Canadian copyright law is primarily governed by the federal
Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42 (the "Act").
The Act was subject to some significant amendments by the
Copyright Modernization Act, S.C. 2012, c. 20 (the
"CMA"), and while most of the changes made by the CMA
have already been in force for some time, the notice and notice
regime created by the CMA for allegations of infringement only came
into force in January 2015.
The Canadian government's stated aim for the notice and
notice regime that is now in force is to formalize what had, up
until now, essentially been a voluntary system. Under the old
voluntary system, copyright owners would typically identify the
alleged infringers by their internet protocol or IP address and
then make requests to intermediaries (internet service providers
and web hosts) to send notices of alleged copyright infringement to
the customers or users of the intermediary who were alleged to have
infringed copyright (e.g. by
