Tech

Canada's new downloading regulations mean you could pay $20,000 for pirating music

by Tyler Munro

Have you ever pirated an album or movie? If yes, keep reading. If no, you’re lying, so keep reading.

For years, Canadian downloaders have championed how hard it was to get caught and punished; that uploading, not downloading, was what they could be punished for, or that their ISP had their back.

That’s no longer the case.

Approved in 2012, the Copyright Modernization Act officially rolled into action on January 1st, requiring both internet service providers and web hosts to forward along copyright violation notices to offending IP addresses. The letter is just a warning, and in many ways is a carryover from the old rules: In the past, ISPs could forward warning letters along at their own discretion as kind of a “be careful” to customers.

But now, these letters could be the lead-in to legal prosecution. New regulations will allow copyright holders to sue for as much as $5000 if the violation was for personal use, $20,000 for commercial use.

For downloaders, this marks a major shift in the online landscape, and with sites like the Pirate Bay still faltering under an increasingly domineering legal blanket, it could signal a key moment in the fight against illegal downloading.

And while, yeah, that means it’s probably going to be riskier to grab the new episode of Ink Master or to download the new Pitbull jam, it’s important to remember that yes, you are breaking the law. Tread lightly. [h/t Van City Buzz]