D'oh! – Fox Teaches Infringer a Costly Lesson

Twentieth Century Fox has achieved a $10.5 million victory against Mr. Hernandez, the former operator of two Internet websites dedicated to streaming episodes of the Simpsons and Family Guy television shows. It was alleged that the defendant had illegally copied over 700 episodes of the programs from television broadcasts and uploaded them to the Watch The Simpsons Online and Watch Family Guy Online websites where the episodes were made available to the public for streaming.

This case is a perfect illustration that statutory damages can be a powerful tool for copyright owners in Canada. Proving actual damages in a copyright infringement case can be difficult, particularly where the defendant is uncooperative and claims not to have any sales records. Section 38.1 of the Canadian Copyright Act provides that copyright owners may elect to recover statutory damages instead of lost profits and damages suffered as a result of activities of infringers. Where the infringements