The Canadian courts ruled that edge.tm and goldtv.biz should be banned by regional internet service providers. Only one of the ISPs, TekSavvy, decided to appeal the decision.
Torrent Freak originally reported back on November 18th that the court had made the decision to forcibly have the ISPs block the two websites edge.tm and goldtv.biz.
Judge Gleeson, the one who presided over the case, admitted that blocking sites doesn’t completely stop the problem but they claimed that it creates a “significant” reduction of “infringing” sites…
“It’s clear from the evidence that site-blocking will not eliminate user access to infringing services. However, the evidence does establish that in those jurisdictions where site-blocking measures have been implemented there has been a significant reduction in visits to infringing websites.
“I am satisfied that a site-blocking order is an effective means of limiting access to GoldTV Services,”
The site-blocking sets a scary precedent – that courts can literally have ISPs, or ISPs can voluntarily have entire websites blocked from user access.
TekSavvy’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, Andy Kaplan, told Torrent Freak in a follow-up article…
“We are very concerned about what the federal court’s new site-blocking regime means for the open Internet as a whole. [The order] is based on foreign law, and it clearly violates Network Neutrality, without giving any serious consideration to that fundamental principle of communications law in Canada,” Kaplan-Myrth tells TorrentFreak.
“If it is allowed to stand, this site-blocking order will be just the first of many, undermining the open Internet to protect the profits and business models of a handful of powerful media conglomerates,”
It’s interesting that an ISP of all people would be willing to fight against the court order. However, TekSavvy sees the writing on the wall, and that this could have far-reaching, wide-sweeping effects on the entire internet. That’s not to mention that net neutrality is supposed to be in effect in Canada, yet the court ruling completely superseded that.
(Thanks for the news tip MaverickHL)
