Big Music attacks Canadian torrent site
p2pnet news | P2P:- After the CRIA forced Demonoid to block access to Canadian users, four recording labels have turned their attention to two other BitTorrent trackers hosted in Canada, issuing them with Cease and Desists. At least one intends to stand and fight.
There was quite a stir during the last month when we announced that Demonoid had been forced to temporarily close following legal pressures. The site returned but blocked Canadian users under orders of the CRIA. Now it appears that this was just the start of action against Canadian BitTorrent trackers.
Following a Canadian newspaper article which branded them ‘The Pirates of Quebec’, two BitTorrent trackers have been targeted by a collective of Canadian music labels.
The administrator of the 1 year old, 46,000 member ‘QuebecTorrent‘ has received Cease and Desist letters from 4 record labels and is being threatened with further action if they don’t comply.
The demands are:
a) Close the site www.quebectorrent.com and any other site of similar nature which you operate.
b) You must agree to never again directly or indirectly operate any other service which enables the sharing of music.
c) You must post a message clearly indicating the closure of the site and inform your users that sharing music via p2p networks is forbidden by Canadian copyright law unless permission is obtained and royalties paid.
In contrast to the situation at Demonoid who chose to block Canadian users rather than close or re-locate, it appears that QuebecTorrent (QT) don’t want to take this lying down and are hoping to fight this action.
Currently the members are being rallied with a view to obtaining donations – the administrator of QT told TorrentFreak that their lawyer is charging 250$ CAD/hour and although he is financing some of the fight, he simply cannot raise all of the funds.
He told us: ‘The fees so far are confirmed at 2000$ CAD. I am asking the users for 1500$ and I will pay the rest.’
He also outlines two scenarios – if QuebecTorrent loses in court, it will be very bad for P2P as a favorable legal precedent for the majors would result in an anti-p2p ‘crusade’.
Equally, victory could create a favorable legal precedent for P2P which would benefit the whole file-sharing community.
In summing up, the administrator says that he has a stark choice – either people donate to support the legal defense of the site or he will have no choice but to close it in the face of pressure from these labels.
The other site sent C&D’s – tv-qc.net – has already closed its doors.
Anyone wanting to help QuebecTorrent fight should consider donating.
Stay tuned, updates to follow.
Torrentfreak – The Netherlands
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October 18th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
“You must post a message clearly indicating the closure of the site and inform your users that sharing music via p2p networks is forbidden by Canadian copyright law unless permission is obtained and royalties paid.”
Lies make baby Jesus cry.
October 19th, 2007 at 4:06 am
Unfortunately it is not entirely lies.
It IS forbidden, by canadian laws, to broadcast or distribute content you do not hold the rights to. You may download for personal use, of course, but you may not distribute it. When you share files, you are not only downloading them, you are also distributing them.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
It is an incredible distortion of reality to equate making files available for others to download with distribution. For a comparable situation which is specifically exempted by canadian law, consider a library containing copyrighted books and a photocopier for users to make their own copies. In this situation, canadian law clearly indemnifies the library as without the action of individuals making copies for themselves no distribution would take place. Similarly, no files will be distributed via filesharing software unless someone somewhere is clicking ‘download,’ and in Canada the people clicking download are fully within their legal rights.
The biggest issue, however is that Torrent sites do not even make files available for download in the first place. The torrent trackers and other services they provide serve merely to allow individuals wishing to fileshare to connect with each other. One might as well sue a DNS service as technologically it performs a similar role on the internet. With reasonable legal support a court case would blow these ridiculous claims out of the water.
October 20th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Just more of the same old bullshit from useless old fogeys who are afraid to move with the times. Society will be a better place once we have left them behind.