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As the last few remaining NHL teams battle their way towards the Stanley Cup finals, the Federal Court has ordered Canadian ISPs to begin blocking NHL game streams accused of violating copyright Friday. While Canadian courts have previously recognized the availability of static website blocking (despite CIPPIC's objection), this order is the first of its kind in Canada, as we argued in our intervention. It implements a sophisticated system that relies on a private company to identify allegedly unauthorized streams using automated assessment tools and report these to Canadian ISPs for real-time blocking, and represents the next step and the never-ending expansion of remedies demanded by copyright holders in Canada.

The order adopts a number of safeguards. It will only operate during the remainder of the playoffs, where there are fewer games to monitor and less opportunities for over-blocking. The Court also ordered an independent expert to audit the website blocking initiative. The independent audit will provide critical evidence that will be critical when courts are later asked to extend this remedy. Specifically, if Rogers, Bell, and the other media companies who applied for this order wish to extend its application beyond the 2022 playoff season, the independent audit will need to establish that collateral blocking of legitimate content was minimal and that the blocking was effective in actually increasing legitimate subscriptions rather than simply driving customers to other forms of infringement or adoption of VPN services.

Image source: Stanislav Lvovsky, "Censored", Flickr, September 28, 2015, CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

CIPPIC has submitted feedback to the Department of Canadian Heritage concerning the proposed legislation to address “harmful content” online. The public consultation was launched right before the federal election was called with a deadline to submit right after the end of the election, causing civil society and academic experts to request a delay  to the submission deadline. No deferral was ultimately granted.

In its submission, CIPPIC calls on the Department of Canadian Heritage to reconsider its approach to addressing activity that occurs online, given that the current approach jeopardizes claims that Canada is a global leader of human rights. The submission focuses on problems relating to the law’s scope of application, its demand that platforms block unlawful content within 24 hours of being flagged, as well as alarming requirements for online service providers to proactively monitor and filter content as well as report information on users to law enforcement.

The Supreme Court of Canada today released its decision in York University v. Access Copyright, 2021 SCC 32.  The case addressed two issues: whether Access Copyright’s Copyright Board tariff is mandatory, and whether copying by York pursuant to its Guidelines constitutes fair dealing.  Both courts below had ruled the tariff not mandatory and the Guidelines unfair.

In a unanimous decision penned by Justice Abella (in her last case on the bench), the Court found that the tariff was not mandatory and so was unenforceable against York, and in light of the absence of any real legal issue between York and Access Copyright, that it would be inappropriate to decide the fair dealing issue. 

However, the Court cautioned that this result should not “should not be construed as endorsing the reasoning of” the courts below, citing “some significant jurisprudential problems with those aspects of their judgments that warrant comment.”  The Court went on to “correct” those “errors” [para. 87-88]

Highlights of that analysis include:

In yet another of a long string of missed opportunities and short-sighted half measures, the CRTC has announced its regulatory solution for Canada's chronic cell phone market debacle. In adopting a regime that replicates, rather than overcomes, the most problematic features of Canada’s mobile landscape, the Commission’s regulatory solution offers slim hopes for Canada’s cell phone market.

As anyone with a phone plan is aware, world-high mobile prices have plagued Canadians for years. Yet Canada’s dominant national providers (TELUS, Bell and Rogers) have persistently denied this reality through lobbying efforts, regulatory filings, and even active misdirection. It is therefore encouraging that the CRTC’s recent decision finally and definitively confirms the nature and scope of Canada’s pricing woes.

The decision also correctly identifies several endemic problems in mobile competition that have caused this state of affairs: market entry is difficult, as upfront costs are high, spectrum is inherently limited, and dominant providers enjoy a substantial head start. As a result of these conditions, several stuttering attempts over the years to instill price discipline from new competitors have failed to make any meaningful headway into the national providers’ dominant market presence and globally high revenues. In response, the Commission adopts a two-tiered regime. First, in an attempt to provide more competition, it obligates dominant providers to let competitors operate 'virtually', without the need to build their own networks (the MVNO mandate). Second, to provide some relief for Canadians who simply cannot afford mobile data connectivity, dominant providers will be obligated to offer lower cost plans.

Each component promises, in theory, to address long-standing problems in Canada's cell phone landscape, but both fall short in the implementation. The MVNO regime is crafted narrowly, and is only available to a small number of existing comptitors. The low-cost plans imposed by the CRTC will help some customers in some regions, but mostly replicate plans already offered by some regional competitors, and do so on outdated 3G technology.

Cross-posted & paired with a post by Erin Knight at OpenMedia.ca. Image Source: Georg Arthur Pfleuger, @knurpselknie, "Facetime between mother and son", Unsplash, June 20, 2020