Copyright infringement happens when one party uses, sells, distributes, or recreates another person's work of authorship without the original owner's consent. Copyright infringement can happen in a variety of ways, through many mediums, including motion pictures, photographs, paintings, musical recordings, and literary works.

With the emergence of the Internet, copyright infringement laws have expanded in an effort to adapt laws to meet the growth of technology. The Internet is a tool that allows the easy retrieval of information instantaneously. This makes it easy for information to spread quickly, though much of this information can be copyrighted. To prevent this from happening, new intellectual property laws have been established to protect creative works that are being spread without consent quickly and easily over the internet.

Section 41.26 of the Canada Copyright Act, which came into force on January 2, 2015, requires ISP providers, like Flash Services, to forward to you any notice we may have received from the mentioned copyright owner.

In order to comply with the said Copyright Act, the notice must identify:

• What is the alleged infringement
• The material to which the alleged infringement relates
• The claimant’s name, address, and right with respect to it, and
• The electronic address, date and time of the alleged activity

When a service provider, such as Flash Services, receives such a notice, we must do two things: forward the notice to the alleged violator, providing either a success or failure receipt; and retain the information allowing the account holder’s identity to be kept for a period of six months. Should the copyright owner responsible for sending the notice to commence any court proceedings; we may be required to retain the information for a period of more than six months.

Please note that Flash Services will not take any legal action against you.

If an issue were to progress any further, where full disclosure is ordered and eventually takes place, and the rights holder wishes to pursue their copyright infringement claim, then you will receive a notification from the rights holder personally. At that point, the issue will rest directly between you and the rights holder.

As an intermediary, Flash Services has no knowledge of the contents of the notice, the type of activity in which you engage on the Internet, nor how the copyright owner was able to track you down.

You are under no obligation to respond to the copyright infringement notice. However, you may contact the copyright holder directly at the email and/or telephone number listed in the copyright notice we forwarded to you. Note, Flash Services forwarded the copyright notice to you because the IP address listed in the copyright notice was in use by your modem/router on the date/time specified in the complaint. We are required by law to forward you the notice. We have not shared your name or any other information about you with the copyright holder or any other organization.