My name is Adam Lackman. I ran a platform called TV ADDONS. You may or may not have heard of it. Last summer, Bell, Videotron, TVA, and Rogers initiated a lawsuit against me. They were able to get an ex parte motion that allowed them to receive an Anton Piller order, which allowed them to enter my home, seize every bit of my property of value, and that was it. Six days later we had an appearance in court. I won. The judge said that the true purpose of the search was to destroy my livelihood and not actually to enforce copyright.
In the United States there's the DMCA process, which mandates a take-down notice system, meaning if you run an online platform and end users, regular people, put up something infringing, they have to notify you before initiating legal action. My platform did not host any content. It did not link to any content. What my platform offered was the ability for software developers to upload apps which would scrape content from external, unaffiliated online sources. You could make an app that would scrape YouTube content and display it on your TV. You can make an app that would show Donald Trump's tweets on your TV every time he would tweet.
Basically we had over 1,500 add-ons on the system, and supposedly, according to them, fewer than 12 were infringing. Nonetheless, even after we won in court, on a Sunday after Canada Day, they received a stay of execution. The stay of execution meant they didn't have to return any of my property until the appeal. The appeal took about six months to be heard. By then I already had about $200,000 in legal fees, even though we had won initially in court. We actually had to go to Ottawa for the stay of execution hearing.
We eventually went to the appeal. We lost the appeal. It took months for us to find out. Without a notice system in Canada, there's nothing protecting legitimate, honest, neutral online platforms from being pursued by copyright bullies who look to maintain their monopolies while they take advantage of Canadian content creators and whatnot.
Thank you very much.