Thousands of Canadians could be on the hook for allegedly sharing Ryan Reynolds movie

Thousands of Canadians, including at least one here in Windsor, Ont., are the targets of legal action for allegedly infringing on the copyright of a movie starring Ryan Reynolds through file sharing.

It's one of several such actions being taken across the country on behalf of content creators in recent years.

The lawsuit lists more than 1,900 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses across Canada it says infringed the copyright of Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard. It says the monetary relief that can be sought for the infringement will not be more than $50,000.

There is at least one person in Windsor using Cogeco as an internet service provider (ISP) that is being sued through Federal Court in the case. CBC News has viewed the statement of claim, but neither he nor his lawyer agreed to speak for this story.

The case was brought forward in July by Kenneth Clark, a lawyer at the Toronto-based law firm Aird Berlis, on behalf of Nevada-based company Hitman Two Productions Inc..

"There's a lot of online piracy that people think have no consequences," Clark told CBC News. "Our mandate is to show people that illegal conduct has legal consequences."

Clark said people receive two warnings through their ISPs that illegal activity is happening on their accounts before any legal action occurs. When it does, a process has been negotiated to start a formal court proceeding.

"That's by serving a statement of claim on the individual along with information on how to get legal resources so they can be informed as to the consequences.

"We are trying to enforce our client's rights because people are stealing their movies."

CBC News reached out to Ryan Reynolds' publicist, as well as Hitman Two Productions Inc. with questions about this matter but did not hear back by publication time.

A spokesperson for Cogeco says the company has a legal obligation to inform customers if there has been an illegal movie download as flagged by the copyright holder, but it does not provide them with the names or addresses of clients.

Much of the problem, according to Clark, comes from free movie apps and Android boxes that use software to not just download movies but also become a hub to share them with others.

"It's not like Napster... where you know what you're doing sometimes."

As for the high dollar amount listed in the statement of claim, Clark said the Copyright Act sets the limit, and that in a formal court document you ask for the maximum.

"Typically cases are resolved somewhere between the minimum and the maximum... Hardcore infringers would be more at the maximum and people's who's internet has been stolen, we dismiss cases against them."

David Fewer is an intellectual property and technology lawyer with the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) at the University of Ottawa and has intervened in these types of cases brought by Clark in the past.

He said that more than 10,000 people in Canada have been sued by Clark on behalf of different clients for BitTorrent file sharing, a method of peer-to-peer file sharing in which users can download files and make them available to other users to download over the internet.

"No one is saying that people should get away with this or this should be legal or that rights can't be enforced," Fewer said.

What's getting him involved is the nature of the litigation, he said.

"What's being monetized here isn't actually the copyright infringement," he said. "Our view is that if a judge ever got to issue damages, it would be a relatively low amount."

"The fear and uncertainty of being sued in Federal Court is what's being monetized here."

He also takes issue with Clark's theory of copyright infringement, and argues that authorizing someone to use your internet doesn't mean you have control over what they do, so you shouldn't be responsible.

"A parent of a house isn't responsible for the defamatory statements of a roommate for example," he said.

"These lawsuits say we need to have a different rule for copyright."

Many sued in similar cases, lawyer says

Matt Cohen, the director of Pro-Bono Ontario, which provides legal advice to low income Ontarians mostly over the phone, said that they have gotten about 500 calls on similar matter over the past few years.

"We know that there are many, many more than that that have been caught up and sued in these matters," Cohen said.

"I do applaud that right on the statement of claim, there is some guidance on who they can call to get legal services.

He said that if people do receive a statement of claim in the mail about a matter like this one, that they do seek out legal advice.

"We explain to them that if, in fact, they have downloaded a movie or shared a file without permission of the copyright holder or been wilfully blind to the fact that someone else may have done that using their account that there is a good chance that a court is going to find them guilty of copyright [infringement]," he said.

They try to assure people they are not otherwise in trouble by the court action and says they should resist if asked to pay a large sum of money.

"We want them to be aware of the potential of civil liability but not to feel scared or intimidated by this," he said.