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Canada Communications Movies Network Piracy The Internet Your Rights Online

ISPs and Movie Industry Prepare Canadian Pirate Site Blocking Deal (torrentfreak.com) 86

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A coalition of movie industry companies and ISPs, including Bell, Rogers, and Cineplex are discussing a proposal to implement a plan to allow for website blockades without judicial oversight. The Canadian blocklist would be maintained by a new non-profit organization called "Internet Piracy Review Agency" (IPRA) and enforced through the CTRC, Canadaland reports. The plan doesn't come as a total surprise as Bell alluded to a nationwide blocking mechanism during a recent Government hearing. What becomes clear from the new plans, however, is that the telco is not alone. The new proposal is being discussed by various stakeholders including ISPs and local movie companies. As in other countries, major American movie companies are also in the loop, but they will not be listed as official applicants when the plan is submitted to the CRTC. Canadian law professor Micheal Geist is very critical of the plans. Although the proposal would only cover sites that "blatantly, overwhelmingly or structurally" engage in or facilitate copyright infringement, this can be a blurry line.

"Recent history suggests that the list will quickly grow to cover tougher judgment calls. For example, Bell has targeted TVAddons, a site that contains considerable non-infringing content," Geist notes. "It can be expected that many other sites disliked by rights holders or broadcasters would find their way onto the block list," he adds. While the full list of applicants is not ready yet, it is expected that the coalition will file its proposal to the CRTC before the end of the month.

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ISPs and Movie Industry Prepare Canadian Pirate Site Blocking Deal

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    So Canada is going to block YouTube? That will go over well.

    The Canadian blocklist would be maintained by a new non-profit organization called "Internet Piracy Review Agency"

    Might as well paint a giant "hack me" sign on your back.... once hacked, what would be some fun domains for us to block? gc.ca? rogers.com? bell.ca?
    Oh what fun it will be!

  • by Dangerous_Minds ( 1869682 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2017 @08:26PM (#55684601)
    May I ask what was wrong with the original submission of this story? https://slashdot.org/submissio... [slashdot.org]
  • "Internet Piracy Review Agency" (IPRA)

    Shouldn't that be IPRAA, y'hosers?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    When companies are the judge, jury and executioner.

    Why else would they form a coalition to bypass judges?

    They are trying to legitimize mafia tactics to the point where the government can't even get involved.

    "That's a nice site you got there. You know me and my buddies got this list. It would be a shame if your site wound up on it."

  • America is to blame here? Because Canada can't govern themselves. Must be the evil Americans.
  • "implement a plan to allow for website blockades without judicial oversight."

    At present, the CRTC enforces net neutrality - pricing may be based on bandwidth and transfer, but not content.

    It'll be interesting to see what happens if the ISPs actually try this, because the CRTC isn't all that strong a regulatory body from the consumer perspective, and nobody complains about illegal content being blocked.

    Somewhere, though, somebody's site will be incorrectly blacklisted and there will be a lawsuit that could b

    • My main concern is that once the ISP becomes a censorship authority, how slippery does that slope become? Great Wall of Canada? Probably not that bad, but probably a good time to start supporting the Canadian chapter of the EFF?

  • by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2017 @09:24PM (#55684919) Journal
    How long before every well funded group of SJW will demand to add sites to that ban list?
    Copyright infringement often starts with all kinds of talk about books, movies, reviews, comments on the internet.
    Movie review sites?
    Books about faith and cults?
    History sites?
    Political sites?
    Law sites that list details about a nations crime rate?
    Sites that review political books?

    That could induce a person to consider copyright infringement after reading about a problematic book or movie.
    Block the problematic site and the temptation for copyright infringement is removed.
    The SJW get to ban sites they don't like and the risk of copyright infringement is removed.
    Win, win for censorship.
    • You forgot a few other things which often face calls to ban:
      Porn sites.
      Sites criticising or insulting religion.

  • by c6gunner ( 950153 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2017 @09:52PM (#55685085) Homepage

    I was with an ISP which, earlier this year, started blocking TPB. Gave me the push I needed to switch to a different ISP which conveniently also costs $5 less per month.

    I have a feeling that, if this happens, only the big players will implement it. A lot of the smaller guys see it as a big selling point that they don't do any traffic shaping and such, and some of them even offered free SSL tunnels as part of their basic service back when the big players were trying to throttle torrent traffic over the bulk bandwidth which they sold to the smaller companies.

    If not, I suppose there's always VPNs.

    • by Xyrus ( 755017 )

      Until they block VPN. No net neutrality means ISPs can (and will) block/throttle/etc. whatever they want.

  • the CRTC is government and them reinforcing an block can end up in a court case over government censorship

    • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

      The "first amendment" in Canadian law doesn't exist. Canada has no fundamental guarantee to speech, it can be restricted by the first. The 1st section of the charter of rights and freedoms state: "guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

      The 2nd section "Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: (a) freedom of conscience and religion; (b) freedom of thought, bel

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I can only imagine who will sit on the board of directors of this "new non-profit organization called "Internet Piracy Review Agency" (IPRA)"

    I can also only imagine the amount of scope creep that will happen, as they start to expand into all sorts of areas.

    I would totally not support this, not that it matters.

  • This kind of thing was bound to happen as studios became more data aware and carriers became content holders.
    This is especially bad for Canadians as we already pay a fee on media that goes to compensate the content management and maybe even content producers that is supposed to allow personal backup.

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