Today, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeals brought down a ruling on the much-watched BMG vs Doe case, in which the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA, CRIA, was demanding that ISPs release the names and personal information of a number of people whom they accused of file-sharing.
The good news is that the court threw out CRIA's claims, saying that they'd been so sloppy in gathering their "evidence" that they had no business invading Canadians' privacy.
The bad news is that this implies that if CRIA is more careful, they'll be able to compel ISPs to disclose customer info, paving the way to thousands of US-style lawsuits in Canada.
Canadian copyfightin' professor Michael Geist has an excellent analysis of this, explaining why it means that Canada needs to fix its copyright laws ASAP.
The court focused much of its discussion on the privacy concerns associated with disclosing the identities of the file sharers. Although it noted the importance of intellectual property protection, it emphasized that in the Internet age "the potential for unwarranted intrusion into personal lives is now unparalleled." The court was clearly sympathetic to the privacy issues raised by the case and sought to map out some significant privacy protections. For example, it concluded that data associating users with an IP addresses goes stale very quickly and therefore evidence that is not current may be sufficient reason to dismiss a motion to disclose user identities. The court also noted that there must be care taken to ensure that personal information beyond the copyright allegations are not disclosed and that the identities of the individuals may be protected through confidentiality orders or by using initials.
