Online watchdog organizes day of action against site blocking proposal

An organization with the aim of keeping an open and affordable internet is “speaking out across Canada to defend access to the internet” by launching a day of action campaign against the government’s site blocking efforts. OpenMedia asked civil society groups and concerned members of the public on Thursday to respond to the government’s Consultation on a Modern Copyright Framework for Online Intermediaries -- including its site blocking proposal --which closes May 31. “In terms of the impact on the open internet, our concern is really that this treats all of us as criminals, and we'll have a huge amount of damage in terms of how it will actually play out because site blocking is a very messy tool,” Matt Hatfield, OpenMedia’s campaign director, said in a phone interview with The Wire Report. In April, the federal government launched the consultation, asking for feedback on whether or not it should allow internet service providers to unilaterally block certain websites from users in order to protect copyright holders. The consultation is part of a package of government efforts: an update the Broadcasting Act, the development of a legal framework for online harms, news media remuneration, and copyright reform. “Questions have emerged regarding the extent to which the copyright framework for online intermediaries still achieves its underlying objectives, including protecting and encouraging the use of copyright protected content online,” the government wrote in its preamble in the policy paper guiding its consultation. One of the “options for reform” mentioned in the paper that are sounding OpenMedia’s alarms is a proposal to amend the Copyright Act to provide “expressly for injunctions against intermediaries to prevent or stop online copyright infringement facilitated by their services even where they are not themselves liable for it.” The injunctions could be available through a court process and the specific relief would include site blocking/deindexing orders to disable access to infringing content, takedown orders to remove content, and stay-down order to prevent or stop infringing activity. Site blocking “tends to lead to blocking a lot of content and websites inappropriately, either because they're, they're badly flagged or because they're a mix of two sites that contain a lot of legitimate content, as well as some copyright infringing content,” Hatfield explained. Other changes proposed would require intermediaries to “implement mechanisms for action to be taken in respect of their users who have been identified as repeat alleged infringers,” with possible consequences including limiting, suspending, or terminating the intermediary's services to the alleged infringer. “For some people in Canada, if you have one (internet service provider) in your town that potentially could mean condemning you to not be on the internet based off an alleged copyright infringement, which doesn't strike us as remotely proportional to any real problem,” Hatfield said. Hatfield said Canada already has strong and comprehensive copyright laws that can be pursued through legal mechanisms rather than through “some sort of extrajudicial system run by intermediaries” -- such as this past Wednesday when the Federal Court of Appeal allowed the first-ever site-blocking court order to stand, dismissing an appeal of the order from TekSavvy Solutions Inc. Hatfield also said that if the site blocking and user blocking proposals were to go through, it would make Canada’s high telecommunication rates situation “much worse.” “Users could end up paying some really high costs under the proposals, including very directly, high financial costs. I don't think it's being taken very seriously by the government at this point but the cost to intermediaries -- setting up some sort of adjudication process for hearing all these copyright claims and making a decision and having an appeals system -- is going to be really considerable, and ultimately we as customers are gonna have to pay that cost,” he said. Hatfield said giving less legal protection to intermediaries and ISPs in terms of copyright infringement runs the risk of leading to “overblocking” content, websites, or users which could have consequences on net neutrality and freedom of expression. “There's a real risk that we're going to see a variety of content less accessible, if there's inappropriate website blocking,” he said. But according to Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s statement when he launched the consultation in April, the aim of site blocking proposals is to “contribute to a healthier online environment for Canadians, creators and media” and provide a “more up-to-date framework to ensure more accountability and better remuneration and transparency.” -- Reporting by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca and editing by Hannah Daley at hdaley@thewirereport.ca

Online watchdog organizes day of action against site blocking proposal

News | 05/27/2021 6:22 pm EDT

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