Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, April 30, 2015

'No Obligation' For Canadians To Pay Settlements In Copyright Notices

If your downloading habits have scored you a copyright infringement notice (or allegation) asking you to pay a settlement amount, you don't have to pay it.

A spokesman for Industry Minister James Moore told Metro News on April 22 that “there is no obligation for Canadians to pay these settlements."

This isn't utterly new. The ministry said on Jan. 9 the "notices were misleading," according to Reuters, and that companies can't use them to demand money. That was just a little more than a week after Internet service providers became legally obligated to forward copyright infringement notices from content owners to consumers.

But the bluntness of the latest message from the government — thou should not have to pay — offers some comfort to consumers, according to University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist.

"Those are encouraging words that come as close as the government can to tell consumers that it does not believe that settlements should be included in the notices and to hint that it does not expect Canadians to pay," he wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

The government must do more to "prohibit the inclusion of settlement demands within notices that were designed to educate," Geist said, "not bully Canadians into paying pricey settlements."

Others have also expressed their concerns with the current so-called notice-and-notice system.

An open letter written by experts from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic calls on Moore to address these issues, demanding that notices, among other things, "include no settlement demand or offer."

Kyle Reed, chief operating officer and co-founder of CEG TEK, told Metro that his company was "unaware of anyone at Industry Canada ever asserting that a notice from CEG TEK was in any way in violation of Canada law."

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.ca/
Author:  Mohamed Omar

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