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posted by CoolHand on Thursday November 01 2018, @01:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the fightin-the-man dept.

What Happens When Telecom Companies Search Your Home for Piracy

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Canadian citizen has house raided, all electronic devices copied, compelled to divulge accounts and passwords, is interrogated for 16 hours, and it is a *civil* complaint... he's already on the hook for a $50,000 payment to the plaintiffs, and he has not even been to trial yet.

When 30-year-old web developer Adam Lackman heard loud knocking on his Montreal apartment door around 8 AM, he thought he was about to be robbed.

When the police showed up after about 20 minutes, according to Lackman, he opened the door and was met by lawyers, a bailiff, and, rather ominously, a locksmith. Seeing that he wasn't about to be mugged, the police left.

One of the lawyers represented some of Canada's most powerful telecommunications and media companies: Bell, Rogers, Vidéotron, and TVA. The other was there to be an independent observer on behalf of the court. Lackman was told that he was being sued for copyright infringement for operating TVAddons, a website that hosted user-created apps for streaming video over the internet. The crew was there with a civil court order allowing them to search the place.

The search was only supposed to go from 8 AM to 8 PM but it ended at midnight. The team copied laptops, hard drives, and any other devices they found, and demanded logins and passwords. Lackman, who called a lawyer in to represent him, was questioned for nine hours by the opposing counsel. They presented him with a list of names of people suspected of being digital pirates in Canada and asked him to snitch. He didn't recognize the names, he told me, and said nothing.

[...] Now, Lackman is embroiled in expensive legal proceedings for a case that pits him against several telecom corporations and media companies, ultimately to answer: Was TVAddons a platform for innovative streaming apps, or was it designed to enable piracy?

[...] Lackman ran TVAddons, a website that hosted unofficial apps (referred to as "addons") for Kodi, a popular open-source media center that allows users to stream media from their devices and over the internet.

[...] The lawyers obtained an injunction that prevented Lackman from operating TVAddons and ordered him to hand over login credentials so that a court-authorized technician could shut down the site and social media accounts.

[...More]

They also got an "Anton Piller" order, which allowed the lawyers—as well as a supervising agent of the court, bailiffs, and technical experts—to enter his home and search the place for devices, hard drives, and documents, and to preserve any evidence they found.

It's as close as you're going to get in civil law to criminal interrogation and seizure

[...] According to Israel, this is the harsh reality of being a small player sued by telecoms and media companies in Canada, where the dominance of the "big three"—Rogers, Bell, and Telus, the latter of which isn't involved in Lackman's litigation—is often referred to as a telecom oligopoly.

The case highlights an imbalance of power, Israel said, "where individuals who experience harms don't have the resources to advance them."

Deep-pocketed companies, on the other hand, "not only have the resources to pursue [perceived harms] to the point where individuals don't have the ability to defend themselves, but also to advance mechanisms with fewer safeguards," Israel said.

[...] Even though the parties are now negotiating a payment plan, uncertainties abound—nobody knows what will happen to Lackman now, least of all him. As his lawyer Renno put it, the case is remarkably still in "very, very early stages."

And that is the point: in the new Canadian anti-piracy regime led by powerful companies, just being accused of enabling piracy can come with immense personal consequences even before your day in court.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by LaminatorX on Thursday November 01 2018, @03:46PM (4 children)

    by LaminatorX (14) <laminatorxNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday November 01 2018, @03:46PM (#756489)

    If I follow this right:
    -----
      - Paintiffs requested/received/executed search & seizure order.

      - Respondent challenged validity of s & s order.

      - Judge agreed order was improper and overturns it.

      - Plaintiffs appeal ruling.

      - Appellate judges overrule lower judge, re-validate order, and ORDER RESPONDENT TO PAY PLAINTIFFS' LEGAL FEES FOR THE APPEAL.
    -----
    WTF? on that last bit. If the challenge was sufficiently bona fide that the first judge agreed with it, why the heck is the appeals court making Lackman pay the cost of the Plaintiffs appealing it?

    Can any Canadians weigh in on whether that is a normal practice up there, or if Lackman getting railroaded?

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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday November 01 2018, @07:00PM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday November 01 2018, @07:00PM (#756560) Journal

    Surely being socked with plaintiff's fees, before having been tried and convicted of anything whatsoever, must be a railroading. As I understand it, it's a whole new fight to prove barratry to recover expenses incurred in defending against a frivolous lawsuit. Of course, the defendant has to win the initial lawsuit first. But this is the plaintiff doing it, not the defendant. It sounds so outrageous that I wonder if the reporting on that detail is accurate. On the other hand, we know the copyright extremists are willing and able to pull crap like that.

    But that's just one detail. That's like debating over the morality of a particularly dirty move in dog fighting, when the dog fighting itself is what we should be quashing.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by http on Thursday November 01 2018, @08:17PM

      by http (1920) on Thursday November 01 2018, @08:17PM (#756595)

      Copyright maximalists are having a hard time [openmedia.org] in Canada. They worried that they soon won't be able to legally threaten [michaelgeist.ca] you.

      --
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @08:46PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @08:46PM (#756605)

    IANAL, but I can kind of see the (perverse) logic here: if a party did nothing wrong, they should be made whole, including the lawyer fees.

    Let's try another more egregious example to show why this makes sense.
    Albert sues Bob in court. The judge is Albert's twin brother. The court finds in favor of Albert. Bob appeals, saying that the first trial was bad because of the obvious conflict of interest. The appeals court agrees with Bob.

    I can see the appeals court saying that Albert should pay Bob's legal fees.

    • (Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:12PM

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:12PM (#756661)

      >if a party did nothing wrong, they should be made whole, including the lawyer fees

      That part seems to be missing. Shouldn't there be a trial determine which party is right?

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