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Facts: The plaintiffs, the largest record company in Canada, brought an action to compel five Canadian Internet service providers to disclose the identity of 29

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Facts: The plaintiffs, the largest record company in Canada, brought an action to compel five Canadian Internet service providers to disclose the identity of 29 of their customers. Their customers apparently used file-sharing software and pseudonyms to download more than 1000 songs over which the plaintiffs had copyright. The plaintiffs introduced evidence by MediaSentry, a company that provided online anti-piracy protection and that found evidence of file-sharing activities by the defendants. Held: Motion dismissed. Ratio Decidendi: There was no evidence of copyright infringement. There was also no evidence to suggest that the defendants either distributed or authorized the reproduction of the sound recordings. They were downloading songs for personal use, and this does not constitute copyright infringement. The defendants placed personal copies into their shared directories, which were accessible by other Internet users. But before such an activity could be construed to be copyright infringement, the plaintiffs had to demonstrate that there had been some positive act on the part of the defendants to distribute the songs, such as sending out copies or advertising that the songs were available for copying. No such evidence was presented. The Supreme Court of Canada recently held that setting up facilities that allowed copying was not infringement. It held that there is no difference between a library that placed a photocopier in a room full of copyrighted material and an individual who placed a personal copy in a shared directory. There was also no clear evidence showing a causal connection between the defendants and the Internet protocol address holders leading to the possibility of violating the privacy of an innocent account holder. This is also a matter of privacy, and the rights to privacy outweigh the public interest in ordering disclosure. Based on the complete case at the Canadian Legal Information Institute online.

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