Have You Received a Piracy Notice from an American Company Demanding You Pay Up?

Earlier this year, a new law went into effect in Canada that required ISPs to report instances of suspected piracy among their customers, the so-called “notice and notice” system. The result is that a bunch of foreign companies–third parties not affiliated with the actual rights holders of the material that may (or may not) being pirated–have been sending emails to Canadians demanding that they pay up now or face massive legal consequences.  It’s been reported that hundreds of thousands of these warnings have been sent to Canadians.

First things first: Canadians are NOT obligated to pay. Demanding a cash settlement without due process from a foreign entity is wrong on soooooo many levels.

Second, there’s mounting pressure on Ministry of Industry James Moore to do something about these abuses.  From TorrentFreak:

“As we feared, copyright trolls have in fact taken advantage of the Notice and Notice system to ramp up their abusive practices in Canada,” the groups write to the Minister.

“We have seen notices claiming infringement of foreign law, misrepresenting the scope of damages recipients potentially face, omitting mention of defenses, and failing to identify the notice as a mere allegation of infringement.”

It’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out.