Canada Copyright Troll Threatens Octogenarian Over Download Of A Zombie War Game
from the killer-grandma dept
Copyright trolling is somehow still a thing and it never seems to fail to provide ridiculous examples of miscarriages of justice. It has been long pointed out how rife with inaccuracy the process of threatening individuals with lawsuits and fines based on infringement as evidenced only by IP address is. Even courts have time and time again pointed out that an IP address is not sufficient to identify a person responsible for a given action. Yet the trolls still send out their threat letters, because bullying in this manner generally works.
The latest example of this kind of trolling misfire comes from Canada, where 86-year-old Christine McMillan received a threat letter from CANIPRE over an alleged infringing download of Metro 2033, a game in which the player slaughters zombies in a post-nuclear world.
"I found it quite shocking … I'm 86 years old, no one has access to my computer but me, why would I download a war game?" McMillan told Go Public.
In May, she received two emails forwarded by her internet provider. They were from a private company called Canadian Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement (CANIPRE) claiming she had illegally downloaded Metro 2033, a first-person shooter game where nuclear war survivors have to kill zombies. McMillan's IP address, the string of numbers that identifies each computer communicating over a network, was used to download the game.
McMillan says she thought the threat letter was a scam at first and, to be fair, it kind of is. With all the discretion of a carpet-bomb, CANIPRE saw her IP address associated with an infringing download and decided she had to pay $5k as a result. Because of Canada's Copyright Modernization Act, her ISP forwarded the notices to her blindly. Needless to say, this lovely woman in her eighties was both scared and confused, being told that the threat letters were legal and legit, but having never murdered a digital zombie in her life. Since receiving the letter, her confusion has turned to understandable anger.
"It seems to be a very foolish piece of legislation," McMillan said. "That somebody can threaten you over the internet … that to me is intimidation and I can't believe the government would support such action."
I'm right here with you, Christine, because this kind of fear and threat tactics are generally reserved for the exact kind of scams too often targeting senior citizens that she initially assumed this was. For the courts to push back on the very "evidence" that groups like CANIPRE rely on solely to threaten people with thousands of dollars in settlement offers isn't so much copyright enforcement as it is extortion. Wireless networks, even when secured, can be used by unauthorized users. Every instance of threatening those whose networks have been accessed in this way to commit copyright infringement is victimizing someone who is already a victim, which is as clear a miscarriage of justice in the Western system as I can think of.
But, again, copyright trolls do this because it works. Even CANIPRE doesn't defend the practice beyond saying that it is technically legal to do all of this, before bragging about how many people fearfully pay upon demand.
The owner of CANIPRE told Go Public he gets 400 calls and emails from people on a busy day and "most of them" settle.
"Ultimately, we are helping our clients get their educational message out about anti-piracy and theft of content and how it harms them and their rightful marketplace," Barry Logan said.
When asked about the wording that McMillan found threatening, Logan said his company ran the language by lawyers and it's legal. He says his company has collected about $500,000 for its clients since the Notice and Notice regime started almost two years ago.
Keep in mind that this is a house of monetary notes built entirely on IP addresses and preying on a public that mostly is unaware of the subtlety in the law and the legal defenses they have at their disposal. Whatever that is, it certainly isn't justice.
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Filed Under: canada, christine mcmillan, copyright, copyright trolling, ip address, shakedown
Companies: canpipre
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Just keeping his hand in, I guess.
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Oh, hey, someone at the BBC evidently reads TechDirt, because they're now reporting this story with a "zombie" game, too. Nice fact-checking back to the original story with the correct information, BBC.
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Sadly, it's more likely that the BBC made the same mistake as Tim did and sourced the inaccurate story before it was edited, than it is that the BBC are secretly avid visitors who like to copy stories from here.
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Little do they know
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Re: Little do they know
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Perhaps....
A way to get some new eyes on a six year olde FPS no one cares about other than THQ and CANIPRE?
and by the WTF, CANIPRE?
Why not just change the company name to "Canadian IP Vampires Llc ? or is that what CANIPRE actually already stands for?
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Re: Perhaps....
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Re: Perhaps....
For $5k, that better be a pretty fkn awesome game.
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They do love to target seniors...
He's a senior citizen in his late 80s living in a retirement home. He has just the one PC connected to his cable modem, and no WiFi. He had never heard of BitTorrent or the obscure show in question.
But seniors are lucrative targets for fraud and shakedowns. FaceBook and others have built databases of users that let advertisers and political campaigns "target market" by race, age and other demographics. No doubt this is just one more side-effect.
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wait...
Does this mean she tried but was unsuccessful? Maybe her "game" was not not ready for the Zombie Apocalypse? Inquiring minds want to know!
joking aside...
I bet that they are likely going to drop this case to avoid egg on their face, but being the trolls that they are... Let's once again hope that this might be another nail in the coffin of these bastard ass trolls!
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Re: wait...
No, it means she's murdered plenty of zombies in the real world, she just can't the hang of it digitally!
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Nothing new, but no less disgusting.
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What about non-seniors?
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Re: What about non-seniors?
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Yet another story reinforcing my whole-house VPN
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Re: Yet another story reinforcing my whole-house VPN
Except that based on stories like this, innocent people can get letters for no apparent reason. You might get a letter associated with your real IP anyway. They've sent letters to printers after all.
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Re: Re: Yet another story reinforcing my whole-house VPN
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Re: Yet another story reinforcing my whole-house VPN
The non-techies in house can't deal with that unfortunately.
Any suggestions for when the VPN IP gets blocked?
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Re: Re: Yet another story reinforcing my whole-house VPN
I also have my DSL modem which has 4 Ethernet ports in it. For devices I don't care about (like my IP phone) I plug straight into it. You could always have a sandboxed computer/laptop that you keep plugged into a bypass port like that for just such needs.
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Fire up the fax machine
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Re: Fire up the fax machine
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Hmm let's see. Four hundred times (let's say) 250 working days in a year, times five thousand dollars: equals 500 million dollars, not $500k.
I'm guessing they say "$5 to make it go away", because anything more than nuisance money would make people ask questions.
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Read very well:
It's easily explained: The rest goes into the pockets of this middleman.
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so something sounds off...
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He must be the porn pirate, despite us finding no evidence at all, because he has a penis.
Our super secret fantastic tech is absolutely perfect, so obviously this bed ridden woman has been downloading our FPS.
At some point the courts need to admit that these systems are ripe for abuse & that the law need to be fixed.
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