Are VPNs legal in Canada?

Do you use a VPN to watch American TV? You may want to read this…

The evolution of the virtual private network (VPN) truly exemplifies the innovation of digital societies to re-purpose a technology for multiple needs. The VPN originated as a means of providing greater security for conducting online transactions or accessing confidential documents, mainly used in business environments. By masking or changing IP addresses, VPNs allowed users to secure their private personal data from ISP records, protect online transactions from unsecured networks or harmful sites, and generally provide a layer of encryption using a secure protocol. Ideologically, VPNs can also represent digital democracy and freedom of privacy and be used to facilitate the circumvention of censorship.

Noble intentions aside, Canadians are using VPNs to access Netflix’s US-based site as well as to other American video websites.

And why not? There are a host of VPN options ranging from free (most likely using unreliable pirated VPN codes) to paid (in exchange of payment of a fee averaging $5 per month), thousands of YouTube videos on how to use VPNs, and a simple search on Google Trends show how frequently people search for ‘how to get US Netflix’ in Canada, especially since 2013.

If you don’t want to pay the $5, enter Wajam’s free VPN service, which in addition to integrating social networks for more relevant social search recommendations, now also compresses data to help users save on data usage, secures details with web logins and—yes—gives users the ability to access other countries’ exclusive websites all in a handy and elegant iOS app.

It seems so easy. Simply mask your computer’s location, and pay for your geo-blocked online content, right?

Wrong.

Geo-blocking is most frequently used by media/technology companies and streaming services in the Western world to divide the globe into segments to either set different prices or protect copyright and licensing restrictions. Additionally, companies that use geo-blocking are governed by terms of service which in fact are breached when subscribers circumvent the geo-block. For example, Netflix does not explicitly permits VPNs and using one clearly violates the company’s terms of service agreement. Would Netflix be ready to face the criticism they would get if they were to void all of these subscriptions?



A grey area

Generally speaking, it is legal to use a VPN to protect your online transactions; however, the legality of using a VPN to facilitate alternative online activities remains a grey area. In August 2013, Judge Breyer became the first US district judge to rule that it is in fact a breach of the Computer Fraud Act to use a mask technology to avoid an IP address block. Although the case involved accessing private data using a VPN and not accessing geo-blocked media content per se, the ruling made it illegal to “knowingly circumvent one or more technological or physical measures that are designed to exclude or prevent unauthorized individuals from obtaining [that] information.”

Some have argued that Canadians who use VPN services to access American TV may well be technically guilty of an offense that carries criminal charges in the US. However, more recently in a Forbes article giving US readers instructions on how to use VPNs to watch the Sotchi Olympics, Mitch Stoltz, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was quoted as stating the following: “While there are differences among the courts about the use of masking IP addresses to gain access to a site, it is pretty well established that simply violating the Terms of Service alone is not sufficient to warrant a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.”

In Canada, the Copyright Act and the Digital Privacy Act govern how users access copyrighted media content and also what privacies are expected for online experience consumers. Recent changes to both acts have Canadian Internet privacy experts like Michael Geist concerned, particularly with respect to clauses that will require that ISPs share their customers’ data with “any organization that is investigating a contractual breach or possible violation of any law.” Originally, the use of a VPN would exclude Canadian consumers from providing their personal data to the traditional ISP; however, new policies mean that VPNs may also be under scrutiny to provide data logs of customers’ online activities. In other words, a VPN or an ISP could be subpoenaed to provide a list of their customers, and those individual subscribers could in effect be under examination without even knowing it. They even run the risk of being prosecuted for breaches to the Copyright Act.

In Canada, we do not as yet have a case similar to the Breyer ruling that sets a precedent for how the law will address online activities conducted under the mask of a VPN. However, we do have the precedent case of Voltage Pictures in the US requesting Canadian-based Teksavvy to hand over the private information of subscribers who it claimed had infringed copyright regulations. The outcome of this case required Teksavvy to hand over its data logs to the US company, but with significant caveats including that Voltage Pictures could not contact any Canadian subscriber unless the text of the correspondence was approved by a Canadian court.

Although Wajam’s deployment of a free VPN service may be legal in its own right, Canadian subscribers who use it to access geo-blocked media content do so at their own risk. We may need to wait until a first case goes to court in Canada to fully understand how our laws will address the use of VPNs to access geo-blocked media content.


Renee Robinson
Renee Robinson, Strategist and CEO at Strategic Screen, is a media industry creative strategist and thought-leader with management experience in programming, regulation/policy, strategic planning, and industry intelligence - both in Canada and internationally. Prior to relocating to Toronto in 2008, Renee advised on policy development and industry intelligence to the Ministers of Culture, Entertainment, Tourism, and Foreign Affairs in Jamaica. Renee holds a MA in Communications and Culture with a specialization in Telecommunication policy.
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