Earlier this month, it was reported Rogers, Bell and Videotron were successful in gaining a court order to block access to a website named ‘GoldTV’, accused of content theft by the telecoms.
Now, an appeal has been launched by one internet service provider to fight this website blocking order—TekSavvy.
Ottawa Law Professor, Michael Geist, reiterates why the website blocking order “is flawed from both a policy and legal perspective,” while also noting the following regarding the appeal by TekSavvy:
The fact that TekSavvy stands alone for the moment highlights how Canada is an outlier when it comes to communications services. In most countries, legal cases involving site blocking are defended by ISPs, who challenge efforts to require them to block access to content. Yet in Canada, those cases are launched by the ISPs themselves, with companies such as Bell and Rogers siding with their content business over their millions of wireless and broadband customers.
Two major developments in Canada on website blocking: (1) leading ISPs are now blocking access to URLs identified in recent court order; (2) @TekSavvyBuzz, alone among Canada’s ISPs, has filed an appeal against the site blocking ruling https://t.co/a25hPapj9N pic.twitter.com/rlzDNDRpBm
— Michael Geist (@mgeist) November 26, 2019
Montreal legal firm Smart & Biggar, representing Bell Media Inc., Groupe TVA Inc. and Rogers Media Inc. told iPhone in Canada the following statement earlier this month:
“Content theft remains a critical threat to Canada’s creative sector, impacting rights holders and creators across the industry and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and thousands of lost jobs. Similar orders are regularly issued by courts in other countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and France, and require Internet Service Providers to simply disable access to sites distributing illegal content. Our clients have now been granted the same remedy in Canada.”
Geist says Rogers has already blocked access to billing.goldtv.biz, which now shows a landing pagee detailing the court order ruling from November 15, 2019.
