CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘Canada’ Category

Post from: TorrentFreak

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Canadian Anti-Camming Laws Net First Conviction: “

Canada has its first conviction under the controversial Bill C-59. A man has been found guilty of ‘camming’ the movie ‘Sweeney Todd’ in Calgary on its opening day. The 21 year-old was given a $1,495 fine and placed on probation for a year. During this time he is also excluded from all theaters and is forbidden to possess any video recording equipment, even that on a cellphone. He avoids jail.

Early in 2007, Twentieth Century Fox announced that Canada had a major movie ‘camming’ problem, claiming that 50% of all such copies of movies originated from the country. The controversial claims caused panic and before long, theater staff were commonly being equipped with night-vision goggles in a bid to catch pirates.

On December 21 2007, Richard Craig Lissaman of Calgary hid a camcorder in his clothing and went to the Empire Studio 16 theater. There the 20 year old joined the matinee performance of the Johnny Depp movie ‘Sweeney Todd’ on its opening day. Sitting at the left of the theater at the back, Lissaman hid the camera in a sock and hid the tell-tale LED lights on his camera with duct tape to avoid being spotted.

Unknown to Lissaman, an investigation financed by the Canadian and US movie industries had been underway for months - and his luck was about to run out. According to Crown prosecutor Rob Bassett, ‘The house lights were turned on and the movie was shut off and Calgary police arrested him. The accused (later) admitted he had recorded the picture.’

Charged with one count of the unauthorized recording of a movie, Lissaman became the second person in Canada to be charged under new legislation designed to crack down on camcorder pirates. Previously, under Canada’s laws the authorities had to prove that any camcorder movie recording was destined for sale, rental or other distribution to get a conviction. But with changes that took effect on June 1st 2007, any image recorded without consent could result in a prison sentence of up to 2 years.

Yesterday, Lissaman, now 21, pleaded guilty as charged and was sentenced by Judge Catherine Skene to $1,495 in fines and 12 months probation. During this period, Lissaman is excluded from going into any movie theater and is banned from owning or possessing any video recording equipment, including video-enabled cellphones.

Virginia Jones, a director of policy and legal affairs for the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association said: ‘We would have liked to see jail time, sending a stronger message. We hope this is just a starting point.’

Linking to defamatory material is not the same as publishing it, says Canadian court: “The publisher of a link to defamatory material does not have any liability for that defamation, a Canadian court has ruled. Liability could only exist if the link publisher made any statement relating to the defamatory material itself, the court said.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

(Via Techdirt.)

Canadian Court Rules That Linking To Defamatory Articles Isn’t Defamatory: “You may recall the story of Wayne Crookes, a Canadian businessman who is active in the Green Party in Canada. In 2007, he sued Google, Yahoo, Myspace, Wikipedia and some other sites, claiming that all were liable for content that he found defamatory. It’s somewhat interesting to try to follow the trail of what the actual libel is — as many of the lawsuits for libel are focused on stories about (you guessed it) him filing for libel lawsuits (which certainly appears to be true, rather than libelous). With at least some of those lawsuits, the Canadian Supreme Court tossed them out, though over jurisdiction issues, rather than on the merits of the case.

In one case, Crookes sued the website P2PNet for just linking to the material that Crookes found libelous. It seemed like a huge stretch to say that merely linking to content (even if you grant that it was libelous) is also libel. And, the good news is that a court has now agreed. It has sided with Jon Newton, the operator of P2PNet in noting that simply linking to libelous material is not, in itself, libelous. The ruling does note that if the link text had been libelous, that might be a different story — but just linking to the text as part of a discussion about the lawsuits is hardly libelous. This is definitely a huge win for free speech in Canada — though, Canada could take a big step forward in updating its defamation laws to make it clear that the liability for libel should be on those who actually were libelous, rather than those who host it or point to it.

edmontonsun.com - Canada - ‘Internet research’ defense negated by Crown in child porn case: “‘Internet research’ defense negated by Crown in child porn case

Judge rejects man’s claim he possessed child porn for research purposes
By Guelph Mercury, 12 October, 2008

GUELPH, Ont. — An Ontario man’s claim he surfed the Internet for child porn because he was concerned girls he knew might have been victims “defies common sense,” a judge said before sentencing him to six months in jail.

Justice Bruce Durno said he did not believe 51-year-old Kenneth Carter amassed a collection of disturbing images while conducting research.

Carter earlier pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography, but during the preparation of a presentencing report told a probation officer he was looking at the online images because he was worried two girls he knew might have been victims.

This belief, he said, was based on his knowledge the girls had once attended a daycare centre implicated after the owner’s son was charged with possessing child porn.

Carter claimed he downloaded pictures and then used image-comparison software to determine whether the children in the images might be the girls he knew.

The Crown rejected this explanation and launched into a sentencing hearing to determine the man’s level of culpability.

Const. Bruce Hunter of the Guelph technical crimes section testified during the sentencing hearing that as far as he knows, the software described by Carter does not exist.

Hunter also said it would be “next to impossible” to locate images of particular children in the massive and growing world of online child pornography.

“What he said he was attempting to do gives new meaning to the phrase needle in a haystack,” Durno said Thursday before sending Carter to jail for six months.

Court heard police found almost 200 images of child porn on Carter’s computer after it was seized in August 2006, as well as approximately 300 child porn stories on electronic storage devices.

Carter admitted during the sentencing hearing he found the stories “titillating.”

Following the jail sentence, Carter will be on probation for 18 months.

Porn arrest here sparks probes in 16 countries: “Porn arrest here sparks probes in 16 countries’

Louise Dickson, Times Colonist, Published: Saturday, October 11, 2008

The arrest of a Victoria man for possessing child pornography has sparked investigations in 16 countries.

Matthew Cohen, 21, traded more than 186,000 child pornography images with hundreds of people around the world, Victoria police Det. Bob Elder said yesterday.

Details of the case have been kept secret until now to allow other jurisdictions to pursue suspects.”

(more…)

Canadian paedophile jailed for three years: “Man caught after police unscrambled ’swirly face’ on web pictures pleads guilty to molesting teenager”

The Register, Thai court jails ’swirly-face’ paedophile: A Canadian schoolteacher who was arrested after police appealed for the identity of a man depicted abusing boys on images circulating on the net has been jailed for three years and three months in Thailand.…”

Canadian Human Rights Commission Launches Independent Review On Hate Messaging on the Internet

(Ottawa, June 17, 2008) – The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) has launched a comprehensive policy review of how best to address hate messages on the Internet. Leading constitutional law expert Professor Richard Moon of the University of Windsor will conduct an independent study as an important part of this review.

(more…)

American Exception - Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech - Series - NYTimes.com:

By ADAM LIPTAK, Published: June 12, 2008

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.

Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean’s, Canada’s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their ‘dignity, feelings and self-respect.’

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which held five days of hearings on those questions here last week, will soon rule on whether Maclean’s violated the law.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Canada Proposes Draconian Anti-Piracy Law:

The bill, dubbed the ‘Canadian DMCA’ has not been popular with many of those it will effect. Over 40,000 have joined a facebook group, run by Michael Geist opposing it. Geist, a law professor at University of Ottawa, has been fighting to oppose these laws for some time now. On the tabling of the bill, he writes ‘The government plans for second reading at the next sitting of the house, effectively removing the ability to send it to committee after first reading (and therefore be more open to change)’

The bill is controversial in many ways. Whilst supporters of the bill will point to the allowances for time shifting, format shifting, and the ability to ‘private copy’ (moving a song from CD to an mp3 player for instance). It will, however, prevent that activity, though criminalization, if there is any sort of technological restriction on it. Anti-copy flags on TV shows, DRM on music, or rootkits on CDs would mean that any attempt to make a fair use, would be subject to prosecution and heavy fines.

Perhaps even more important, uploaders, and to an extent, downloaders too (certainly those on torrents), will now be liable. While in the past, the RMCP has stated it won’t pursue uploaders, with new laws come changes in policy for those that enforce the laws. Bill C-61 contains a statutory damage amount of $500.

Limitation
(1.If a copyright owner has made an election under subsection (1), a defendant who is an individual is liable for statutory damages of $500 in respect of all the defendant’s infringements that were done for the defendant’s private purposes and that are involved in the proceedings.

This is a change from the previous wording, which gave the court latitude to drop that $500 to as low as $200.

Scene members, and torrent sites will also find themselves under increasing pressure. Despite claims that most torrent sites are not commercial, it’s not stopped industry associations from claiming they are, in order to get law enforcement action against them. From the act,

Circumvention of technological measure
(3.1) Every person, except a person who is acting on behalf of a library, archive or museum or an educational institution, is guilty of an offence who knowingly and for commercial purposes contravenes section 41.1 and is liable

(a) on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding $1,000,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or to both; or

(b) on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding $25,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to both.

Although DRM has seen a decline in recent times, laws like this can only give content distributors incentive to bring them back, at least in Canada.

Canada Investigates Facebook’s Alleged Privacy Violations: “Canada’s federal privacy commissioner begins an investigation into Facebook after four students complain that it violates Canadian law by disclosing personal information to advertisers without proper consent.

(Via Wired News.)