TORONTO – While firmly believing the protection of content creators’ rights is vital to the future growth of Canada’s Internet economy, Telus does not support the idea that ISPs should be responsible for any copyright infringement that occurs on their networks.
“I do believe we can’t create a really serious Internet economy around things like digital music and entertainment without better ways to protect rights holders,” said Michael Hennessy, vice-president of wireless, broadband and content policy for Telus.
“It’s just we don’t want to have that responsibility thrust on us in a way that we end up in the middle, being sued because we’re not protecting rights holders or being sued because we’re disconnecting [Internet customers].”
Step one will be to have the Copyright Act amended in a way that codifies or limits ISP liability with respect to copyright infringement, Hennessy said. At that point, Telus would be willing to discuss what role, if any, ISPs should have in regulating Internet user behaviour with respect to file sharing, he said. Hennessy made his comments during a special session at Insight Information’s third annual Entertainment Industries Summit, held this week in Toronto.
In Hennessy’s view, implementing some type of “three strikes and you’re out” approach to copyright infringement on the Internet – an approach recently advocated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy – is only a step away from acting like the “thought police.”
“It’s very important that you start on a premise of due process,” Hennessy said, “and not try to manage a system that probably is fundamentally unmanageable by taking down people’s service or disconnecting them before they’ve really had a trial.”
Matt Thompson, co-founder of SaveOurNet.ca and SavetheInternet.com, said consumers and businesses have some basic questions right now about what ISPs are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do. For example, is it legal for a large ISP to throttle the bandwidth of the broadband services it provides to smaller ISPs or end users? Are ISPs allowed to block access to certain web sites?
“Sometimes regulations are just basic legal principles that let everybody know what they’re allowed to do and what they’re not allowed to do,” Thompson said. “It sort of sounds good – ‘let’s not regulate the Internet’ – but my point is there is no magic pixie dust that’s going to fall down from heaven to make these questions go away.”
Hennessy argued that many of these types of scenarios can be dealt with on a case by case basis, without requiring the government to create a formal broadband policy. However, he agreed the Canadian government does lack currently a broadband vision that will ensure the country has an open and competitive broadband infrastructure designed for the 21st century.
Linda Stuart is a Toronto-based writer and editor.
