Teksavvy Fights Back Against GoldTV Website Blocking Order – Interveners: Start Your Engines

The Federal Court has recently issued a website blocking order that is without precedent in Canada. Similar orders in other jurisdictions have been based upon explicit legislation.  There is no explicit basis in Canada’s Copyright Act for this order. Here’s the decision: Bell Media Inc. v. GoldTV.Biz, 2019 FC 1432 (CanLII), <http://canlii.ca/t/j3frl>

Regardless of whether or not there is any reason to sympathize with GoldTV, which for whatever reason was not represented at this and the lead-up hearings, the main issue is whether the Federal Court has the necessary jurisdiction under the Copyright Act to block its websites. At stake are not only jurisdictional issues but freedom of expression, net neutrality, CRTC regulation, extra-territoriality and other rather profound matters.

Here’s the Notice of Appeal from Teksavvy, which deserves to be commended for taking on this this manifestly David v. Goliath fight. Here’s the Court’s docket. Here’s a good take on the appeal from MobileSyrup.

Needless to say, Bell and Rogers, which are both major content owners and ISP giants, are in the interesting position of effectively suing themselves and asking the Federal Court to approve their proposed remedy that would implicate other independent and much smaller ISPs such as Teksavvy and millions of Canadian internet users.

If website blocking is a needed solution to a serious problem, then one would expect explicit and very carefully constructed legislation based upon extensive review and consultation. Other common law jurisdictions where the courts have blocked websites have enacted enabling legislation that merits study. In Canada, it is clearly the role of Parliament to devise and implement copyright legislation. 

The job of our courts is to interpret and apply such legislation – not to effectively amend and extend the law to fill in perceived inadequacies.

There could and should be many potential interveners in this appeal. While leave to intervene is required in the Federal Court of Appeal and seems to be more difficult to obtain these days than in the Supreme Court of Canada, that should not stop potential interest. Interveners, start your engines.

HPK

Update on Canadian Copyright Mass Litigation – September Snapshot

This photo of Ottawa is courtesy of TripAdvisor

As I reported earlier, regarding the Rogers v. Salna “reverse class action” case against 55,000 or so unnamed defendants and the issue of reasonable reimbursement to Rogers for providing the names and street addresses of these potential defendants if the case gets that far, Voltage filed a Notice of Appeal on August 16, 2019.  As predicted, Rogers has filed a Notice of Cross-Appeal dated August 28, 2019.

It will be interesting to see whether and how the outcome of this appeal and cross-appeal from a trial level decision that in turn resulted from a remand from the Supreme Court of Canada and which could go on for still some time, will affect the proposed reverse class action that began in 2016. The long delayed certification motion for the reverse class is scheduled for September 23rd   and 24th , 2019. The key documents for this motion have apparently not yet been filed.

There’s also an important contested proceeding underway for a Norwich Disclosure order that is being contested by Eastlink and Xplornet that will the subject of a case management conference on September 19, 2019.

It will be interesting to see how vigorously the ISPs fight to protect the privacy of their subscribers. Presumably,  none of them yet have any idea that they have been named as a “Doe #” and could be on the hook for up to $5,000 and will have to self-defend (perhaps with help from Pro Bono Ontario), find a lawyer who is able and willing to help them on a cost effective basis, or take the risk of ignoring the proceedings and being vulnerable to default judgment.

Then there’s the appeal and cross-appeal unfolding in the Teksavvy case, which I wrote about some months ago.

All of this, not to mention the ongoing 18 so other cases against thousands of “Doe” defendants regarding various Voltage, etc. matters.

There are important issues that cut across all these proceedings and which could have a potentially profound effect on the public interest. The apparent lack of sufficient attention to the public interest to date should be of serious concern to policy makers, who have yet to implement regulations about reimbursement, and to the Courts, which have never faced this kind of mass litigation on this scale and with this sophistication before in Canada. I was very much involved in this first of these cases, the BMG case, back in 2004-2005. The rigorous test for disclosure set forth by the Federal Court of Appeal in that case at the behest of Shaw, Telus & CIPPIC (which I then represented) has not been followed or even invoked in all cases since then, although Teksavvy now seems to be pursuing it in in earnest in the case noted above.

Copyright owners are entitled to protect their rights and the recent fronts of litigation referred to above have been conducted in Canada with commendable Canadian courtesy. This has happened without the extreme and even criminal excesses we have seen in some American “troll” litigation. Some Canadian ISPs are standing up to be counted; however, they have their own commercial interests to consider which are not necessarily going to result in the protection of the interests of their customers.  Overall, there is a serious systemic access to justice problem here that somehow needs to be addressed.

As I’ve said before, it’s useful to recall the clear words Justice Brown of the Supreme Court of Canada in reimbursement decision, Rogers Communications Inc. v. Voltage Pictures, LLC, [2018] 2 SCR 643, 2018 SCC 38.  Here are perhaps the two most consequential paragraphs in the judgment – which arguably put a potentially severe chill on all the legal basis of the outstanding mass BitTorrent cases:

[35] I acknowledge that there will likely be instances in which the person who receives notice of a claimed copyright infringement will not in fact have illegally shared copyrighted content online. This might occur, for example, where one IP address, while registered to the person who receives notice of an infringement, is available for the use of a number of individuals at any given time. Even in such instances, however, accuracy is crucial. Where, for example, a parent or an employer receives notice, he or she may know or be able to determine who was using the IP address at the time of the alleged infringement and could take steps to discourage or halt continued copyright infringement. Similarly, while institutions or businesses offering Internet access to the public may not know precisely who used their IP addresses to illegally share copyrighted works online, they may be able, upon receiving notice, to take steps to secure its internet account with its ISP against online copyright infringement in the future.

 [41] It must be borne in mind that being associated with an IP address that is the subject of a notice under s. 41.26(1)(a) is not conclusive of guilt.  As I have explained, the person to whom an IP address belonged at the time of an alleged infringement may not be the same person who has shared copyrighted content online. It is also possible that an error on the part of a copyright owner would result in the incorrect identification of an IP address as having been the source of online copyright infringement. Requiring an ISP to identify by name and physical address the person to whom the pertinent IP address belonged would, therefore, not only alter the balance which Parliament struck in legislating the notice and notice regime, but do so to the detriment of the privacy interests of persons, including innocent persons, receiving notice.

(highlight and emphasis added)

Even if these comments from the SCC go beyond the narrow “ratio decidendi” (what is actually decided and what is generally rooted in the facts) to the those that are “obiter dicta”, the latter type of comments can still be authoritative if they are closely related to “ratio decidendi”.  Those who are curious about the role of SCC “obiter dicta” may want to read the SCC’s own important 2005 decision regarding this issue. See  R. v. Henry, [2005] 3 SCR 609, 2005 SCC 76. In this instance, these comments were arguably closely related to the “ratio” and should now be regarded as binding authority.

This SCC ruling may mean that a very large number of those who have been or may become caught up in Canadian copyright mass litigation and who cannot be shown on the basis of reliable, sufficient  and admissible evidence to have done anything more than to pay for internet service are not only not liable for copyright infringement but arguably should never be drawn into the process in the first place.

HPK

Piracy v. Privacy – The Federal Court Significantly Restores the Balance in Canadian Mass Copyright Litigation by Insisting on “Best Available Evidence”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence

Today’s ruling by the Federal Court of Canada in ME2 Productions, Inc. v. Doe, 2019 FC 214 is a reiteration and affirmation of the landmark ruling by Judge von Finckenstein in the first of these Canadian copyright “Doe” cases 14 years ago.   That BMG decision, which was upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal, made it clear that the Court will require substantial, admissible, reliable affidavit evidence that can be cross-examined upon. Today’s ruling notes that “…the key evidence that is found in the Arheidt Declaration is hearsay which cannot be subject to cross-examination since it is simply an exhibit to the affidavits. This is exactly the type of evidence which was rejected in BMG, which remains good law.”  In today’s ruling, Judge Pentney refers several times to the need for “the best available evidence.”

The Court in BMG was then and is now still rightly concerned that hearsay evidence creates the “risk that innocent persons might have their privacy invaded and be named as defendants where it is not warranted” and such evidence will not suffice if “no grounds are provided for accepting” it. I was proud to argue the BMG case, along with Alex Cameron, on behalf of CIPPIC. Shaw and Telus also put up a very good fight for their customers privacy then and did the heavy lifting on cross-examination. Bell and Rogers were at least somewhat supportive of their customers’ privacy. Videotron supported the record companies. Here’s a still useful balanced analysis of this case by Richard Naiberg, counsel for the record companies on appeal and me.

Teksavvy is to be commended for standing up for its customers’ privacy in this instance. Unless today’s ruling is overturned on appeal, which seems unlikely, the inevitable question will be how this ruling might affect other similar copyright mass litigation “Doe” cases if they rely on similar evidence to obtain the Norwich disclosure orders.  In the battle of “piracy” v. “privacy”, it’s good that the balance in Canada has been significantly restored.

HPK

TekSavvy’s Appeal to Get $346,480.68 for Taking the Position to Take “No Position” - "Nice Work If You Can Get It"?

Here’s an update to my April 3, 2015 posting on TekSavvy's claim to entitlement to full indemnity costs, including legal fees, for a total of $346,480.68 for "for the costs it says it incurred as a result of Voltage’s motion" for disclosure and, which included $178,820.98 for legal costs, essentially for taking the position that it took no position in Voltage’s attempt to get the personal information on 2,000 or so of Teksavvy’s customers in order to pursue them for alleged copyright infringement.

It will be recalled that the March 17, 2015 decision by now retired Prothonotary Roza Aronovitch of the Federal Court regarding TekSavvy’s costs motion  resulted in TekSavvy getting only $21,557.50 – about 6% of what it asked for overall. And of that, only $4,500 was for legal costs, which were sought in the amount of $178,820.98.  That’s 2.5% of what was asked for in legal costs.

Both Voltage and TekSavvy have appealed Prothonotary Aronovitch's ruling. Here’s the docket. The appeal will be heard by Justice Peter Annis of the Federal Court on Monday, November 9, 2015 on the seventh floor at 90 Sparks Street, corner of Metcalfe in Ottawa.

Both sides have filed voluminous material. Teksavvy has filed a 248 page “compendium” with excerpts from 19 cases. Teksavvy has also gone to great length in its very unusual attempt to file, as “new evidence”, the transcripts from the hearings before Prothonotaries Aalto and Aronovitch.

Although CIPPIC is no longer actively involved on the file, the appeal material was eventually posted here by CIPPIC  late last week and this will be helpful to the public discussion generally and to law students in particular.  It will be recalled that CIPPIC stepped in earlier as an intervener, after Teksavvy took the position that it took no position, and sought adjournments so that CIPPIC could enter the fray. CIPPIC’s role was never entirely clear. It explicitly disclaimed any role in acting for Teksavvy or for the John or Jane Does. It did conduct some cross- examination and referred to the “hearsay” issue – the giant elephant in the room – in its written material in the disclosure motion but did not do so explicitly even once in its oral submissions before Prothonotary Aalto as confirmed by the transcript Teksavvy is trying to file. This may somewhat explain why Prothonotary Aalto’s decision does not once mention the word “hearsay”.

According to the transcript of the substantive hearing before Prothonotary Aalto, CIPPIC was apparently more concerned with broad “public policy” issues than with the more practical question of whether, in light of the BMG decision, there was arguably insufficient substantial, admissible, non-hearsay, and reliable evidence to justify denial of the disclosure motion and thereby stopping the case from even moving forward.

If only Teksavvy or CIPPIC had dealt with the evidence issue head on, this case arguably might never have gotten off the ground. For whatever reason, neither of them did so. While outcomes based upon evidentiary or procedural issues are not as dramatic or satisfying as policy based victories, there is a school of thought that one should take one’s victories wherever one can find them. In this case, if a ruling based upon insufficiency of adequate evidence could have been obtained, it might well have solved, at least for practical purposes and perhaps for a long time to come, a very big public policy problem – namely whether Canadian courts will have to deal with lawsuits such as we have seen in the USA and UK that could involve use of the courts for the alleged purpose of “speculative invoicing”, sometimes called “trolling”, of thousands of individuals who will have no practical recourse to defend their privacy and who, in very many cases, may very well be legally innocent of any infringement.

In contrast to Teksavvy’s “no position” position (it did not even file any material at the disclosure hearing before Prothonotary Aalto), many may wonder why Teksavvy has devoted such extraordinary efforts to recover almost $180,000 in legal costs from Voltage - essentially for “taking no position” and asking for adjournments so that CIPPIC, a law school clinic could intervene. And now, including Monday’s appeal, there will be two lengthy costs related proceedings with an attempt to introduce new evidence, cross-examinations, and volumes of paper – all about legal costs and TekSavvy’s alleged other internal costs. If Teksavvy had only instead devoted perhaps just a fraction of these efforts and resources to attempting to knock Voltage’s case out of the park on the basis of inadequate evidence, and had this succeeded,  as it seemed arguably very possible at the time,  and as CIPPIC and others did  in the  2004 BMG case (I was outside counsel for CIPPIC at the time and Shaw and Telus vigorously fought for their customers), Teksavvy might well have recovered substantial costs and its subscribers, whose privacy may now get compromised, would be much happier. But for reasons which remain, in my view, unexplained in any satisfactory way, this was not to be the case.

One thing that should be clear and was clear to CIPPIC, Shaw and Telus, at least in 2004, is that defending privacy – including challenging the sufficiency of the copyright owners’ evidence - does not in any way condone piracy. It is the job of ISPs to defend their customers’ privacy – not the job of a law school clinic where the path is well worn and the ISP, for whatever reason, just won’t do its job. Voltage and TekSavvy made much of their cooperation in notifying the 2,000 or so customers of what was about to befall them – without giving Voltage their identities in that notification effort. But it was absurd to expect any of them to appear – even anonymously - on the disclosure motion to fight for their privacy. Most of them would have expected their ISP to do that, as Shaw and Telus did so well in 2004.  (At that time, Rogers and Bell basically just observed and Videotron was on the side of the record companies).

Nobody stood up here explicitly for Teksavvy’s customers.  The clear position of the Federal Court of Appeal on the need for a copyright claimant to provide timely, reliable and adequate non-hearsay evidence, upholding Justice von Finckenstein’s decision below in this respect, has been eroded because it was neglected by Teksavvy, which took no position, and arguably not fully pursued by CIPPIC, which did not mention it at the hearing.  Whatever one may think of Voltage, its agenda and its goals are at least very clear in this case. The same cannot be said of Teksavvy, or perhaps even of CIPPIC, which was placed in an awkward position and which had limited resources. It’s not at all clear that Justice Mandamin’s early expression in this case of how it was “important to get it right” and that a “motion without representations from different points of view does not help”  has been fully met in this instance. Here is Justice Mandamin's Order of January 31, 2013.

If this case goes further and Voltage eventually gets the names and addresses of its 2,000 or so potential defendants (or, at least, recipients of demand letters), just who is going to stand up for the customers’ interests in terms of wording of the letter and supervision by the Court, which Prothonotary Aalto clearly recognized as important issues in his decision? This should not fall to a subsidized law clinic because a presumably prosperous ISP with $5-$10 million a month in estimated cash flow chooses, for whatever reasons, to “take no position”.

So, even though this case was started on November 14, 2012 – almost exactly three years ago – at this point we have far more questions than answers. 

HPK

Copyright Trolling in Canada: Is Blacklock’s a Copyright Troll & "Frequent Flyer" Litigator?

(Wikemedia)

A recent decision from the Ottawa Small Claims Court in 1395804 Ontario Limited (Blacklock’s Reporter) v Canadian Vintners Association (“CVA”), 2015 CanLII 65885 (ON SCSM) is raising some notable eyebrows, for example with  Canadian law professor Teresa Scassa here and the redoubtable @glynmoody on the internationally widely read Techdirt website.

The decision deals with the issues of whether a person without an account to a pay-walled website who receives a “teaser” by email from the website publisher about an article of potential concern to that person or his/her organization and who requests a copy of the work in question from that website from a third party who does have an account is infringing copyright, circumventing a Technical Protection Measure (“TPM”) and can invoke a fair dealing defence in these circumstances. There was also a claim for inducing breach of contract and punitive damages.  The Court came down heavily on the defendants on all issues. The Court found that the defendants were liable for the cost of an institutional subscription in the amount of$11,470 plus punitive damages of $2,000 plus costs.

A few points must be made at the outset:

-          Decisions of the Ontario Small Claims Court, even if correctly decided, have minimal, if any,  precedential status  – other than perhaps in a limited sense of “comity” or “collegiality” amongst other small claims court judges in Ontario. Under the doctrine of “stare decisis”, courts are bound to follow decisions of higher courts to which their decision could be appealed. So, the Federal Court, the Copyright Board and even the Ontario Superior Court are clearly not bound by a decision of an Ontario Small Claims Court.

-          In any event, and with all due respect to the clearly well-intentioned and lengthy reasons of the Deputy Judge (who is not an actual “Judge” but a lawyer who serves part-time as Deputy Judge in the Small Claims Court) who wrote the decision, there are many reasons to doubt that this particular decision was correctly decided in all or even any material respects. It’s arguably an unwarranted and unprecedented stretch of the law to conflate either asking someone for a copy or providing someone with a copy with illegal “circumvention” of a TPM just because the work is behind a paywall.  It’s not even clear that the Blacklock’s paywall constituted a TPM, as defined in the Copyright Act or that there was any circumvention, as defined, in this instance or that any of the activity alleged was prohibited by the legislation. Above all, as Prof. Scassa states succinctly here, “Receiving and reading a copy of an article sent by another person is not per se copyright infringement.” Her conclusion is that “This decision is so entirely lacking in the balance mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada that one can only hope it is nothing more than a strange outlier.”  There are other problems with the decision as well, but I won’t get into them here and now. There’s no need for the moment because it’s a Small Claims Court decision and is of virtually no precedential consequence.

-          In any event, the Supreme Court of Canada made it very clear in the 2004 CCH v. LSUC decision that:

o   “As an integral part of the scheme of copyright law, the s. 29 fair dealing exception is always available.” (para 49)

o   “The availability of a licence is not relevant to deciding whether a dealing has been fair.” (para 70)

-          Much else could be said about the problems with the decision, but now is not the time or place. Anyway, once again with all respect, it’s just a Small Claims Court decision.

There have been a number of instances in which small claims court judges have written long decisions in Canadian copyright cases. This is interesting, but ironic – because these decisions don’t really count, for better or for worse. However, this is understandable because these cases are probably much more interesting to these judges than the usual types of cases that are handled in their courts. And given the relative paucity of copyright jurisprudence in Canada, they are clearly trying to be helpful.

An interesting question is why this particular case wasn’t brought in the Federal Court – either as an application or a simplified action. Given the amount of money at stake, it could have been brought in either court. Moreover, the Federal Court has procedures for dealing with applications and “simplified actions” that can be fast and economical, while still allowing for adequate document production, cross-examination or discovery as appropriate in advance of a hearing.

Indeed, Blacklock’s has brought several other cases in the Federal Court. Here are 10 cases filed since mid-2014, mostly against the Federal Government or its agencies and a couple of NGOs:

Court Number	Style of Cause	Nature of Proceeding	'RE'
T-1234-15	1395804 ONTARIO LTD. (Blacklock's Reporter) v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CANADA	Others - Crown (v. Queen) [Actions]	RE
T-1085-15	1395804 ONTARIO LTD., operation as Blacklock's Reporter v. AGC	Others - Crown (v. Queen) [Actions]	RE
T-897-15	1395804 Ontario LTD. v. Canadian Transportation Agency	Copyright Infringement [Actions]	RE
T-745-15	1395804 Ontario Ltd, operating as Blacklock's Reporter v. Bank of Canada	Copyright Infringement [Actions]	RE
T-477-15	1395804 ONTARIO LTD. ET AL v. CANADIAN FOOD INSPECTION AGENCY	Copyright Infringement [Actions]	RE
T-269-15	1395804 ONTARIO LTD. ET AL v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CANADA	Admiralty - Damage (Property & Facilities)	RE
T-2090-14	1395804 ONTARIO LTD v. CANADA (AG)	Copyright Infringement [Actions]	RE
T-1674-14	1395804 ONTARIO LTD. v. SIERRA CLUB CANADA FOUNDATION ET AL	Copyright Infringement [Actions]	RE
T-1613-14	1395804 ONTARIO LTD. v. FRIENDS OF CANADIAN BROADCASTING	Copyright Infringement [Actions]	RE
T-1391-14	139504 ONTARIO LTD., OPERATING AS BLACKLOCK'S REPORTER v. AGC	Copyright Infringement [Actions]	RE

Some of these have been discontinued, which may – though does not necessarily - mean that there was a settlement. However, the cases against the Government are being apparently vigorously defended – and some interesting defences are emerging.

It appears, on the basis of the Government of Canada's amended pleading (see below), that it is going to fight these cases on the basis, inter alia, that Blacklock’s is allegedly a “copyright troll”, uses “teaser emails that are designed to interest the department in reading and distributing the Plaintiff’s articles”, engages in “speculative invoicing” and is engaged in copyright “misuse”.  The Government of Canada has just won a clear and convincing procedural victory on a motion to amend its statement of defence to plead along these lines – along with a costs order of $4,000 against Blacklock’s on a procedural motion and a comment from the Court that:

The motion was contested, it was contested extensively and it took a lot of time. There was a need for cross-examination. In the course of the argument, I made comments to the effect that the Plaintiff’s argument and choice of the way in which it chose to understand questions or construed questions was obtuse to the point of being obstructive.

This is harsh language and a very significant costs order as far as these things go. Here’s the Court’s Order dated October 26, 2015.

Here is the Statement of Claim and Amended Statement of Defence in T-1391-14. This seems to emerging as the lead case.

Blacklock’s appears to have become one of the most "frequent flyers", as it were, in Canadian copyright litigation in the short time of just over one year. I cannot recall any single party bringing ten lawsuits in the Federal Court in just over one year.

For those who are unfamiliar, Blacklock’s is a relatively new online high priced media service ($157 for a personal subscription and $11, 470 for an institutional one) that, according to itself, “…covers news you won’t find anywhere else: bills and regulations; reports and committees; Federal Court and public accounts. We’re the only reporter-owned and operated newsroom in Ottawa that finds the facts needed by business, labour and associations.”

I have been interviewed by Blacklock’s on at least one occasion. I must say that I will now become rather reluctant to be interviewed again by Blacklock’s again, if the allegations in the Federal Government’s amended statement of defence are true.

The business model of a subscription based media service with a narrow and relatively small audience with a timely need to know is a tricky one. It has been practiced to a high level of apparent success and respect by the family owned Hill Times organization in Ottawa, since 1989, for a mostly Ottawa-centric  audience of “Cabinet ministers, MPs, Senators, political staffers, lobbyists, 'backroomers,' political junkies, and some of the top decision-makers in the country, including influential players in Parliament, Cabinet, the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council, the Finance Department, Treasury Board, the Department of National Defence, the Justice Department, and more.”

The Hill Times organization seems to know how to successfully balance paper and online publication and free and pay-walled material.  I’m not aware of the Hill Times ever having sued anyone for copyright infringement.  I’m always happy to be interviewed by and occasionally write for the Hill Times and its various specialized offshoots such as the Wire Report or Embassy News.  Nor have I ever heard of large media organizations such as The Economist or the New York Times ever suing anyone for sharing the occasional article that is behind a paywall.

Speaking generally and not about this or any other particular case, suing one’s customers – or potential customers – is rarely a good business model, whether it be for deterrence or, worse still, as a source of revenue or a business model. Ask the RIAA how their campaign against a 12 year old child, a 71 year old grandfather and a dead grandmother worked out. Likewise, and again speaking generally and not about this or any other particular case, there have been recent examples in the USA and UK where some “troll” litigation has backfired badly.

Needless to say, if any of these Blacklock’s Federal Court cases result in a judgment, this would be something worthy of notice because it would potentially have significant precedential value.

If CVA appeals the Small Claims Court decision, things could get very interesting. The appeal would go the Ontario Divisional Court, which, as copyright lawyers should know, delivered an excellent pro-fair dealing ruling in 1997 in the Allen v. Toronto Star case involving the reproduction on the front page of a Toronto Star edition with a major article about Sheila Copps of a whole magazine cover from Saturday Night Magazine featuring a picture of Sheila Copps. It’s not clear that it would be cost beneficial for CVA to appeal the current decision, even if they win. But if it does, it’s reasonable to expect some interest on the part of potential interveners – on both sides of the fence. A decision of the Ontario Divisional Court is one that could indeed have some precedential value.

In any event, interested eyes are – or should be - on the Federal Court cases. If anyone becomes aware of any other Blacklock’s litigation or threatening letters, please feel free to let me know and pass along details, anonymously if you so wish.

Anyway, speaking of alleged copyright trolls, the hearing of Teksavvy’s quest in the Voltage case to appeal the  decision by Prothonotary Roza Aronovitch of the Federal Court regarding TekSavvy’s claim to entitlement to $346,480.68 in which Teksavvy was awarded only $21,557.50 – about 6% of what it asked for overall coming up on November 9, 2015. Although CIPPIC is no longer active in this matter, it would be helpful if CIPPIC would update its website regarding this case soon and post the most pertinent of the obviously voluminous material filed in the Court so that folks who may wish to follow or attend the hearing on November 9, 2015 can be better informed.

More to follow without doubt on both Blacklock’s and Teksavvy soon.

HPK