New bill to crack down on illegal downloads has privacy experts worried

AP Photo/Marvel-Disney, Zade RosenthalThis image released by Marvel shows George St-Pierre, left, and Chris Evans in a scene from "Captain America: The Winter Soldier."

You might want to think twice about downloading a pirated copy of the new Captain America movie — or any other film — thanks to a new federal piece of legislation that was quietly tabled in the Senate this week.
Bill S-4, the Digital Privacy Act, was introduced in the upper chamber on Tuesday, and privacy experts are concerned that the bill is carte blanche for companies to share Canadians’ personal information with big media companies who are trying to crack down on copyright infringement.
The crux of the legislation, which tightens regulations on the steps that companies need to take if security breaches compromise their users’ personal information, has received some tepidly positive reviews from analysts. But it’s the section tucked in the middle that’s raising eyebrows.
Currently, under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) companies can only share their users’ private data with government and police, in limited circumstances, as they investigate a crime.
Once S-4 becomes law, PIPEDA will allow companies to share Canadians’ information with other companies if they believe there has been a breach of agreement, or a case of fraud.
In other words, says digital advocacy group OpenMedia, pirating a copy of Game of Thrones onto your laptop will mean that HBO may soon have your number. All they’ll have to do is call up your internet service provider and ask for the information of each user who has ignored their copyright.
The practise began in the United States, where companies — unflatteringly referred to as “copyright trolls” — have issued mass mailings to users who pirate copyright material. The letters range from cease and desist requests, to notices of legal action and, more and more commonly, demands for reparation. In the U.S., companies have been known seek as much as $75,000 or more for violations.
David Christopher, communications manager for OpenMedia, says it’s a dangerous precedent, and S-4 will allow for it.
“It also opens the door to telecom firms handing our private data to U.S.-style copyright trolls, without any court order or judicial oversight,”he says. “Worst of all, we’d never know when we’d been a victim of these privacy breaches as the disclosures would be kept secret.”