Canadian Anti-Piracy Company Caught Using Unattributed And Paywalled Articles To Fill Its Blog
from the putting-lipstick-on-a-scraper dept
Canipre, one of Canada's foremost anti-piracy enforcers, has a bit of a problem on its hands. Like others that zealously guard against piracy, the company expects everyone else to fully respect the IP rights of the entities it acts for. And like others in the same field, it seemingly can't be bothered to make sure it properly respects other entities' IP rights. (See also: BREIN, the BSA, the City of New York, the list goes on and on…)
Michael Geist points to Canipre's latest press release, touting the use of its evidence in a Voltage Pictures lawsuit, as well as its intent to fully take advantage of Canada's new infringement notification system. Then he points to this:
Yet what Canipre does not say is that a blog associated with the company may have been engaged in copyright infringement for many months. The blog – copyrightenforcement.ca – is run by Barry Logan, the company’s Managing Director, Operations (I received an email from Mr. Logan last year that listed the site as his blog address). In addition to posting releases from Canipre and information about the TekSavvy case, the site has posted dozens of full-text articles from media organizations around the world.Hey, fair dealing and all that, some might say. Sure, but let's not get carried away. Posting up plain text versions of paywalled articles -- in full, without additional commentary or criticism -- isn't exactly fair dealing. And it's not as if Canipre has any respect for the fair dealing of others. It's an anti-piracy firm and its vision of the world's use of IP is solidly black and white. Either you've paid for it, or you're an infringer.
For example, last week it posted the full text of a 1200 word article on TV piracy from the Wire Report, an Ottawa-based telecom publication. The article resides behind a paywall limited to subscribers and is listed as “exclusive content.” In fact, reposting full-text articles from other sources is a regular occurrence on the site. Posts in December feature articles from the Huffington Post Canada, Business Insider, and CNET. Earlier posts include full-text articles from the Hollywood Reporter, StreamDaily, Reuters, the Canadian Press, Global News, Vancouver Sun, and the National Post. Some of the posts include articles that strip out reference to the author (Chronicle Herald, CBC) and others include no attribution whatsoever. The site also uses photos from the articles, often without attribution.
And, as Geist notes, there's plenty of stuff in there that goes further than what could even be the outer reaches of fair dealing. The blog has stripped attribution/authorial references -- maybe out of cluelessness, maybe in a desire to obscure its origins -- which is no one's idea of fair dealing.
This isn't Canipre's first hypocritical dance with the IP devil. Back in 2013, it was caught tarting up its dark and dramatic website with photos belonging to other people, all without even making the slightest attempt to credit the actual creators. Barry Logan was the man behind that debacle as well, who contributed nothing to the discussion of the company's hypocrisy other than some buck-passing to the third party site designer.
Even if some of this could be considered fair dealing, the company using the creations of others without permission frowns deeply and legally on those who would do the same to its protected content. Michael Geist's headline puts it beautifully: Canipre certainly has a beautiful glass house. Shame it can't seem to kick its rock-throwing habit.
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Filed Under: anti-piracy, blog, canada, copyright
Companies: canipre
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- they really do not care at all about intellectual properties
- they all want money, lots of it, and any old reason will do
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- they really do not care at all about intellectual properties that they do not control and/or own
They spend incredible amounts of time, money, and effort 'defending' their IP, it's just the IP of everyone else that they couldn't care less about.
Second point is dead on though.
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'When you do it it's a crime, when I do it it's an accident'
Of course the real kicker, the absolute punchline, is the complete and utter blindspot both agencies like this, and those that defend them, show towards said hypocrisy. Where before even potential copyright infringement was grounds for the harshest punishments possible, suddenly it was 'all an accident', and 'totally not intentional', and look, they 'apologized', so that should be enough, and why are you focusing so much on such a minor thing?
While aggravating, it is nice of them to expose their hypocrisy in such a blatant manner I guess.
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These copyright holders that have been infringed should not get together but all sue individually, get them delisted/deranked from Google, send DMCA takedowns and contact their local government agency to have their servers raided.
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Now at $150.000 per work infringed, how much will them pay? I bet nothing.
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Drag them to court
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This does seem a perfect business opportunity for Prenda Law. It's not like they'd need to actually own the copyrights to send threatening letters.
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I daresay they wouldn't be so quick to condemn their allies.
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Apparently though Canpire seems to not believe these same rules would apply to itself when it comes to other's copyrighted and authored works.
That pretty much tells you exactly how full of shit Canpire is about copyrights and right holders protections
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If only they actually believed this. It might be easier to swallow. This is how I believe they actually think:
"Either you've paid for it and you only use it within the narrow limits I've set for you to use it in, or you're an infringer."
That second part makes the whole thing so much worse. To be honest, I don't really have an issue paying for things, including content. It's when people start telling me that I can only use the content I bought in certain ways and on certain devices that I get really grumpy. And if you tell me to pay for something more than once I say to go [censored] yourself.
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OTOH, I can do what ever the hell I want to and there is nothing you can do about it because I am above the law.
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Sharing is Caring
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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