bullet with your head, after all property rights allows me to do what I want with my property after I pay for it, right?”"
      
      Your response is idiotic at best, Guest. Chip stated “up to and including giving it or sharing it with another individual.” He wan not advocating attacking people with DVDs.
      
      You don’t share a bullet with someone’s head unless their head asks for and freely accepts it. That’s the difference between “share” and “assault.”
    - anon
      
      the irony of your first sentence. holy moses.
    - jimmy671
      
      NASTY!
      Maybe you are related to bobmail,good luck with that.
    - BarakaX
      
      One of the dumbest retorts I’ve ever heard! I guess you missed the “life” and “liberty” parts…
  - chip
    
    have you read the universal charter of rights and freedoms? It’s only been around since 1948, you may have missed it…
    
    Just in case you didn’t catch it, here’s a point you might want to note:
    
    Article 19
    “Everyone
    has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes
    freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
    receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
    regardless of frontiers.”
    
    did you notice that? seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media
    
    …slmost sounds like filesharing, doesn’t it?
    - bobmail
      
      “did you notice that? seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media
      
      …slmost sounds like filesharing, doesn’t it?”
      
      No, it soulnds like you can seek information (like what time your local beer store opens) and share that information with your friends, either as an email, smoke signals, or you can make a you tube video about it if you like.
      
      That you can share ideas through any media doesn’t suddenly grant you permission to violate everyone else’s rights.
    - Anon
      
      Sigh! Copyright is unique my friend. Tis nor stealing nor sharing really. I think that it is worth something, but Piracy is the only way to combat the extortion that exists right now. Hell, I’m already paying $60 a month for my proxies and seedbox services and watch 2 movies a night. I only liked 4 of the movies that I saw this month though. I make 24k a year, should I have to make myself broke to keep being a fan? I paid 60$ for my partner and I to see the hobbit 2ice in 48fps 3d. I don’t feel bad for downloading.
    - Gene Poole
      
      Nobody’s rights are being violated and you are clearly either retarded or deliberately obtuse. Copyright is a government sanctioned restriction on rights. It removes rights, it does not grant rights. And it does so in the interest of furthering culture and science. Current copyright law flies in the face of this and hinders society and culture, rather than furthering it. This is evidenced by the fact that 3% of all Canadians are infringers of copyright according to one company’s research this fall, and they are infringers through normal, socially acceptable activity.
    - bobmail
      
      “Copyright is a government sanctioned restriction on rights. It removes rights, it does not grant rights”
      
      Wow. If that’s your starting argument, you must really hate life. By your logic, a red traffic light removes your rights to drive, and a stop sign must be total hell!
      
      Copyright law flies in the face of your need for free stuff, nothing more. Copyright is a logical idea on which business models can be built, commerce can occur, and writers, movie makers, and other creators can actually work at what they are good at, rather than having to take jobs in McDonalds to pay the bills.
      
      We have enough burger flippers like you in the world. I for one think it’s great to encourage the best and brightest to do what they do best, creating the content we enjoy. I don’t want them to stop because some pimply faced kid like yourself decided that their need for a free movie overwrote all logic.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      I love how you guys always avoid the actual discussion by comparing it to something it’s not. Straw man much?
      
      What I’m saying is nothing like a red traffic light removing my rights. Copyright by its very nature is a government granted monopoly that limits others’ rights to copy, full stop. That’s all there is to it, there’s no avoiding this. The purpose is to promote the progress of science and useful arts, and that’s all it’s for.
      
      I’m ignoring the rest of the ad hominem because it’s immaterial and you lost the second you tried to argue basic facts.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “By your logic, a red traffic light removes your , commerce can occurrights to drive, and a stop sign must be total hell!”
      
      Very bad straw man there. Running a stop sign means you endanger other people’s lives and safety.
      Copying a file endangers no one.
      
      “Copyright is a logical idea…”
      
      No, copyright is an illogical idea which claims that one person is supposed to be able to tell everyone else what they are and what they are not allowed to communicate. It’s called “information control”.
      
      “…on which business models can be built, commerce can occur,…”
      
      Like the drug trade, pyramid schemes, assassination and extortion. That’s not even an argument.
      
      “…and writers, movie makers, and other creators can actually work…”
      
      Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Beethoven and Bach were unemployed and NOT making a living doing what they were good at? Who knew?
      
      “…rather than having to take jobs in McDonalds to pay the bills.”
      
      It’s actually a rule rather than the exception that professionals in every line of work have to take jobs in other fields than their chosen specialty at least once.
      
      What you are proposing is that entertainment should remain the sole exception to this rule and the people who aren’t good enough to subsist on their speciality or in sufficient demand should by subsidized by a special law.
      
      OK, by your argument, anyone working for ten years in order to get an M.Sc and a Ph.D should be similarly upheld by special government law. Doing what they’re good at, and not what the market demands. It’s only fair.
      
      Or would you care to amend that straw man of yours until it sounds vaguely sensible?
      
      As for the rest of your diatribe…Google today employs the best and the brightest, giving them all kind of fringe benefits and ridiculous salaries. On a business model which consists of creating code, making infrastructure, and giving it away for free.
      
      According to your argument Google ended with two guys flipping burgers in MacDonalds, and most of what we today call culture never having been created. Strangely enough, reality does not agree with your hypothesis.
      
      Oh, and for the record, I’ve found that most politically active pirates bothering to post in places such as these do tend to have high-paying jobs in the IT sector or finance. So…pimply-faced youth? I ought to tell that to some pirates I know. They’ll have a laught at being compared to PFY’s.
      
      You, on the other hand, would make for a very good PHB, i believe.
    - jimmy671
      
      Bobby Bobby,watch that temper you know that it makes your Blood Pressure rise.
    - jimmy671
      
      “Nobody’s rights are being violated and you are clearly either retarded or deliberately obtuse.”
      
      No, bobby boy is a Paid Mafiaa Troll,he comes here every day and spouts stupidity.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      I really don’t understand the point on blogs like TorrentFreak. the signal to noise ratio is so strong against copyright that there can’t be any profit in arguing against it, you’re not going to dissuade anyone when the rebuttals are as strong and (for the most part) knowledged as they are here.
      
      I mean, I know the psychology of trolls, but you’d think if it’s a paid troll, there should be a feck of a lot more than these few, if you want to actually deter anyone. Maybe that’s too costly.
    - Wallace
      
      “That you can share ideas through any media doesn’t suddenly grant you permission to violate everyone else’s rights.”
      
      You can’t take away someone else’s freedoms by simply stating that freedom “violates everyone else’s rights.” That’s a dodge any 10-year-old can see through and only a 10-year-old mind would try.
      
      Freedom comes with responsibility. My freedom to swing my arm ends where our nose begins. Etc. But my freedom still exists in both cases. It’s your failure to recognize that that dooms you and your ilk.
    - Anon
      
      Bobmail, you’re confused about what “rights and freedoms” are.
      
      You don’t need permission from anyone to exercise rights and freedoms.
      
      That’s why they’re called rights and freedoms.
    - bobmail
      
      “You don’t need permission from anyone to exercise rights and freedoms.”
      
      Actually, you do. Your rights and freedoms exist only to the extent that they don’t impact other people’s rights and freedoms. It’s the magic of the real work, you can use all the freedom you have until you hurt someone else.
      
      Even freedom has limits, something you will learn one day.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Absolutely, I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise. Of course, by filesharing, you aren’t hurting anyone’s rights to property, since they continue to possess the original copy. So not sure what point you’re trying to make there.
    - bobmail
      
      At bare minimum, you have reduced the potenital market, both in direct sales and in their ability to resell the product for other uses.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Perhaps you should take a look at the following:
      
      https://www.techdirt.com/skyisrising/
      
      through filesharing, the content industry has grown over the past decade. Not in spite of it, rather because of it. filesharing helps create demand, it doesn’t reduce it. It’s like free advertising.
      
      This old chestnut has been disproven so many times that you should be beaten simply for dragging it out in the first place.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “At bare minimum, you have reduced the potenital market, both in direct sales and in their ability to resell the product for other uses.”
      
      Every market study shows otherwise. The loss of sale is as dead as a hypothesis as the ether theory.
      
      So no.
    - BarakaX
      
      It’s amazing what you consider “hurting” someone else. Kudos to you, though. Spoken like a true statist!
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Your rights and freedoms exist only to the extent that they don’t impact other people’s rights and freedoms.”
      
      No they do not.
      
      In dictionary definition, “right” can not be revoked by any agency. That is why even lawful imprisonment is described as “infringement on personal liberty by use of violence monopoly” in legal terms. All rights stem from the UN human rights declaration which explicitly states how these rights are to be handled in case of a conflict.
      
      “Copyright” is not a right but a privilege and as such can be revoked.
      
      Article 19 and article 27, dealing with the rights of communication, right to be acknowledged as creator and right to distribute and receive culture are explicit in how they are resolved when conflict arises.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “That you can share ideas through any media doesn’t suddenly grant you permission to violate everyone else’s rights.”
      
      The UN articles do not include “copyright” among “human rights”. See article 27 for details. Both section 1 and 2. Copyright is a flagrant violation of the human rights articles as it infringes on both article 19 and article 27, paragraph 2 by allowing a third party to sanction what everyone else is allowed to communicate.
      
      Similarly, the UN human rights articles can not be violated by individuals, only by governments and government-empowered action. In short, even if you were to cancel section 2 of article 27 and abolish article 19, a filesharer can not violate human rights.
      
      What it means is that if the government assists a “copyright holder” in censuring what filesharers communicate, said government is in violation of both article 19 and article 27.
  - Danny
    
    Bobfail,
    
    I have the right to share DVDs, Books, etc, with friends and family. Why is it any different just because its online?
    - chronoss
      
      actually in Canada under new law technically NO YOU DON’T
      thank your conservative friends in 2015 at the polls
      and remember they might not even be a legal govt
    - Danny
      
      I am not Canadian so yes I do.
      
      I was actually asking Bob his views to the difference between online and offline sharing.
    - bobmail
      
      It’s pretty simple.
      
      Online sharing has one difference that makes it a whole different world, which is that you don’t have to surrender your control over your DVD, books, or whatever to share them. When you share a book or a DVD with someone, you actually give it to them – and in essence, transfer the rights to them on a temporary basis. It’s like your car – you lend it to your buddy, you can’t drive it.
      
      Online, you are replicating and giving away. Different thing entirely. I would have less probably with file sharing if it fact your lost your copy when you gave it away. I think that would resolve much of the issue, because I doubt you would pay $10 for a book and give it to some unknown person in Brazil with the hope they give it back to you one day.
    - Danny
      
      Bob I would be quite happy to watch a digital download once then share it with my friends or send it to someone else online. Even if it meant I couldn’t watch it again.
      
      That is actually what happens to most of the stuff I stream on netflix, I usually only watch once.
      
      So if we had the ability to transfer digital downloads to someone else you would be perfectly fine with filesharing?
    - OccamsKatana
      
      So if I read a book to my kids, am I surrendering the book, or just it’s contents into their little minds to go to school the next day and share the cool story dad read to them?
      
      Hmmm, I wonder…. Would those friends then be compelled to read that same story because it sounds really cool? Would they be compelled to buy a book they might otherwise never have heard of?
      
      Could the same not be said for file sharing? I know I am bloody sick to death of buying shitty software that doesn’t do as promised, or a cool movie I have gone to see based on the minute trailer that has the only good parts.
      
      Copyright helps these companies force this shit down your throat under the guise of protecting their rights? What about the money spending consumers? Don’t we have the right to drive the car before we buy it? Oh, WAIT!!!! Yes, we do. Why not with movies, or books, or music, or software? Because they know it’s shit and use copyright to scam us.
      
      Just a question. Do you tip your server BEFORE the meal? That would be silly huh? But they certainly expect a tip. Some places now add a 20% gratuity to your bill, because the shitty servers are ENTITLED TO BE PAID for their shitty service. Isn’t THAT fucked up? I won’t eat at a place that forces my tip before I’ve been served. And just for the record, I’d easily drop 30-50% of the food bill in a tip if the server deserves it.
      
      Oh wait…. you don’t tip at McD’s… my apologies.
    - bobmail
      
      If you think paying for a movie or a book is a tip, you live in a pretty screwed up place.
    - Pelham123
      
      “Online sharing has one difference that makes it a whole different world, which is that you don’t have to surrender your control over your DVD, books, or whatever to share them.”
      
      What about inviting somebody over to your house to watch a DVD? That’s offline sharing in which you don’t have to surrender your control. You are against that?
      
      Also, most offline ACCESSING (downloading) of media involves making a copy. Your radio makes a copy, as does your television. Streaming, downloading and watching cable are the same service from the same provider, just different software.
      
      Like most trolls/shills, you’ve taken one fundamental, (fair, accurate) complaint Bittorrent – the mass distribution of someone else’s copyrighted work – and effed it all to hell. You don’t know why Bittorrent is a problem, and if YOU don’t know, how can the powers that be expect other people to figure it out?
    - bobmail
      
      “What about inviting somebody over to your house to watch a DVD? That’s offline sharing in which you don’t have to surrender your control. You are against that?”
      
      You didn’t surrender the product, therefore you didn’t surrender control. Single point of control is key – you bought a license, not a copy machine.
      
      ” Your radio makes a copy, as does your television. Streaming, downloading and watching cable are the same service from the same provider, just different software.”
      
      Sorry, not a fair comparison. Radio doesn’t make a copy, it only allows you to listen to it for that moment. It is licensed and paid for by advertising for you. It’s not a free lunch (although you may see it that way).
      
      It’s the same with your TV: What is on your TV is bought and paid for, provided for your entertainment with the goal of presenting you advertising or selling you access to the server (free channel model or pay channel model).
      
      Bittorrent (and file lockers, and so on) are a problem because they have allowed people to decide for someone else if their work will be given away for free. It has cut down the rights of artists, as some no-name decides they don’t have the right anymore to decide how to distribute their own work.
      
      So yeah, I know why it’s a problem, but it’s hard to explain to a generation of people who have no self control or respect for others.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      It’s so hard to take corporate shills seriously, but I’m trying.
      
      Property rights precede your precious copyright “licenses”, and when I’ve bought for something it’s mine to do with my property as I would like, regardless of licenses. It’s how it’s been as long as we’ve had the concept of property. The artificial restraints imposed by copyright are exactly that, artificial. Christ, man, didn’t you learn how to share in kindergarten?
    - BuddhaFacePalmed
      
      No, the artist never had any right how to choose to or distribute their materials. They only HAD the ILLUSION of CHOICE simply because there were limited ways to get to your audience in the past and those needed a wealthy patron/publisher/slave-master in order to facilitate such endeavors.
      
      Nowadays, we have the internet, where letting the public peruse your materials is as simple as point-and-click. So, the patron/slave-master/publishers are becoming obsolete, because why need them to distribute stuff when the internet already does that for free anyway. I bet that they’re only aware of the file-sharing market simply because someone informed them that people are sharing their shit over the internet.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “but it’s hard to explain to a generation of people”
      
      http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html
      
      Yea, I know. Thomas Jeffersson was such a respectless man and part of such a respectless generation…
      
      The doubts regarding copyright have been well-founded since the inception of copyright. Want a link to the original parliamentary members in Great Britain who opposed the creation of copyright as well? You will find they too sound exactly like that “generation of people” you complain about.
    - Lawnstone
      
      Online, you are replicating and giving away. Different thing entirely.
      
      I’m sure you actually meant to say ‘GREATEST THING ENTIRELY!’. There is one reason and only one reason I do not copy my car and give it to my friend. That is because I can’t. I don’t have the knowledge, the tools or the resources to do so.
      
      But anything digital? Yeah. I know how. Everybody knows how. Programming makes it as simple as clicking a button. I have the tools to do so. Everybody does. Computers have become cheaper and more ubiquitous every single day. And resources? What resources? HELLO LOW LEVEL OF ENTRY.
      
      And with 3D printers gaining more attention and popularity, you damn well bet that when it reaches the level of sophistication capable of copying a car, I sure as hell will.
    - bobmail
      
      “But anything digital? Yeah. I know how. Everybody knows how. ”
      
      I suspect you know how to fire and gun and make someone die. Have you done that recently? Knowledge does not specifically make something a good choice, does it?
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      straw man FTW
    - BarakaX
      
      Why do you keep on equating physical violence and even murder with copying and sharing media?? It’s completely ridiculous!!! Do you honestly think anyone’s going to take you seriously making such ludicrous comparisons?
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      smoke and mirrors. misdirection and obfuscation. It’s how the MAFIAA have been struggling to stay relevant in this day and age.
      
      instead of, you know, adapting and innovating.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      I don’t understand why anybody would be concerned with me using my own resources and time to manufacture a duplicate for my own personal use. Especially considering duplication and dissemination is what the internet was invented for, and it’s a little too late to put that genie back into the bottle.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “When you share a book or a DVD with someone, you actually give it to them – and in essence, transfer the rights to them on a temporary basis.”
      
      Copyright explicitly disagrees with you here.
      Both first sale and fair use had to written in as explicit exemptions.
      
      And in many countries, fair use explicitly allows you to make copies to anyone who asks.
      
      So to borrow Danny’s original question and paraphrase; if in sweden it is legal for me to make copies for a thousand people of a thousand works but online I should get busted for making copies to three other people, then how does your argument fare?
    - OccamsKatana
      
      I thought we were talking about Canadian ISPs, with the new Canadian copyright laws and Canadian courts, and Canadians sharing, but….. maybe I’m missing something. Or maybe it’s not me afterall….
    - guest
      
      Bobmail is a FAGGOT paid by MAAFIA to keep tabs on real men who understand that only FAGGOTS support the MAAFIA.
      
      FUCK OFF AND DIE Bobmail.
  - chronoss
    
    heres a protection you can suck my dick on
    
    disability limits max payments one can make in a month to 50$
    
    even if i were found infringing a trillion things all i can get if i never take a buck for any of it or pay a buck for any of it is 5000 dollars …its gonna tkae you 8.33333333 years to get your money out of me and ill say ive inringed EVERYTHING up to that date….and ill add then ill go get it and you cant sue me for the same thing twice
    FUCK YOU TROLL
    - Wallace
      
      Chronoss, I can guarantee you that no content creator in any industry (except for Voltage Pictures) has a problem with you downloading their work and enjoying it without paying. TF trolls and professional shills don’t create content and have proven their inability to speak for people who do.
  - asdsf
    
    Sharing isn’t illegal, just so you know.
  - OccamsKatana
    
    You’ve never shared a comic book when you were a kid? Listened to someone else’s new cd at their place? Lent out a movie? Hummed a bloody song in public? Let me call you a fucking hypocrite, and if I’m wrong, you have my permission to call me stupid as well.
    
    If those items are yours EXCLUSIVELY, then they are bound to you exclusively, forever. Don’t you dare throw them out, lest someone else find them….. that would be them sharing your property without your permission. Or are you more of the thinking that you bought it, you can do with it as you please?
    - bobmail
      
      I always love the twisted logic.
      
      I never invited the whole world over to listen to music. I never gave my comic books to everyone at the same time. I never hummed a song loud enough to be heard by everyone, and I most certainly didn’t lend my movies to everyone in the world while magically also keeping it.
      
      You are stupid. (You asked for it).
      
      Everything you listed has reasonable and logical limits. You can only lend your comic book to one person at a time. You can only fit a half a dozen people in your living room to watch a movie. You can’t sing loud enough in public to let the whole world hear.
      
      Most importantly in all of those things is time. When you invite people over to watch a movie, you have to spend the time watching the movie too. With a half a dozen people a time, you couldn’t even invite the whole student body of your local high school over to watch the movie in a month. Think about it. 2 showings a night, 6 people per show… that’s 12 people. That’s only 360 people in a MONTH, and you would be giving up every evening of your month to do it – plus cleaning.
      
      Online, you could share the movie with 360 people in a few minutes. Given the month, you could easily reach everyone on the planet.
      
      Most importantly, reaching all of those people would not take any of your time. You spend a minute, not a month to get it done.
      
      Scale. it’s the real issue that stupid people don’t get. Are you that stupid?
    - BuddhaFacePalmed
      
      Why should scale be an issue? A thousand murders is still murder. So, by definition, sharing = caring. Sharing x entire population = caring x entire population. Simple Math.
    - BuddhaFacePalmed
      
      It’s not twisted logic.
      
      I would share my favourite bands, arts, movies, comic books, and games to the whole world if I could. I broke out to Bohemian Rhapsody and was joined by the whole cafeteria in finishing the lyrics.
      
      You are ignorant. (You asked for it).
      
      Sharing never had limits. In fact, by sharing you can meet new people and get new perspective on things. Maybe by sharing the new Flash comics, you discover the Muslim next door likes the same thing. You discover that not all Muslims are insane men trying to bring down Western civilization, but rather normal people who go through daily life and are simply devout to the moderate views of their religion. Maybe by sharing an Adele song, you’ve stopped a girl in Czech Republic from committing suicide because her boyfriend of 3 years is leaving her.
      
      The world is not as simply black and white as you would like to believe, nor is as simple as reducing the revenue of multimillionaires. Sharing has never been theft and never will.
      
      I would hate to see the day I tell my children that they can’t share their stuff with other kids because it would deprive the creator of revenue.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Scale. it’s the real issue that stupid people don’t get. Are you that stupid?”
      
      According to your argument, since car accidents, the vast majority of which involves casual disregard of speeding laws, create 40,000 actual deaths in the US alone per year, Cars ought to be banned?
      
      No. Scale is irrelevant. Copyright is a very bad idea if it can not scale. It’s legal for me where I live to share a thousand works with just about anyone i meet by making copies. Online as soon as I hand out one copy, the police are on me?
      
      You can not claim either reason or proportionality in that kind of law.
    - Ardvaark
      
      @Bobmail
      
      There you go again with misleading affirmations.
      First of all, as others have said, scope doesn’t matter. What matters though is that I can share with whoever wants me to share an item with them. Guess what? its just as online. I don’t share it with the world, I share it with whoever wants me to share said item (by that someone getting the torrent for example). It’s very unlikely that the whole world would want the same thing (and it would also be awfully boring) the difference is anyone can ask me to share that something regardless of where they are.
      
      Also one important thing, since when do I have to watch a movie I’m sharing with someone offline? I can, but do i HAVE to? certainly not.
  - Wallace
    
    “You don’t lose your right to share, don’t be stupid.”
    
    No, you can still do it. Even if Bittorrent were destroyed by a neutron bomb tomorrow you could still do it.
    
    “You don’t have the right to share someone else’s works to start with”
    
    Yes, you do. Don’t be stupid.
  - jimmy671
    
    Hey Bobby Boy,I see you’re TROLLING again.
  - joexxx
    
    I’m not sharing someone else’s work. I’m sharing a copy that I made myself.
  - guest
    
    FUCK OFF AND DIE Grandma. You mewling piece of shit.
  - OccamsKatana
    
    I always love the twisted logic.
    
    I never invited the whole world over to listen to music. I never gave my comic books to everyone at the same time. I never hummed a song loud enough to be heard by everyone, and I most certainly didn’t lend my movies to everyone in the world while magically also keeping it.
    
    You are stupid. (You asked for it).
    
    Everything you listed has reasonable and logical limits. You can only lend your comic book to one person at a time. You can only fit a half a dozen people in your living room to watch a movie. You can’t sing loud enough in public to let the whole world hear.
    
    Most importantly in all of those things is time. When you invite people over to watch a movie, you have to spend the time watching the movie too. With a half a dozen people a time, you couldn’t even invite the whole student body of your local high school over to watch the movie in a month. Think about it. 2 showings a night, 6 people per show… that’s 12 people. That’s only 360 people in a MONTH, and you would be giving up every evening of your month to do it – plus cleaning.
    
    Online, you could share the movie with 360 people in a few minutes. Given the month, you could easily reach everyone on the planet.
    
    Most importantly, reaching all of those people would not take any of your time. You spend a minute, not a month to get it done.
    
    Scale. it’s the real issue that stupid people don’t get. Are you that stupid?
    
    So in your world, it’s ok to be a little bit illegal? Buddy, your logic tells me that you say this is all ok, it just depends on the scale of it??? So assault isn’t assault if I only punch you in the face once in awhile instead of outright beating the shit out of you?
    
    We’ve always shared, whether its been lending a friend a book, giving your best girl a mixtape, or whatever…. Why is it suddenly a crime just because we’ve shifted formats? Speaking of format shifting, why is it also now illegal to rip the CD I paid for onto my mp3 player? Because of idiot logic like yours that makes the laws.
    
    The tip thing…… you entirely missed the point of that. Sad really.
    
    Buddy, you have to pick a side. It’s either ok by you to share, or it’s not. Not kinda, sorta, or only if it’s one person at a time….. you either share or you don’t. Which is it? Fuck the twisted logic, let’s talk BLACK AND WHITE. Pick a side.
- OccamsKatana
  
  Oh, I agree wholeheartedly about this ISP biting the dust. I hope Marc Gaudrault reads these and understands that when you throw your customers to the wolves, you won’t have a customer left. Who would want to sign up for their services? Oh, a ‘law abiding’ citizen? We’re all law abiding citizens, especially until proven guilty in a court of law. Not to mention the wrongly accused law abiding citizens! I’d be furious with TekSavvy, whether I downloaded more than an email or not. I was looking into their services, but they don’t provide in my area. No longer, TekSavvy….. Are you reading this? You’ve definitely lost me as a future potential customer.
  
  Maybe when TekSavvy does bite the dust, it will open the eyes of other ISP’s and have them stand up to the bullies.
  
  TekSavvy, Rest in peace……
Carlton

“Voltage Pictures are claiming that around 2,000 TekSavvy users have been
monitored sharing around two dozen of their titles including Tucker & Dale vs Evil.”

Bullcrap. They don’t have the ability to monitor specific users. They only know what certain IP addresses were doing. From this they make an ASSUMPTION as to who the sharer is.
- Christopher Kidwell
  
  Quite true. With easily hacked wireless networks, friends using your connection, etc. it’s impossible to be sure that the person whose name is on the bill actually did the infringing sharing in question.
- chronoss
  
  voltage are also claiming commercial infringement something an ip address can never tell you NOR can giving such names and addresses could ….
  
  only way they could prove that is if they catch you handing money over or taking it via video in real life ….and by then you have the rcmp arresting you for counterfeiting….and will likly get 20000 per infringement vs this action that is NON COMMERCIAL at 100-5000 FOR ALL INFRINGEMENTS with the low side being told to do by govt to judges to prevent this very kind of lawsuit.
- http://twitter.com/HilaryAdria HilaryAdria
  
  like Linda answered I am impressed that anybody can get paid $5655 in one month on the network.
- http://twitter.com/HilaryAdria HilaryAdria
  
  ….goo.gl/SjMWb (Click on Home)
- http://www.facebook.com/SamHandwich Mark Newfangled
  
  You have no idea how much info ISP’s actually have on your connection. it is more than IP. The can tell your machine ID, local IP, ports, whatever they want. They can tell what is in your packets, even if it is encrypted and they can’t read it, they still know.
  - Wallace
    
    Your name should be Mark Oldsuperstitious
  - ITakeAPotatoChipAndEatIt
    
    What the ISP can and cannot see is irrelevant, its up to Voltage to identify infringers, not the ISP, the only information that could have been obtained prior to the court order, was an IPAddress, that does not identify a person.
  - Andrew Lee
    
    All of which is very easy to spoof so it comes back down to you can’t be 100% sure who was doing it.
    
    With your WiFi I can turn my computer into yours and I could pirate whatever and be on my way. Far as you would know it would look like someone was fucking with your computer. A friend,a child,one of their friends, or whoever comes to your home. Would you want to be accused of piracy just from a number?
    
    I mean really the first thing anyone is gonna do if they’re warloading is spoof their system. Well I guess I can’t say that for sure but it’s what I would do. I mean why not it’s very quick to do and simple.
    
    Also even with dpi it’s only good to a certain point and there are plenty of ways to circumvent that as well.
    
    Just look at a modems id if you change it and know what you’re doing you can get free internet. It’s very fucking illegal lol and the prison time it carries is serious but the fact remains it can be done without too much effort. FYI You’re better off to pay for it. The risk to benefit ratio is tilted far to the risk side.
    
    So to say a machine id should be considered confirmation is fucking nuts. A machine id should be more proof than a IP but still it’s not very good proof either. Also I’ve never seen any copyright case for piracy even mention it.
    
    Maybe that’s not what you’re saying but from where I’m sitting it sure looks like it.
  - joexxx
    
    If your traffic is encrypted then can tell that the payload of the packet is, most likely, encrypted. But that’s it. There is no magic and workers there are the usual incompetent IT bunch.
  - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
    
    Yeah, no. Little bit off there. Encrypted traffic can not be read through DPI. All that can be determined is that said packets are encrypted.
    - joexxx
      
      Even that is difficult since you can’t really tell encrypted data from random data.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      encrypt your traffic, run it through Tor, under a vpn. there will be so much noise it won’t be worth the time analyzing it to determine what you’ve done. All you have to do is make it not worth someone else’s effort.
      
      …although the people under discussion here clearly did none of those things ;)
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    Really? What they get is the router id, router ip, port to which the traffic is adressed. Nothing more.
    
    Your ROUTER will also get your mac adress.
    
    If you are using direct wall-plug cable, that’s what you supply your isp with, but there is no way they get anything more than that and the volume of traffic – unless you are dumb enough to use the ISP without adding an encrypted tunnel to an exit point.
bobmail

The problem for Teksavvy is that they don’t have great service, but have offered unlimited bandwidth where the other DSL ISPs have not. They got plenty of their customers this way, especially those who wanted to download with impunity. Basically, they became a sort of piracyhaus.

Now the other shoe drops. They understand that they cannot oppose discovery without cause, and in Canada there isn’t that 1st amendment issue to deal with.
- cogg
  
  actually, they do have great service. i’ve been with them for years and i have no issues with their net service. their csr support, on the other hand, leaves something to be desired. rapid growth caused this.
  they’re not a piracyhaus. they don’t control what their users do on the net, nor will they allow themselves to be placed into the position of policing their users.
  back in 2004 the supreme court made it clear copyright trolls didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. unfortunately, harper hopped into bed with the hollywood industry and changed copyright laws. on the positive side, the feds imposed caps on what a troll could demand as damages, which now goes against voltage. voltage is demanding 10k per infringement while the new law (in effect since nov 01) states 5k is the max limit for individuals with 20k for corporations. voltage initially sent teksavvy notice on nov 7, with a formal statement this month. gaudrault took the stance of requesting proper time to notify users so they could prepare themselves accordingly. voltage demanded immediate action. the court agreed with teksavvy. as gaudrault pointed out, with 2300 IP’s requested, due to the lack of time, 43 people were erroneously notified of the claim by voltage and other users had used multiple IP’s. more time was needed for properly assessing the situation.
  but this is the start of the court troll invasion. let’s just hope the courts don’t suck into it all. an IP is not a person.
  the user backlash… well, let’s just say if you do the crime you do the time. teksavvy has no reason to use their resources to defend what people do with their net service. individuals are responsible for this.
  - http://www.facebook.com/chibijoshie Josh Chinnery
    
    It has been pointed out many a time that the technology these assholes use is not very reliable, not to mention it can only identify the owner of the accounter, who might not being doing the downloading. And before someone spouts out that owners should be policing their networks better, how do you suppose they do that? Laptops, tablets, smartphones, gaming consoles, even desktop computers come wired with Wi-Fi abilities these days, so there’s no way you can know for sure who is doing the sharing. There’s also the added layer of hackers using their powers for the forces of evil, slackers who use other people’s Wi-Fi, and people who have no idea how to secure their Wi-Fi properly.
    
    To be honest, the ISP should not be surprised by the user backlash. These crooks don’t give a flying monacle monster about their movies; they just want money. They’re greedy bastards who don’t care if they’re ruining someone’s life.
  - chronoss
    
    look its a simple thing to argue in court that its impossible to tell if these users commercially benefited from the download or sharing ( making available after they the 3rd party seeded them) thus get the court to toss the case.
    
    but doing what they did sets a precident that if they win in court for this user info. I COULD do the following the next day….
    
    file a small claims action that states every teksavvy user has infringmed my ip and i want all the names and addresses of every user…
    what can they do hten they set there own precident….and a bar ill say that is so low that its incomprehensible.
    ON TSI defense it shows us how awful this system can be.
    - bobmail
      
      “ook its a simple thing to argue in court that its impossible to tell if these users commercially benefited from the download or sharing ( making available after they the 3rd party seeded them) thus get the court to toss the case.”
      
      Yes, but that is an argument to be made by the individuals as they are brought to court, and not by the ISP. The ISP is not there to defend their case for them. You guys go on and on about ISPs not being able to tell if someone is doing something illegal. That’s fine, but stop acting as if they are going to advocate the case for individual users.
      
      Like it or not, the copyright trolls as you call them have an uphill battle, their information may not be enough and that is something for a court of law to judge. But that isn’t for the ISP to judge, which is why they are getting out of the way and providing the information requested in this legal action.
      
      You can’t have it both ways, stop arguing it that way.
    - icec0ld
      
      While clearly violating customers rights and ignoring their responsibility to their users.
      
      But hey, let no one say they were not warned. Do as any good consumer should. Take your business to another ISP and show them exactly what happens when you forget the most important part of any business: The customer is always right. May as well set your business on fire and shutdown now if you can’t follow that one.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “But that isn’t for the ISP to judge”
      
      It may not be, under current law, which is a bad thing. In every other circumstance where communication is concerned, the common carrier has one and only one duty. transmit information in confidence.
      
      If any civilian entity can violate that principle then the ISP fails in it’s duty as a common carrier and should rightly be censured. Part and parcel of it’s duty is indeed to stand up for it’s customers.
      
      Hence, without contesting such a claim by a third party the ISP is reneging on the service it’s being paid for. worse, by allowing such interference, many nations would judge that the ISP has also reneged on the law which provides messenger immunity.
  - ThumbsUpThumbsDown
    
    The declaration that “if you do the crime, you do the time” assumes the priority of Constitutional Due process, even in Harper’s Canada, doesn’t it?
    
    Furthermore, “user Backlash” is NOT presumptively about “doing the crime” or “doing the time”; but, about something that is unmistakably different; and, unmistakably more important: The unopposed surrender of Customer’s entrusted Private Personally Identifying Information to private third party adversaries whose only proffer is an IP address devoid of any demonstrably legally valid connection between any specific Person and any specific criminal act.
    
    That Gaudrault chose to surrender his Customers vital Private information without opposition, and therefore without the substantial beneficial scrutiny of Appellate Review, makes this a disgraceful betrayal of trust that puts in question the existence of meaningful Privacy Rights for ALL Canadians.
    
    This just makes clear the present operating priority of Copyright Holders and their Political supporters that, wherever possible, the Constitutional Rights of Citizens will be conceded to, and resolved within, Administrative Bureaucracies.
    
    Can Citizens afford to let that happen?
    
    Mr. Gaudrault’s explanations are every bit as disgraceful as his actions. Why? Because they treat Canadian Citizens as manageable cattle, too stupid to be interested in their most vital civil Rights.
    
    “User Backlash” should be “awake and enraged Citizens Backlash”.
    
    Mr. Gaudrault and his Company should both be answered brutally and in Full.
- chip
  
  “in Canada there isn’t that 1st amendment issue to deal with.”
  
  explain? The Canadian constitution does contain the bill of rights, which, admittedly protects “freedom of expression” rather than “freedom of speech”, but freedom of speech is also simply one part of freedom of expression.
- chronoss
  
  they have great service
  in 7 years ive had 2 downtimes and they told me !!!!
  ive had no caps ( max 1600gb a month ) and the owner you can talk too regularly….
  marc screwed up a bit here but made good by getting cippic on board to help lawyer the scene
  
  ive posted tons of angles to wack this the most of which is an incorrect filing based on the fact they are trying a COMMERCIAL aspect to gain more cash
  
  this is not commercial file sharing
  last i checked none of any of the 2300 i spoke to took money or received any in this action….
  judges are instructed cases of non commercial to look at undue hardships and impose the least amount and look at the amount of files shared…and its for all infringements for a dozen movies you might get 1200$
  up to the max of 5000 for all or as little as 100$…
  not the tne grand they seek per file….
  harper will get lynched if this happens
- BarakaX
  
  “Now the other shoe drops. They understand that they cannot oppose discovery without cause, and in Canada there isn’t that 1st amendment issue to deal with.”
  
  Pardon???
  
  Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
  
  “2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
  …
  (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
  …”
  
  Please get a clue.
  - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
    
    Thank you, 1982.
    
    I read recently about when in one of the Prairie Provinces they elected the SoCreds (who refused to call themselves Premier and such since they didn’t believe in government, so instead they had a “board” and were chairmans etc), there was an issue where the SoCreds insisted on the right to rebut critical newspaper articles (Act to Ensure the Publication of Accurate News and Information) which included forcing newspapers to disclose sources.
    
    The issue with the clearly unconstitutional law (freedom of the press?) was that there were no guarantees in the Canadian Constitution (which was simply about how the government would be organized), and that federal government was concerned with how the people were governed, whereas provincial gov’t had domain over businesses (eg newspapers) so they could mandate whatever they wanted.
    
    The only way the courts overthrew the law as unenforceable was in claiming that rights of the people were in the federal domain and freedom of speech was a right of the public, so the SoCreds couldn’t create such a law…but considering that battle, I wonder that it took like 50 more years to come up with a charter of rights and freedoms in canada.
    
    well….I found it interesting anyway. fuck you.
- Ardvaark
  
  So they offer unlimited bandwidth as opposed to their competitors and you consider that a worse service?
  
  You have a very good sense of business.
  
  Imagine if every business had the same mindset: “why use a USB drive, let’s sell the same floppy disks as our competitors, of course!”
downunder

chickens..

if all isps choose to standup for the average man and shutdown the net across america im sure that would sway them and backdown

but lets face it.. bully wood are doing more damage for future income with these tactics.. it will ultimately backfire on them in less income or no change in income

oh dear all pirates gone and still we are earning the same or making a loss..

no shit einstein
chuzhu

http://lnk.co/KQ35L

””
chronoss

here is the fucking merits
voltage is trying to say each and every user that they wish to get the name and address of commercially profited form there precious bullshit( no im not named )

ip data cannot tell you that period
so what the fuck would giving out the names and addresses mean – NOTHING BUT HARASSMENT

its akin to accusing the 2300 of counterfeiting which they are not guilty of and if i were everyone i’d ask lawyers about slander and defamation of character

its one thing to non commercially infringe which is 100-5000 FOR ALL INFRINGEMENTS WITH JUDGES BEING INSTRUCTED BY GOVT TO ERROR ON LOWSIDE TO NOT ENCOURAGE MASS LAWSUITS.

ONE MOVIE LIKELY GET YOU 100 dollar fine

It is another thing to try and game the system and try and pull this over on the court.

THIS has zero to do with non commercial infringement people they filed for commercial infringement of 10000 PER INFRINGEMENT..

teksavvy could have said this and had hte case tossed right hten and there instead they make some deal that allows people to get warned so they wont oppose it…

OH JOY you know what ill do should voltage win im going to send teksavvy notice of claim that ill file for all the addresses and names of EVERY TEKSAVVY USER for violating my ip , for commercial purposes even though that isnt true…. they will then give me such and if your still a teksavvy user at this point your an idiot.
- Wade R
  
  Yes. at this point they’re basically giving away ip info for commercial extortion.
Colin Carr

Just when TekSavvy seemed to be doing the honourable thing and supporting their customers, they bottle out. Unless they change their minds before the January court hearing, I hope LOTS of their customers will vote with their feet.
Fr3d

“…but added that the best way for people not to become involved in the case “is to simply not engage in such [illegal file-sharing] activities.”

Tell that to those network printers that were “engaged in such [illegal file-sharing] activities.”
- jimmy671
  
  Don’t forget the eighty five year old grandmothers
  
  and the dead people.,that were supposed to be file sharing.
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    Or the ones who turned out not even to OWN a computer.
Hero3

i guess teksavvy just lost alot of business people will start cancelling ..
- http://profiles.google.com/sfjetland Serge Fjetland
  
  no, they wont, not when the competition is Telus and Shaw.. this might drop teksavvy in a lot of peoples eyes.. but its a so so company vs piles of steaming shit
tao54nyc

“The law is the law. I can’t defend against the law. The laws are there to defend against bad things. If we defend against laws, that makes us bad. We don’t do that. We’ve never done that,” he said.

I’m sure Canadians are waving their flags proudly over that statement. Apparently they’re brainwashed to believe that all “laws” are good and just, enacted by decent, morally upstanding, well meaning people.

Bollocks.

There are also unjust laws, enacted by corrupt politicians, at the behest of bloated corrupt corporations, in whose pockets those politicians reside. How do such laws “defend against bad things” when they are in fact the CAUSE of bad things? The only recourse then is resistance, civil disobedience, and nullification, because “elections” don’t seem to mean much any longer.
- Anon
  
  The part TekSavvy is getting right is their realization that inevitably all ISP’s in every land will hold an accountability to work with law enforcement to every kind of unlawful activity online. And the part you are getting right is your call to civil disobedience so the world can use your behavior to gather additional control over the network, year upon year. Is this really that complicated for you? I guess it is.
  - Guest
    
    Exactly. White people have a responsibility to enslave black people, policemen have a responsibility to shoot people on sight for suspicion of possession of alcohol, parents have a responsibility to stone children who speak back at them, and Rosa Parks should have been publicly raped or something.
    
    Good on you, Anon! Pelouzey’s got a special load of industry white chocolate just for you.
- Anon
  
  The part TekSavvy is getting right is their realization that inevitably
  all ISP’s in every land will hold an accountability in one hand sn a dildo in the other hand to work with law
  enforcement to every kind of unlawful activity online. And the part you
  are getting right is your call to civil disobedience so the world can
  use your behavior to gather additional control over the network and punish and abuse it while I enjoy. :)
- Anon
  
  The part TekSavvy is getting right is their realization that inevitably all ISP’s will hold an accountability to work with law
  enforcement to every kind of unlawful activity. Is English really that complicated for me? I guess it is
  - joexxx
    
    Unfortunately for the ISP, this attitude will force them into crossfire that they will not be able to survive.
Foff

What has never been established in court to my knowlege is how do they prove what you shared? Even if my sharing was a 1 to 1 or 1.5 to one. That does not even mean I shared one copy. All I perhaps shared was a few bits over and over. If there were 2000 seeds then at most I am liable for 1/2000. I mean for fuck sake they cannot ask a shit load of money when no money and only shared a little. I don’t why any judge has not taken a critical look at the technology and applied liability correctly.

The courts are nothing but pimps and whores if they allow themselves to be used as part of a business model. I am 100% sure they are trolling like this because they figure then make as much or more on this then on legitimate sales. In fact I would not be surprised if they were the original posters and seeders or at least had an employee or associate post and seed. Then they spied on it and collected ip addresses.

All can say is if I ever got such a threat I would file it in the round file and let they do whatever the fuck they wanted cause I am basically broke and sue proof no one is going fucking extort me. But If I was pervert and into that shit I would certainly get a vpn as I would want to keep my private life private.
ThumbsUpThumbsDown

By conceding away his Customer’s Privacy Rights, Mr. Gaudrault and TekSavvy saved on litigation expense; but, only at the cost of huge damage to the Civil Standing of all Canadians.

Normally, when you wish to sue an unknown Person; you can do so, only providing you can claim a direct linkage between a specific Person and a specific criminal act.

TekSavvy willingly surrendered customer’s vital Personally Identifying Information to Copyright Plaintiffs who alleged infringement at an IP address; but, who could not proffer any direct connection between any specific Person and any specific criminal act.

Customers of TekSavvy would have benefited from a close Appellate Review of the legal basis of these demands for their Private information; but, TekSavvy, and Mr. Gaudrault, didn’t see the value to Customers of such a review.

There is only one saving grace in this disgraceful disaster: As more Canadian Citizens are brought into the Canadian Judicial System to suffer the untenable, but vicious, assaults of Copyright Trolls, the inevitable political and Legal consequences will follow.

In this context, we should hope that they bring ever single Canadian into those Courts; not once, or twice; but, twice a week.

We should invite the Press; and, be waiting at the door with Harper’s and Gaudrault’s Personally Identifying Information, and a Pamphlet explaining, “These are the Fucks who did this to you on behalf of the Copyright Monopolies!!”
http://www.facebook.com/people/Johnny-Cash/100002427462340 Johnny Cash

I hate you Tekksavvy. The UK pirate party has no money and it’s fighting back. You guys almost claim to be the saviors of the internet and this is what you do to your customers? I was going to switch to them before I heard this but now I’ll have to find yet another ISP since I’m with Distributel. At least those dicks don’t lie about not helping us.
anonymous

‘after looking at the issue from every possible direction’. fucking liar! he looked at it from one direction only! he has done just what Voltage was hoping for. what a gutless arse hole he is! i would have thought his main concern would have been to defend his customers and keep them using his service. obviously wrong with that. his customers dont seem to matter at all! here’s hoping there is now a mass exodus to other ISPs!
Anon

My GOD!

We were using this isp to break the law and now the damned isp is actually REVEALING us!! How dare they? lol
- Guest
  
  So if I’m not breaking the law, exactly why the hell would the ISP revealing me be acceptable? Tell you what, Anon, we’re throw the book at you for every single crime listed in there that you may have done. Just to be on the safe side we’ll also imprison you for several hundred years. Don’t want to miss out any collateral damage now , do we?
  - Anon
    
    If you aren’t breaking the law, Guest, you have nothing to worry about. And that, actually, is also the way real life works. ;-)
    
    Do you think we worry about being caught in a swarm in which we literally don’t participate? lol The majority of internet users don’t infringe, never did, so we don’t worry, and the best you can point to is a tiny sampling of notice errors collected by pirates over a dozen years. When BT is monitored and 2000 isp subscribers are directly evidenced infringing, then presented to the isp through proper channels, why should TekSavvy CEO Marc Gaudrault choose to become an accessory to that? Did you even read the article? He owes you nothing but the connection, and how you abuse that connection reflects on you, not on TekSavvy. The isp’s who decide to help conceal their subscribers unlawful behavior so they can profit from the subscription will inevitably be held to account. And why should they not be? In that case they would be hiding you! That’s CLASSIC accessory, and for profit no less. And if you don’t like the ip=identity equation? Suck it up and secure it. Tell it to the judge. It’s your connection.
    - Techanon
      
      If you aren’t breaking the law, Guest, you have nothing to worry about.
      
      How incredibly naive. Not breaking any law doesn’t mean anything if you’re targeted by people with the resources to make it look like you did or if the burden of proof is reversed (like in Germany).
      Some times because of the nature of the plaintiff, just them having your name can be your social downfall even if you win in their case against you.
      
      Anyways, with their method of collecting these IPs uncontested you can’t be sure anymore if these are legitimate accusations anymore.
      
      Who’s to say they didn’t use a random number generator to generate the IPs?
      
      Who’s to say they didn’t distribute material in bad faith with the intention of suing later?
      
      Who corroborates that the IPs they collected effectively did what they claim they did?
      What if a single public IP is shared by more than one account holder (this is the case for ISPs that implemented CGN (Carrier Grade NAT), who do you accuse then of copyright infingement?
    - Anon
      
      “Some times because of the nature of the plaintiff, just them having your name can be your social downfall even if you win in their case against you.”
      
      Isn’t that always the case, in every situation and in every jurisdiction? For all of human history? What’s special or new about this? And you definitely keep alleging they are using a numbers generator to gather ip’s. lol That’s a fine strategy. And I thought Falkvinge was entertaining. lol
    - Techanon
      
      So you mean is okay to humiliate people who are wrongfully accused of copyright infringement? Weren’t you who said it was okay as long as you didn’t break any laws?
    - Anon
      
      Of course not. And law enforcement is human, mistakes will always be made. But you appear to be suggesting that because a statistically insignificant number can and will be inconvenienced this way, enforcement should be abandoned altogether for its imperfection.
      
      Think about that, then think about how the real world works. Do we cease law enforcement because very rare mistakes can be made and sometimes are? This, by the way, is the kind of poor quality thought that is getting you nowhere in the court of law and public opinion.
    - Techanon
      
      What enforcement? These corporations only go after cash settlements.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      No actually that’s a fair point though. Ever heard of the paradox of the false positive? Assuming that the numbers are accurate and that Canadian group have info on 3 million Canadians, let’s assume that they can pull this info with 99% accuracy. (I don’t for a second believe that they can pull it off to the tune of 99% accuracy, but for the sake of this illustration, let’s go with that)
      
      What you’re talking about is 30,000 innocent citizens being accused of illegal activity. This is not statistically insignificant. In terms of real world events, this is something that we refer to as a ‘snafu’, or alternately a “P.R. Nightmare”. I don’t see how your math can be that bad, but maybe I’m too optimistic.
      
      Of course the likelihood is that their process is far less accurate due to the vagaries of the real world, including open wifi, family members, friends, hacking, malware etc so that number could stand to be significantly higher. So what if we have a hundred thousand people falsely accused? Still statistically insignificant?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “But you appear to be suggesting that because a statistically insignificant number can and will be inconvenienced this way,”
      
      Any person with the ability to read a one-page how-to such as this one –
      http://www.ehacking.net/2012/01/reaver-wps-wpawpa2-cracking-tutorial.html
      – Or one of a dozen explicit youtube-tutorials, can ensure and guarantee that any person is “inconvenienced” this way. Haven’t you heard of “wardriving”?
      
      If by “statistically insignificant” you mean “thousands” then yes. Otherwise, no. See Gene Poole’s excellent little tutorial about how “false positives” work.
    - Anyone
      
      they accused network printers or old ladies without pcs of filesharing
      
      their method of gathering IPs is not reliable in the slightest
      
      furthermore, they just get an IP, they still don’t know who is responsible
      
      this whole extortion scheme has to be outlawed and the criminals thrown in jail, because unlike filesharing they actually do cause harm
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Some times because of the nature of the plaintiff, just them having your name can be your social downfall even if you win in their case against you.”
      
      Isn’t that always the case, in every situation and in every jurisdiction? For all of human history? What’s special or new about this?”
      
      What is new about this? Well, Stalin and Mussolini wouldn’t see the problem and apparently neither do you.
      
      The people who defined the rules of a civilized society throughout the ages would beg to differ with you and point out that what you describe is something that in any democracy must be fought, tooth and nail. Because it is not a good thing at all if your life can get wrecked because a holder of power happens to have your name on a list, irrespective of what you’ve actually done.
      
      I guess the reason you can’t see a problem with that is why you defined yourself as “fine” with being a fascist?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “…is a tiny sampling of notice errors collected by pirates over a dozen years. When BT is monitored and 2000 isp subscribers are directly evidenced infringing…”
      
      You are calling a proven minimum error percentage of 12% minor? Anon-land must be nice this time of year.
      
      Add to that if you pissed off your local neighbor and that guy is able to read a one-page “how-to” then you will be standing in front of a jury trying to prove exactly HOW it wasn’t you using your router to download bad copyrighted goat porn.
      
      And given the reaver hack and assorted other hardware hacks on wifi level out there, there’s jack-all you can do about it.
      
      Since the hardened criminal knows these tricks and you, the “upstanding citizen” does not, it’s a given that those 2000 “infringers” you are dreaming about will in fact be about 200 real clueless idiots downloading casually – and the rest people who got nailed because their neighbor had a nasty attitude.
      
      Hell, such a person as you would have lots of people in real life thinking you are a prize idiot who could do with some time before a judge, merited or not. That’s enough.
      
      I understand that in “Anon-land” a law may not be bad if it primarily results in idiots and innocents being hit by it. In the real world that pans out differently however. Learn the difference.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      seriously?? 12%??
      
      I was wrong about the monitored infringers in Canada, I believe it was a million (out of a 30 million population, so 3% of the country) but if there’s a 12% margin for error, then that’s a hundred and twenty thousand innocent people getting trolled (or possibly sued). That’s insane.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      According to the washington university’s study they conclude a smaller number – but that’s after a bunch of computer science graduates have sifted the data.
      
      http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/dmca_hotsec08.pdf
      
      A more casual scrape such as the one used by “youhavedownloaded” gets a 12% false positive count. You may recall how apparently many ip adresses from that one ended up in the white house, pentagon, the MPAA themselves and Universal Studios.
      
      The number may vary extensively depending on how wide your sampling is, but for tracking a dozen movies, say, all you need is one troll in one swarm and your data is shot to hell.
      
      Either way, even a 99% accuracy rate as you examplify it is a utopian ideal. Assuming there is no spoofing, no wardriving and no swarm poisoning going on, I’d say 95% accuracy MIGHT be achievable. Assuming the sampling is sifted and done by real experts only.
      
      What really happens, of course, is that the expert simply tosses all data he thinks could be crap overboard, leaving out of a million reports, a thousand. From that thousand he grabs the ten most persistent ones. Then takes half of those to court. This is the way HADOPI did it in france.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      at any rate, when you’re dealing with numbers like this, even a 1% false positive can be ruinous. Maybe that’s why they never plan to actually take anybody to court…
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Maybe that’s why they never plan to actually take anybody to court…”
      
      Congratulations, you win one internetz.
      
      Every actual court case based exclusively on ip-based evidence has been struck down in thunder by the judges. Either in the first instance or on the appeal. That renders an actual court process costly.
      
      Most people would prefer not to go to court, especially if they don’t understand the accusation and have no technical knowledge. Just paying 20$ as a “settlement” in order for it to go away is vastly preferable for many.
      
      So from the perspective of a shady law firm, send tens of thousands of these letters and if even one in ten pays, you profit. The rest you forget about.
      
      This is why ACS:Law got so hammered in the UK when “Anonymous” hacked their serves and published their internal mails where it stood in black and white that their business model was basically extortion via intimidation. Hence why Crossley, the boss of ACS, got disbarred.
- http://gear-mentation.myopenid.com/ Gear Mentation
  
  No, sharing is not breaking the law. The laws of the MAFIAA are against the law. The people’s will is the law.
Pingback: In the News.. | TorGuard.net Blog - Anonymous VPN Services
heyhey

FROM DSL REPORTS; Statement by Teksavvy CEO

Why we are not opposing motion on Monday.
The reason we insisted on a notice period was so that those affected or
those interested in this situation could have a chance to intervene on
Monday. If you feel that your information should not be released you
could be represented anonymously if you choose to.

For the merit
of what they are alleging, this is not a trial. So all they are doing at
this stage is to show enough to pass a test in order to convince a
court to order us to release the information. At this point no copyright
infringement has been proven. We believe its important that people know
when their private information may be released and that’s why we have
taken this approach.

The best way to protect against these
requests is to simply not engage in these activities. We don’t encourage
illegal activities of any kind, nor am I insinuating that anybody has
now either as I don’t know one way or another why anybody might have
appeared on their list. What people do online though is not for us to
scrutinize, we don’t monitor or collect data or anything of the sort.
All ISPs are subject to these kinds of requests and this is not the
first request of its kind. Other ISPs have had similar requests in the
past and there will surely be more in the future.

All of that
being said though, it’s important to read exactly what they are
alleging. My understanding is that they are alleging that at an IP
associated with some of our customers accounts, their work was made
available somehow. Whether anybody downloaded it or whether the alleged
downloaded it is not part of their claim to my understanding. Again
though, we are not and will not be commenting on any of the merits of
what they are alleging. Those who do, should take advantage of the
notice period and find a way to make their case on Monday. Should the
motion pass and we were to be forced to give up the information, those
alleged would then have to deal with Voltage directly. What they choose
to do with the information is up to them. Again though, all they would
have at that point would be your information, not a judgment that
anybody has done anything wrong. To do that they would need to take the
alleged to court where they would have the opportunity to plead their
case.. As is the case in all court hearings.

Everybody should
know though that we have looked into all angles to determine what our
position should be in this situation and after spending a significant
amount of time and soliciting a considerable amount of advice from
numerous respected sources, we found that we simply could not comment on
the merits of the case. Our place is to ensure that we provide adequate
notice and also to make known to others that these requests have
occurred and that the best way to make sure to avoid being involved is
to simply not engage in such activities. If somehow you end up involved
and you feel its not right, the place to voice your concern is the
hearing on Monday. If you intend to appear, please let us know also.

I
will be there on Monday to ensure your privacy is taken seriously
however we will not be making a case against the merit of what they are
alleging. That’s for those affected and others to do if they wish to.
Our role has been to provide notice and to take every step to alert and
to some degree educate people that the laws have now changed and
apparently so too have the technologies used to collect evidence in
these cases. If they were not enforcing these laws in the past, they are
certainly doing so now, whether the laws are right or not is not for us
to judge.
–
Marc – CEO/TekSavvy
Anon

“The best way to protect against these requests is to simply not engage in these activities.”

Does this get any clearer? If you don’t want to hear it from the artists, the industries, the governments and legislators, the waves of law enforcement or from me, then hear it from from your isp. But hear it or be hunted.

You are truly imbeciles at this point. Seriously.
- http://gear-mentation.myopenid.com/ Gear Mentation
  
  If you don’t want to hear from all those people, be smart about sharing. That’s all. No need to share less. What they don’t get is that they are actually helpless in the face of sharing.
- Anyone
  
  an IP is not a person
  which means they have no proof whatsoever
  
  and you want to allow this sort of extortion to continue?
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  “But hear it or be hunted.
  
  You are truly imbeciles at this point. Seriously.”
  
  You mean as it’s panned out every time so far? We have a cheat sheet in hand from Sweden and France about how well such “hunting” goes.
  
  Not well. Though there is an amusing case in sweden of one of the biggest copyright holders being successfully framed for filesharing by some creative troll who decided to demonstrate the problems of ip-harvesting.
  - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
    
    Please share the details. I love a good caper.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Google translate actually handles this page pretty well…
      http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1646&artikel=5316720
      
      “Police investigation of illegal file sharing on the Swedish Film Institute is closed. The information received by the prosecutors is not enough to bind people or computers to the suspected infringement, says Henrik Rasmusson on International Public Prosecution Office.
      
      It was a year ago that several Swedish films, Kiss Me, Border, Crown Jewels and Åsa Nisse, leaked via The Pirate Bay. It was only shortly after they premiered. According to the anti-piracy company Double Trace AB in Malmö should have seen the films spread from servers in Swedish filminstiutets networks.
      
      There was much criticism of how this was handled. Among other things, the media profile of Robert Aschberg at Strix Television, behind Åsa-Nisse film. He found Film Institute took a long time to report the incident to police and instead went out and told the staff about the suspected infringement.”
      
      The prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson would not comment on it, but says that it is generally a good idea to notify the police as soon as possible and allow it to become a confidentiality of investigations of a suspected intrusion. He also says that there were no pieces of the technical nature of the investigation that made it impossible to proceed with the case.”
      
      What basically happened is that the local Ifpi/MPAA had tracked a number of movie distributions via torrent on The Pirate Bay to ip adresses within the firewalls of the Swedish Film Institute.
      
      (The Swedish Film Institute, by the way, is the actual employer of the swedish copyright enforcement brigade. Our own local midget Hollywood.)
      
      After a year’s worth of investigation the police had to drop the case as no employee or computer at SFI could be linked to the leak.
      
      For anyone who knows how a network works it’s pretty obvious what happened. Someone decided to demonstrate how badly the IPRED directive worked in practice by poisoning a number of torrent swarms with ip adresses belonging to SFI.
      
      And true to form the local MPAA went into action the same way they are now poised to do in Canada, as they have in France, etc. Using the same methods.
      
      That’s why I’m hoping that someone in the US or Canada will be granted discovery in response to one of the absurd claims made on the ISP’s – because that would show everyone where the MPAA/RIAA obtain their data. And give us all a very good laugh.
      
      You can guess how many resources were wasted by the police and the SFI themselves over a year’s worth of investigation.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      That’s just all kinds of awesome. That just blows the pirating printers away completely, thank you :)
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      You’ll find this stuff all over – read through the ACS:Law case for another example of how these clowns operate.
      
      Hell, the pirating printers are one single example of where a University actually started examining their various takedown notices. These are the same jokers who send Google takedown notices for their own Imdb pages.
      
      Basically, a copyright enforcement agency is more often than not a bunch of lawyers incapable of earning a living any other way. And that in the end means they rely on Copyright giving them a way to use legal trickery such as this in order to survive. Especially now that even Hollywood is cutting the budget on the MPAA because the copyright holders are realizing they’re just feeding a bunch of useless purposeless parasites.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Oh I know, I’ve been following the dealings of Prenda Law and John Steele for some time now, it makes for a great soap opera.
      
      Wasn’t aware that the MPAA are being cut back, that’s surprising given how heavily America is invested in Intellectual Property, though I’m sure they’ll just look for government funding, sort of quid pro quo for all the ‘donations’ they’ve been funneling to the US gov all these years.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      I think the heavy thinkers in the US treasury are starting to re-think the “Intellectual Property” part.
      
      At the rate China is creating IP and purchasing it, it will take them 20 years to surpass the US in held portfolios. At which point China-based manufacture will run US-based off the market because they then own the patent on “rectangular communications devices with rounded corners, aluminium-reinforced frames and with centered glass screens”.
      
      When China stated that they’d own export and manufacture in the 60′s, everyone laughed. Ten years ago they said they’d also own the IP market. And now, some smart people, instead of laughing, are looking very worried. In order to even start researching in the US you need a legal team to investigate whether you’re even allowed to. China doesn’t enforce IP internally at all so the place seethes with innovation.
      
      Of course, that’s the political heavyweights. Hollywood is just noticing that their customers have come to hate them while seeing no drop in piracy irrespective of how much money they drop into the MPAA’s pockets.
      
      Which is where a lot of shady law firms formerly with solid contracts in copyright enforcement are now striking out on the “get rich by mass extortion” scheme. It’s cheap, fast, and under the DMCA relatively safe.
- jimmy671
  
  “You are truly imbeciles at this point. Seriously.”
  
  Look who is talking!
  Fuck Off Troll.
JordanKratz

Make sure to never watch another Voltage Picture.Boycott them and share the News Info with your friends and fans.
Fuck the MAFIAA Hard !!!
rickards

Voltage chose the right ISP to go through. Teksavvy doesn’t have a large team of lawyers, nor bundles of excess cash to spend on court proceedings. they’re small-time in canada; they buy bandwidth from the big boys and resell it to customers.
Brandon Hope

they play to sue 2% of our population. Please stop worrying about this, what they want to do is insane and our courts will not allow them. Common sense is the main law in Canada
- http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
  
  I would love to see someone challenge a suit in Canada as a violation of their rights and freedoms guaranteed to them under the charter. It would make for a really interesting debate.
  
  Hey, maybe it’ll be me ;)
SimonFraser4

Have you seen Voltage’s library? Who illegally downloads a Steven Seagal movie?
- BuddhaFacePalmed
  
  i think Steven Seagal himself because no one watches them anymore and that he could cry over together with his dead career :P
Stephen Harper

What bothers me the most is how the CEO went on about how we would be bad if we fought against laws. No, this is not true. It is our obligation, to ourselves and our loved ones to fight back against unjust laws. Just because some person in a seat of power manages to pass a law does not mean its for the good of the people and does not mean its a good law! This copy right bill, should never have been passed in the first place and is counter intuitive to our changing society. This bill is an example of what can be done when someone with a lot of money gets involved. We need to be standing up for ourselves and fight back on this hard and fast!
Guest

The right answer to these Assholes is to declare that the logs has been lost and that the data requested are not available.

Oops! Sorry your honor! You know with technology. . .
Guest

“The laws are there to defend against bad things. If we defend against
laws, that makes us bad. We don’t do that. We’ve never done that,” he
said.”

Even when the law is bad? Even when corporations of parasites and criminals are abusing the law to enrich themselves and rob people?

This Marc Gaudrault “est un fumier et une salope” That all I have to say.

Don’t do business with this fucking TekSavvy ISP of assholes!
ThumbsUpThumbsDown

How could one do a mass mailing to each and every TekSavvy

customer in Canada?
- Anyone
  
  accuse them of infringing on your copyright ;)
  TekSavvy will simply forward the message, as has been shown in this article
http://twitter.com/jasonbonney Jason Bonney

Was thinking about switching from Rogers to Teksavvy but not anymore. Just got a VPN instead. Fuck them all.
anon

I am still unsure as to why people are being sued in less they are selling the copy-righten data thus making a profit in no way are these people (rather IPs) making money (to our knowledge) off of what they are downloading thus they should be exempt from being sued due to the fact that they could be using it purely for educational purposes or personal use.

Those selling the copy righten data should be punished tho only for the funds gained those using it for personal usage should not, imo.
- http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
  
  it’s a regulatory offense, it’s how the law works. Threaten people with a civil suit in order to deter them from doing it. It’s not a criminal offense in any way, it’s more like jaywalking.
  
  It’s not even downloading that’s considered the evil activity so much as uploading and sharing. If you were to do all your bittorrent with a program like BitThief, you would never see a complaint.
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    “Threaten people with a civil suit in order to deter them from doing it. It’s not a criminal offense in any way, it’s more like jaywalking.”
    
    Actually, jaywalking IS a criminal offense.
    
    A civil suit would be slander/libel, breach of contract, etc. I.e. the case is not tried under penal law. A criminal case can bring jailtime, a civil suit most often not.
    
    How this works, to clarify further for the anon above, is that you threaten thousands of people with a lawsuit where you may sue them for 1000 dollars. Merely attending the suit will cost the accused a lot of time and money in itself. Then they tell you they will instead go away if you give them 20$.
    
    If 500 people choose to give those 20$ rather than have to defend themselves in court, that’s 10,000$ in pure profit for the cost of sending a thousand letters.
    
    And that is why shady law firms try to apply this method to filesharing. It’s a form of “legalized” extortion.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Yeah I’m apparently a little confused on the whole thing, it is a felony, though nonetheless it’s a regulatory offense (much like traffic violations), in that there’s no mens rea involved to prove culpability, and the purpose is to deter rather than to punish for moral wrongdoing. The more you know…
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Interestingly enough in Sweden jaywalking is a criminal offense – but one which has NO statutory penalty assigned to it, and hence more or less every swedish person is in fact a criminal today. Something to think about.
      
      This is a clear problem of overlexification – when you try to create laws covering every eventuality and end up with a disorganized mess in which it is actually impossible to be compliant anymore.
      
      This is one page I would class as humor if the truth wasn’t so tragic.
      
      http://www.dumblaws.com/
Pragmatica

If Teksavvy kept IP logs for less than 30 days then they wouldn’t have the data to give to copyright trolls when they come calling. Several VPN providers log nothing for this exact reason. Teksavvy should drastically reduce their log retention from 90 days to under 30 days or ideally 7 days or less. Canada has no legal requirement that providers must log anything…so it’d be great if they’d reduce/stop logging because then they would legitimately have no data to hand over. Any ideas what might be preventing them from doing this? It’s such a simple, elegant solution really. Do any Canadian ISPs currently have less than 1 month logs?
Pingback: Google in Talks to Resolve Antitrust Issues in Europe | My Blog
Haha

I heard it through the grapevine, personal information of people from MPAA and RIAA WILL BE posted and made public to those that wish to see/use it anyway they wish, and I am itching to get my hands on this, Boy oh Boy……………=)
http://twitter.com/krozareq krozareq

They should be offered death
joexxx

This is a very dumb statement by the CEO. He has, essentially, admitted that the company already abandoned their neutrality in this case. The company admitted that Voltage Pictures has a viable case – that’s a position, not a neutral stance.
The issue with this attitude is that it puts the ISP into a cross-fire between copyright holders and users. This is a cross-fire situation which puts the company into a legal and business environment that it is unlikely to survive in.
Very bad move!
BarakaX

“The law is the law. I can’t defend against the law. The laws are there
to defend against bad things. If we defend against laws, that makes us
bad. We don’t do that. We’ve never done that.”
–Marc Gaudrault

“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.”
–Mahatma Gandhi
guest

Bobmail = paid spy and FUCKING FAGGOT.
Lest-Starve-Them

Stop debating if the wolf is right killing hens in the hen house ! This is ludicrous.

You do not resonate with wolves. You shot them or you starve them…

So start starving them: The last time I bought an ‘intellectual property’ was in 2001 !
Goodbye Voltage!

Don’t settle. Fight … that is exactly what Voltage’s lawyers hope won’t happen.

Their legal costs to fight 2,000 lawsuits – most of which will ultimately be lost by simply pointing out that an IP does NOT MEAN that it was your download, not to mention sympathetic judges in a David vs Goliath legal fight.

Better that central legal counsel be retained ($100 per person sets up a hell of a fund) to deal with core issues.
Hololol

Encrypted packets do pass Deep packet inspection. DPI cannot break into an encrypted packet to see whats inside. Whoever mentioned that is possible is wrong. Look it up.
Naze

well as far as i can see this bobmail guy is a complete shit. He get paid to troll people.shame on you noob. few days before i heard cop arrested a 9 year old girl for downloading copyrighted video & took her winnie the pooh laptop. Criminals are moving freely & kids are being arrested by cope.thats how usa is. & you looks like those guy bob who can arrest a kid just coz he/she downloaded something
Canadian

So does this mean they will go after every person who taped songs off the radio? Everyone who taped a movie off tv? They even made boomboxes with 2 decks specifically to copy tapes! Why is it now wrong to do what has been encouraged for years? If you have internet you most likely have cable and radio access, so saying it’s not the same scope can shut up.

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