A rule in the Copyright Modernization Act that is aimed at Internet Service Providers (ISPs) may affect a narrow population, but for ISPs it is a significant victory: It is now explicit that ISPs are not liable for copyright infringement in their role as intermediaries as long as they are unaware of the infringement.

By contrast, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), in the U.S. ISPs are afforded a safe harbor from liability if they meet a number of safe harbor guidelines. Under the same rules, ISPs and online service providers must remove or block access to infringing material when they receive a notice of infringement.

The Canadian updates instead establish a “notice and notice” system—as opposed to the so-called notice and takedown scheme under the DMCA—under which online service providers that receive a notice of infringing content must provide notice to the poster of the content.