The data shows that blocking pirate sites causes more harm than good, but that hasn’t stopped Canadian media companies from demanding that their government implement a website blacklist. A coalition of movie industry companies and ISPs, including Bell, Rogers, and Cineplex, announced this effort back in December, and they formally launched it last week as FairPlay Canada. Their plan calls for an extra-judicial blocklist that would bypass any legal proceedings and would instead empower a private organization to decide which sites are blocked. The Canadian blocklist would be maintained by a new non-profit organization called “Internet Piracy Review Agency” (IPRA) and enforced through the CTRC, Canadaland reports. The plan doesn’t come as a total surprise as Bell alluded to a nationwide blocking mechanism during a recent Government hearing. What becomes clear from the new plans, however, is that the telco is not alone. Canadian telecom regulator CTRC would be tasked with making sure ISPs obeyed the block, and it has already indicated that it is opposed to the idea. That is a good sign that this effort will go nowhere, but even if this block list is put into place, Michael Geist believes it will face multiple legal challenges: The limitations of blocking technologies, […]
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