Bill C-86, the Budget Implementation Act that includes extensive copyright reforms, passed the Senate and received royal assent last week. With little fanfare, the rules for Canada’s copyright notice-and-notice have now changed. The law no longer requires Internet providers to forward notifications that include the following:

(a) an offer to settle the claimed infringement;
(b) a request or demand, made in relation to the claimed infringement, for payment or for personal information;
(c) a reference, including by way of hyperlink, to such an offer, request or demand; and
(d) any other information that may be prescribed by regulation

In short, the law now excludes notices that contains an offer to settle, a payment demand or a link to a payment demand. Any notices that include that information do not need to be forwarded and ISPs will not face any penalties for failing to do so. The key remaining question is whether ISPs will crackdown on non-compliant notices. Since there is no penalty associated with sending non-compliant notices, subscribers are dependent upon ISPs carefully reviewing notices to ensure that they only forward those that fully comply with the law.

The government has been a strong supporter of the notice-and-notice system – it insisted that it remain in place as part of recent trade negotiations on the CPTPP and CUSMA – and has now taken long overdue steps to stop the abuse by establishing requirements that effectively ban the inclusion of settlement demands.