Open Letter calling on Industry Minister Moore to fix flaws in Notice-Notice system

CIPPIC and a number of other civil society groups and experts has put out an open letter to Industry Minister James Moore, highlighting a roadmap for how to fix a number of loopholes in Canada's Notice-Notice copyright regime. The Notice-Notice regime was enacted with the objective of creating a minimally intrusive mechanism for rights holders to contact alleged infringers. However, it is being exploited by some rights holders to send settlement demands that are unreasonable. Typical abusive notices include extravagant demands for damages well in excess of what would be available under Canada's Copyright Act, and might be sent without meaningful corroboration that the threatened recipient is actually the rights infringer. Some also include threats that the recipient will have her Internet access account terminated if they do not pay up. Third parties often flood ISPs with notices in a 'scattershot' approach not designed to facilitate an actual lawsuit based on proof of wrongdoing, but rather to encourage recipients to pay in order to make the matter go away - a highly questionable monetization technique. While rights infringers should not be able to hide behind ISPs in order to justify conduct, the current model is being abused to inappropriately threaten individuals who, often, have done nothing wrong at all.