Industry Committee on Sept. 26th, 2018

[Dan Albas]

Mr. Kaplan-Myrth, you mentioned earlier that on the notice and notice regime, sometimes personal information will be sent, which may violate someone's privacy. You'd like to see those things replaced by a more standardized form that wouldn't allow that information to come to you in the first place. Is it because you're worried about liability if you put in notice and notice and inadvertently give information about someone to someone else? Is that the erroneous information you're talking about?

[Andy Kaplan-Myrth]

I'm sorry. There may have been some confusion about that. I was asked if I would provide samples of the notices that we receive, and I said that there is some personal information in those notices, so we may redact them before we provide them to the committee.

[Dan Albas]

Oh, no, I'm not talking about that. You said that sometimes you'll receive information, and when you forward it to someone on notice and notice and it is extraneous to the requirements—

[Andy Kaplan-Myrth]

That's right.

[Dan Albas]

—you could be liable for it. Is that what the concern is?

[Andy Kaplan-Myrth]

It's not that we're necessarily liable for it in any way, since we're required by law to pass it on. The sort of thing I'm talking about there is the personalized links that appear in those notices.

The notice we receive will tell the end-user to “click here to confirm that you have received this notice”, and then it will have a link. It's not just a link to a website; it's a link with variable tags that identify which notice it was. What it means is that when the end-user gets that notice and clicks the link, the sender now has the IP address and other information about the person's computer and browser that they can associate with that notice. They have information about the individual that they didn't have before.

By passing that on, we're making our end-users vulnerable in a way that doesn't feel like it serves the purposes of the notice-and-notice regime. The end-user, in turn, gets that message from TekSavvy or from the ISP, not from the rights holder. We write some information as sort of an envelope around the notice that explains to the user that it is not from us, that we are just passing it on, and that we're required to pass it on, and all that sort of information. But then we have to provide the notice as it's given to us, including advertising for a potential competitor of ours. That puts us in a difficult position, and it's completely extraneous information.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

For the last question, Mr. Graham, you have a hard two minutes. That's it.

[David de Burgh Graham]

It will be easy to manage. Thank you.

Mr. Kerr-Wilson, I want to follow up on a comment you made earlier that the CRTC may not be inclined to follow a court order. Can I ask you to confirm your position that the CRTC would not be inclined to follow a court order?

[Jay Kerr-Wilson]

Yes, of course. The CRTC actually issued a ruling. It was in the case that was referred to earlier in which the Quebec government had sought to require people to block access to gambling sites. The CRTC is very clear. It spelled out that even where there is a municipal order, a court order or some other judicial order, its approval is still required.

It said that in deciding whether it will approve, it will look at the telecom act objectives, which don't necessarily coincide with Copyright Act objectives or Criminal Code objectives. This is the CRTC that has said this; I'm not assuming that this is the case. The CRTC has been very explicit about this.

[David de Burgh Graham]

Thank you.

[Andy Kaplan-Myrth]

Could I just jump in there? Perhaps ironically, the CRTC made that finding partly at the behest of large ISPs that at the time did not want to block gambling sites in Quebec and asked the CRTC to step in to assert its jurisdiction in that situation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

That's the two minutes.

[David de Burgh Graham]

That finishes it up?

Thank you, guys.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

On that note, I want to thank our guests for coming in today and for a lot of information. I don't envy our analysts. They have a lot of stuff to go through. That's why we have so many of them. We spared no expense.

Thanks very much to all of you for coming in today.

The meeting is adjourned.