The controversial copyright infringement notice market

The warning in a threatening tone arrives first by email and then by post. It says that the recipient of the notification has a deadline to pay an amount or a lawsuit will be initiated. The infringement: infringement of copyright by downloading a movie via the internet.

The origin of these notifications is in lawsuits in which companies claiming to be the holders of these rights ask internet concessionaires to access the data of users who, according to them, would be violating the law by downloading movies through sites such as uTorrent and BitTorrent.

And they have obtained advance decisions (injunctions and urgent injunctions) to access names, emails, addresses and telephone numbers linked to thousands of IPs (internet protocol, a type of address that identifies each device connected to a network).

With this information, law firms issue extrajudicial notifications offering settlements with values ​​between R$200 and R$3,000, as compensation for what they claim to be an infraction.

For entities such as Idec (Instituto de Defesa do Consumidor) and the Coalizão Direitos na Rede, this is a type of “fishing” led by what they consider to be “copyright trolls”, who apply the same aggressive tactics to the defense of copyrights as brucutus from the internet.

They also recommend that consumers do not respond to notifications and do not pay the requested amounts. The formal face of these trolls are the law firms that act on behalf of the producers in the actions, and that reject denomination.

“It is regrettable, they are trying to confuse these actions with the troll copyright institute. [em cobrar compensação]”, says lawyer Márcio Gonçalves, from the office that bears his name, responsible for thousands of notifications.

Joélcio Tonera, from the Guerra IP office, also a signatory to thousands of other notifications and the author of a lawsuit against Telefônica Brasil, says that he only represents the interests of those who hold the rights to the productions.

“The evaluative or moral position would be up to whoever was harmed. In any case, our client makes the files of his cinematographic works available in an absolutely legitimate way to those who are authorized. As soon as there are copies, there is an infringement”, he states . “With all due respect to the important work of Idec, but this is not a matter of consumer rights.”

In the case against Telefonica, Tonera represents Pml Process Management Ltd., a company based in Cyprus.

The filing claims that the company identified, using forensic technology, that certain IPs had used torrent sites to illegally download movies. The argument is the same as for other actions of the type. The list of productions that would have been downloaded includes titles such as “Ava”, “Rambo: Until the End”, “Hellboy” and “Double Explosive”.

The lawyer does not say how many users have already had their data revealed by court decision — the number is protected by the General Data Protection Act, he says.

Even in cases in which it was not the author, such as those against Claro, Guerra IP received authorization to access the data granted by the Court (the legal name is the sub-establishment).

The latest process includes 66,000 IPs. In another, against Claro, 53 thousand IPs were identified. Vivo says it is not aware of the lawsuit. Claro does not comment.

For Luã Cruz, researcher at Idec’s Telecommunications and Digital Rights Program, there is no doubt that lawsuits and extrajudicial notifications are troll behaviors.

The request for data is not illegal, he says, but the methods are questionable, as they do not explain to users or the Judiciary how the identification was made and how the collected data are being treated.

Pedro Lana, researcher at the Copyright and Industrial Law Study Group at UFPR (Federal University of Paraná) and secretary at the Copyright Observatory Institute (Ioda), says that companies requesting data are not transparent about the procedures for identifying IP.

For Lana, who is a member of Coalizão Direitos na Rede, there are indications that this collection violates data protection legislation. He also finds the method compatible with classification as a troll because it undermines the purpose of copyright law, which is to stimulate creativity, by applying it to threats of litigation.

The lawyer Christian Perrone, from the ITS (Instituto Tecnologia e Sociedade), says that the trolls take advantage of the user’s fear of having a more serious consequence for the fact that the download was carried out.

In the case of notifications, he recommends seeking to find out if the rights are legitimate before any response. “But there’s always a high probability that it’s just a way to get some quick cash.”

THE Sheet talked to two people notified by one of these offices. Both asked not to be identified as they decided not to respond to notifications.

The two say that, upon receiving the email, they thought it was an attempted coup. A few days later, the notification arrived in the mail. User notified in March says she is convinced she has not downloaded the film. The problem, she says, is that the notification doesn’t contain any other information that would allow the allegation to be confirmed.

Lawyer Márcio Gonçalves defends the notifications and says that the procedure intends to make the user aware of copyright. According to him, there are agreements that do not even involve payments.

“It’s all treated on a case-by-case basis, but whoever decides to ignore it runs the risk of being the target of an individual action”, he says. He joined, by decision of the companies he represents, with two actions against users.

For Idec, the user must keep in mind that these requests are based on a new legal situation and that there is no possibility of framing it as a crime, that is, in the criminal sphere, as there was no intention to profit from the download.

In the civil sphere, the consumer protection body considers that the amounts are disproportionate, generating illicit enrichment.

“They say it’s to educate users, but what we’ve seen is that, as they have data from many users, they fish with a net. We understand that people can ignore these notifications, because they want to profit with this gap in the legislation”, says Cruz, from Idec.