OTTAWA – Back in September 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada established ISPs were entitled to be compensated when providing copyright owners with contact information of alleged movie pirates when required by a so-called Norwich Order.
It then sent back the decision to the Federal Court to determine the amount Rogers can charge for each search.
Voltage said that $3.50 to $5 would be a reasonable cost of compliance while Rogers argued at court that $100 per hour would me more like it.
After a long examination of the process and the labor costs at Rogers, Justice Keith Boswell decided that Rogers should be compensated a total of $67.23 for the five IP addresses searched in the Norwich Order in this instance.
“The evidence shows that, on average, it takes 24 minutes for Rogers to look up the customer name and address information for an IP address with two timestamps (or 12 minutes per time stamp). However, in view of my finding above that it would have taken Rogers a total of 115.25 minutes to identify the customer information associated with the five IP addresses in the Norwich Order, Rogers is entitled to compensation of $67.23, plus HST, for searching and disclosing the customer name and address information associated with the five time stamps in the Norwich Order (i.e., $35.00 x 115.25 minutes/ 60 minutes = $67.23). Voltage shall pay Rogers the amount of $67.23, plus HST, within 30 days of the date of this order,” reads the decision.
This proceeding was in relation to a specific request by Voltage and, to our knowledge, the first of such orders – but many more are likely to follow.
The court did not award costs, as Voltage requested.
