TORONTO – Canipre, a Montreal-based company that provides forensic investigation services for copyright owners, is at the centre of Canada’s latest file-sharing case.
Canadian ISP Distributel is opposing a motion to disclose the identities of some of its subscribers who are alleged to have been involved in file-sharing.
According to court documents, NGN and Riding Films hired Canipre Inc. to investigate the IP addresses involved in the alleged file sharing of three films, Recoil, Crash Site and Dawn Rider, though peer-to-peer networks.
Canipre was also used by Voltage pictures in its case involving thousands of TekSavvy customers.
But how do companies like Canipre track copyrighted material in order to find out what Internet Protocol (IP) addresses have downloaded the pirated content?
Monitor file-sharing websites for pirated content
Canipre is provided with the copyrighted material, for example the title of a film, and monitors the Internet for that film property.
According to Barry Logan, senior director of operations at Canipre, the company tracks the title through file-sharing websites (including torrents, P2P networks, user-generated channels and social media portals) and are able to monitor the exchange of files through BitTorrent.
Using metrics to find IP addresses
By monitoring the download trends of P2P and Torrent users, Canipre is able to create a profile of Internet users by country, region and city.
“Canipre is able to view specific media files acquired through unauthorized download and determine what titles are actively downloaded or subject to a download attempt,” reads Canipre’s website.
What information is collected?
Only a user’s IP address is collected by third-party companies like Canipre, therefore they are not seeing any personal information about the user.
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