TORONTO – The Supreme Court of Canada granted Rogers Communications’ application for leave to appeal a lower court ruling which said the company could not charge copyright owners a fee to track down suspected movie and TV content pirates.
In May, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that Rogers is not allowed to recoup its costs from copyright owners who ask the ISP to help track down individuals suspected of stealing video content to which they don’t own the rights. (Click here for more background on Rogers’ reasons for the appeal.)
While the Copyright Act and the Copyright Modernization Act protects copyright owners from having their wares digitally taken and shared without compensation, everyone knows this is a common occurrence and so movie studios and others try to work with ISPs to limit losses. Legal procedures are in place to combat the problem – primarily the so-called “notice and notice” regime where ISPs, alerted to potential copyright infringers, send warnings to households whose IP addresses have been flagged as potential pirates that there has been potential illegal activity from their home, such as downloading movies that haven’t been paid for and tell them to cease and desist.
However, Rogers has insisted all along it shouldn’t have to do this work for free and that the copyright owners must foot the bill for the search, at a rate of $100/hour.
Voltage Pictures (likely best known for its 2008 film The Hurt Locker), filed a suit against Rogers saying it should not be forced to pay a fee. In the original case, the lower court sided with Rogers. In May, the Federal Court sided with Voltage.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear this appeal sometime in the first half of 2018.
