Filesharing Update: A Torrent of Lawsuits

In our earlier post we reviewed a recent US lawsuit against (the now-famous) Jammie Thomas involving filesharing and copyright infringement allegations south of the border.  That fight is continuing and lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have decided to assist on the appeal.    

In Canada, the filesharing site Demonoid closed its doors last month after cease-and-desist letters from the Canadian Recording Industry Association.  Their site now contains the simple greeting: “The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online.”  CRIA succeeded in shutting the site down, but filesharing sites are like prairie dogs – the moment one pops down a hole, another is emerging somewhere else. 

It appears that the real fight is brewing in Quebec over the filesharing site QuebecTorrent.  Last month, 31 members of the recording industry (including Sony BMG Music Canada, Universal Music Canada and EMI Group Canada) launched a lawsuit against the site, seeking a preliminary injunction to shut it down.  QuebecTorrent managed to defeat that application and keep its doors open for the time being. This case may represent the first opportunity in Canada to test — or make — the law in this area, so both sides are preparing for the fight.  At the moment, filesharing is not specifically legal in Canada although no court has had an opportunity to review the specifics of a filesharing case.

This is one to watch.

 

Calgary – 11:22 MST

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