Copyright infringement happens when one party uses, sells, distributes, or recreates another person's work of authorship without the original owner's consent. Copyright infringement can happen in a variety of ways, through many mediums, including motion pictures, photographs, paintings, musical recordings, and literary works.
With the emergence of the Internet, copyright infringement laws have expanded in an effort to adapt laws to meet the growth of technology. The Internet is a tool that allows the easy retrieval of information instantaneously. This makes it easy for information to spread quickly, though much of this information can be copyrighted. To prevent this from happening, new intellectual property laws have been established to protect creative works that are being spread without consent quickly and easily over the internet.
Section 41.26 of the Canada Copyright Act, which came into force on January 2, 2015, requires ISP providers, like ACN, to forward to you any notice we may have received from the mentioned copyright owner.
In order to comply with the said Copyright Act, the notice must identify:
When a service provider, such as ACN, receives such a notice, we must do two things: forward the notice to the alleged violator, providing either a success or failure receipt; and retain the information allowing the account holder’s identity to be kept for a period of six months. Should the copyright owner responsible for sending the notice commence any court proceedings; we may be required to retain the information for a period of more than six months.
Please note that ACN will not take any legal action against you.
As an intermediary, ACN has no knowledge of neither the contents of the notice, nor of the type of activity one engages in on the Internet. We cannot take a position with regards to the accuracy of the notice, and we do not know what further steps its sender will take, if any.
As an intermediary, ACN is not in a position to answer questions about the circumstances surrounding this notice. What we can tell you is that a notice from a private party does not entail any legal ruling, which only a court can render. Further, there is no legal obligation to pay any settlement offered by a copyright holder.
There are various resources at your disposal to help deal with the notices. We have listed a couple of addresses below for your consideration:
Subscriber information and individually-issued Internet Protocol addresses are all personal information which we do not provide to the sender. We will not provide any personal information to any copyright claimant unless we are ordered to do so by means of a court order. And we will take every opportunity to make sure that our account holders receive notice of if and when a court is asked to disclose their personal information.
It is good practice to ensure that you secure your Internet Service/Account. Your wireless router should be password-protected. The password should be changed regularly, and those who have the password should maintain good virus protection. The account holder should always keep track of who has access to it.
If an issue were to progress any further, where full disclosure is ordered and eventually takes place, and the rights holder wishes to pursue their copyright infringement claim, then you will receive a notification from the rights holder personally. At that point, the issue will rest directly between you and the rights holder.
As an intermediary, ACN has no knowledge of the contents of the notice, the type of activity in which you engage on the Internet, nor how the copyright owner was able to track you down.
You are under no obligation to respond to the copyright infringement notice. However, you may contact the copyright holder directly at the email and/or telephone number listed in the copyright notice we forwarded to you. Note, ACN forwarded the copyright notice to you because the IP address listed in the copyright notice was in use by your modem/router on the date/time specified in the complaint. We are required by law to forward you the notice. We have not shared your name or any other information about you with the copyright holder or any other organization.