Should I start worrying? (third copyright notification from isp)
March 8, 2019 6:03 PM Subscribe
So, first, I'm in Canada. In November I (stupidly) downloaded a movie without using a vpn. I got the usual copyright form email from the production company via my isp, which is accordance with Canada's Notice and Notice Regime. I ignored that email and went on with my life, and didn't click on the link to settle...
... then Last week I received a SECOND email from them, which surprised me because it's been several months. Now tonight I received a THIRD notification.
Should I just pay the settlement? Ignore it? Do I need to see a lawyer now? Uhhh, I'm kind of nervous! A third notice?!
... then Last week I received a SECOND email from them, which surprised me because it's been several months. Now tonight I received a THIRD notification.
Should I just pay the settlement? Ignore it? Do I need to see a lawyer now? Uhhh, I'm kind of nervous! A third notice?!
I covered this with my intro computing students last term. Notice-and-notice is meant to "educate" and discourage future downloading (and it's actually working). It's been abused by copyright holders to extort money out of people by including confusing language about settlements and legal action that are utter BS. The new rules in Secret Sparrow's link are intended to put a stop to that abuse.
You can safely direct these emails to the bin*.
* (says this occasional-computer-science-instructor who is definitely not anybody's lawyer)
posted by bethnull at 8:19 PM on March 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
You can safely direct these emails to the bin*.
* (says this occasional-computer-science-instructor who is definitely not anybody's lawyer)
posted by bethnull at 8:19 PM on March 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
Response by poster: Yeah, that's what I thought. I've usually just ignored the odd copyright notice letter and moved on with my life, but the notices I've received from this company sounded more ominous and frightful than I remember them sounding.
I'm also puzzled because the second letter was sent on Feb 26 with March 8 as the deadline to pay the "settlement," which I ignored, and now on March 8th (of course) I've received another email with a notification to pay the "settlement" by March 18th. It's all very aggressive for something that happened months ago.
posted by VirginiaPlain at 8:38 PM on March 8, 2019
I'm also puzzled because the second letter was sent on Feb 26 with March 8 as the deadline to pay the "settlement," which I ignored, and now on March 8th (of course) I've received another email with a notification to pay the "settlement" by March 18th. It's all very aggressive for something that happened months ago.
posted by VirginiaPlain at 8:38 PM on March 8, 2019
Best answer: You might want to run a sanity check that this is being relayed via your ISP, and not being sent directly to you from the alleged copyright holder. I'm only tangentially involved with notice and notice, but my brief understanding was that the complainant was only supposed to send one notice per alleged infringement, excepting if the ISP doesn't reply saying notice was sent. Additionally around this January additional changes were made to notice and notice - the notice may no longer include hyper links, nor demands for settlement.
Which is to say it sounds like you've got someone who's already breaking the rules. If they're just sending to your ISP, and your ISP is sending you the notice, then you're gold - that jerk is just being aggressive hoping to get money. If the complaints are somehow coming directly to you (crappy ISP leaked info and/or supplied info), then this might be something worth paying a bit more attention to. If you're not sure, if you could google "show email full headers" for your email client, and sent me a metamail of the full message headers I'd be willing to take a look and say what it looks like.
It might be worth forwarding these back to your ISP letting them know that they're not compliant. This (notice and notice) is a PITA to ISP's, so their regulatory process might be happier to pass on everything, as opposed to others which watch for changes in the templates sent from various providers, and verify changes before re-sending them to users. There's definitely been complainants that we've replied back to for pushing out non-compliant "notices" even before the most recent changes. But I can easily see how a an ISP already didn't want to deal with the work of initially passing on notices and just opened the firehose.
As you mentioned VPN's at the top, I hope that you've invested in one.
posted by nobeagle at 6:49 AM on March 11, 2019
Which is to say it sounds like you've got someone who's already breaking the rules. If they're just sending to your ISP, and your ISP is sending you the notice, then you're gold - that jerk is just being aggressive hoping to get money. If the complaints are somehow coming directly to you (crappy ISP leaked info and/or supplied info), then this might be something worth paying a bit more attention to. If you're not sure, if you could google "show email full headers" for your email client, and sent me a metamail of the full message headers I'd be willing to take a look and say what it looks like.
It might be worth forwarding these back to your ISP letting them know that they're not compliant. This (notice and notice) is a PITA to ISP's, so their regulatory process might be happier to pass on everything, as opposed to others which watch for changes in the templates sent from various providers, and verify changes before re-sending them to users. There's definitely been complainants that we've replied back to for pushing out non-compliant "notices" even before the most recent changes. But I can easily see how a an ISP already didn't want to deal with the work of initially passing on notices and just opened the firehose.
As you mentioned VPN's at the top, I hope that you've invested in one.
posted by nobeagle at 6:49 AM on March 11, 2019
« Older Looking for a chart about shared values of the... | Unsolved (Work) Mysteries, Grease Edition Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
Read this for details: Millions of piracy notices coming to Canadians can no longer demand cash [CBC News - Jan 27, 2019]
posted by Secret Sparrow at 6:18 PM on March 8, 2019 [3 favorites]