Rogers Wins in Supreme Court of Canada

From the head note:

                   The respondents are film production companies that allege that their copyrights have been infringed online by unidentified Internet subscribers who have shared their films using peer to peer file sharing networks. They sued one such unknown person and brought a motion for a Norwich order to compel his Internet service provider (“ISP”), Rogers, to disclose his contact and personal information. The respondents sought that the disclosure order be made without fees or disbursements payable to Rogers, relying on ss. 41.25 and 41.26 of the Copyright Act. These provisions, referred to as the “notice and notice” regime, require that an ISP, upon receiving notice from a copyright owner that a person at a certain IP address has infringed the owner’s copyright, forward that notice of claimed infringement to the person to whom the IP address was assigned. They also prohibit ISPs from charging a fee for complying with their obligations under the regime.

                   The motion judge granted the Norwich order and allowed Rogers to recover the costs of all steps that were necessary to comply with it. He found that while the statutory notice and notice regime regulates the process by which notice of claimed copyright infringement is provided to an ISP and an Internet subscriber, as well as the retention of records relating to that notice, it does not regulate an ISP’s disclosure of a subscriber’s identity to a copyright owner. The Federal Court of Appeal agreed with the motion judge that the statutory notice and notice regime does not regulate the disclosure of a person’s identity from an ISP’s records, but it confined Rogers’ recovery to the costs of complying with the Norwich order that did not overlap with the steps that formed part of Rogers’ implicit obligations under the statutory regime. Rogers appealed.

                   Held: The appeal should be allowed and the matter remitted to the motion judge to determine the quantum of Rogers’ entitlement to its reasonable costs of compliance with the Norwich order.

https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/news/en/item/6360/index.do


More later.....