For Immediate Release
Fox Creek, Alberta - October 16 - It came to light late last week that the Conservative Government intends to require VPN providers to forward takedown notices they receive from copyright holders to their customers [1]. Furthermore, VPN providers will now be forced to log customer actions for at least 6 months. Both requirements are set to kill off the Canadian VPN industry. VPN services are sought for the added privacy they provide while online. By requiring VPN providers to keep logs of customer actions, an advantage the Canadian VPN providers had over their international competitors will be lost [2]. At the same time the requirement to forward takedown notices will put an administrative strain on VPN providers as many are small businesses, often run by a single person or small group of people. Google, while not a VPN provider, receives over a million takedown notices per month [3]. While VPN providers will receive substantially less there are no safeguards in place to keep a virtual avalanche of takedown notices from appearing. Furthermore, the U.S. have had many unfounded searches, abuses and spying committed by copyright trolls, and this change will exacerbate the situation and bring U.S. style abuses to Canada. VPNs remains one of the few tools that can be used as a safeguard against unchecked spying by non-transparent and oppressive governments. This mitigation tool is worth protecting to counter the ever increasing threat to privacy (an essential safeguard for democracy). This threat have been made worse by breach on internet security imposed by the NSA and its “5 eyes” spying allies. We ask the Canadian government to show
their commitment against not spying on Canadians, and protection of consumer’s interests by not imposing such a damaging law.
“It is amazing that the Conservatives would go ahead and propose a measure so detrimental to Canadian businesses. It is especially jarring when juxtaposed with their recent consumer-friendly throne speech,” says James Wilson, Leader of the Pirate Party of Canada. The VPN industry has seen impressive growth since the revelations regarding NSA spying. The Conservatives, by weakening VPN privacy measures, have essentially said Canadian businesses cannot benefit from this growth. “This looks like a hastily made plan that does not understand and appreciate the intrinsic value of the technology. It only benefits copyright trolls who does not operate under the democratic principle of due process,” says Ric Lim, Party Secretary. This plan could cause tremendous harm to open nature of the internet and the interests of consumers. One proposal that the Conservatives have not expressed interest in is having copyright holders pay a fee to VPN providers to handle the takedown notices. The Pirate Party of Canada supports this idea as a means to prevent frivolous takedown notices. However, the party cannot support the keeping of customer logs as to have such a system makes VPN services providers of a false sense of
security rather than actual security. More data retention also exposes Canadian to higher risk of fraud in the event of a system breach, which seems to happen at a higher frequency nowadays (e.g. Sony and other large corporations with substantial IT departments). The Canadian Government has launched consultations on these changes [4]. The Pirate Party of Canada urges everyone to make the government aware of the negative effects the proposed
changes will have on Canadian businesses.
The Pirate Party of Canada is a federal political party focused on thoughtful information policy reform, genuine democracy, civil liberties, and the freedom of the Internet. You can find out more online at www.pirateparty.ca
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Media Contacts: [email protected]
Comments
7 comments for PRESS RELEASE: Conservatives Set To Kill Growing VPN Industry
Hmm… did not know that. Thanks for bringing it up…
Canada is one of the 5Eyes international espionage network, so of course the government wants VPNs dead. I actually agree with them for once in this case; Canadians can get much greater national benefits through American incentives and extortion than from our tiny VPN industry. Customers will abandon our new VPN Remote Logging services, then pay internationally for real VPNs anyway, and hopefully local VPN providers will sue the government for arbitrarily destroying their industry and win. I just hope we traded our VPN industry for something really good, like money and an exemption from predator drone murders.
“Canada is one of the 5Eyes international espionage network, so of course the government wants VPNs dead. I actually agree with them”
You seem to be on the wrong party page or are trolling. Pirateparty stands for privacy and your agreeing with the cancellations of yet more privacy options …your name has been noted.
Nuff said
Mad
Welcome to the end-game for freedom and democracy - The USA no longer has true democracy, and in general cannot stand the idea of someone else having more freedom than them, especially right on the border.
They are so ingrained with the concept of American superiority and manifest destiny, that they are incapable of understanding that someone would NOT want to be American. I know of several former and current US citizens living in Canada who are subject to draconian treatment whether they renounce their US citizenship or not.
If they don’t, they still have to file US Income tax forms every year, report current address, and notfiy the Treasury if they have more than $10k in any bank account, even if for just 1 day.
If they renounce their citizenship, they are treated as undesirables every time they travel wthin US jurisdiction - they are taken aside EVERY TIME when crossing border.
The American state works great for Americans; not so much for those who aren’t
This is only a small sample of the police state that Fuhrer Harper wishes to create.
Sieg Heil, Stephen!
I think the WWII reference was a little over the top, but approved the comment anyway.
So, suppose a company is operating its servers in say, Sweden or Cyprus or Panama, but its letting Canadian customers use the service, would they still be required to retain the logs?
I am not agree with Canadian Government policy about banning VPN. Because when you are online in any public WiFi, you are in great threat, so using a VPN is feel of security.
After the announcement i change my vpn provider because i am not going to trust on Canadian VPN provider anymore. I choose my provider from VpnRanks which have a list of non Canadian VPN providers.
It's not possible to make comments anymore.