Slashdot Mirror

There's already a lot of laws that have been passed to calm down the CRIA, but in return we got rights, such as copying music for personnal use. We get charged on blank media, the CRIA tries to pass taxes on mp3 players and even tried to pass it on blank hard drives. Fortunately, the ones in charge of passing the laws aren't as stupid as in some other countries which I won't name.

Well, here in Canada, they're known as the CRIA, and they routinely get their asses handed to them when they try this shit, so they're largely ignored. I assumed the rest of the world felt the same, but sadly, that doesn't seem to be.

Even labels in Canada have split from the CRIA, due to disagreements in the way they do business (including labels for larger acts like Rush and Sara McLachlan). The CRIA was founded to protect Canadian artists and companies, one of the reasons these labels left was because the CRIA was more interested in protecting US companies, than Canadian artists.

Is there anything to indicate the CRIA, RIAA, and the equivalent body in other nations are actually the same companies, though? Seems to me calling the RIAA an international organization is a bit of a stretch. They may have similar goals, but I don't think they're one and the same. Although, I suppose if they're comprised of the same corporations (Sony, EMI, Universal, Warner, etc), they might as well be one entity.

Something seems a bit fishy about the motives of CRIA and its not just this Canadia-taxpayer funded meal.
Not only have most of the Canadian labels pulled out, but they don't seem to easily identify which labels they represent.

More telling though is this site http://www.cria.ca/stats.php which has their industry statistics on CD and DVD sales. I'm not an accountant or trained in business, but doesn't it feel funny to read this sentence? "Sales information is supplied by members of CRIA and tabulated by Grant Thornton without audit." I take their said statistics with a grain of salt.

Politician: So are you saying movies and music are being pirated? Do you have less sales records as proof?
CRIA: Yes.
Critic: So who tabulates the records? Is there an audit trail?
CRIA: One person. Sorry no audits available.
Politician: Enough! The proof is in the records!
Critic: But they're not even responsibily tallied! We need more information.
Politician: We're passing the law.

Ah, Democracy!! (sigh)

I agree, Rogers is doing for another reason: being chummy with the CRIA.

Rogers needs content. It can only provide it by being friendly with the media industries.

On USENET you can get movies, music, images, tv shows and even comic books!

They do not want to be liable because in Canada, you can download legally (for now). Their tech department does not want to censor the feed or does not know how to.

Bandwidth and/or cost is not a concern. They wish to play nice with the media industry.

I'm switching, because I love USENET.

mailto:info@cria.ca or perhaps even mailto:ghenderson@cria.ca

mailto:info@cria.ca or perhaps even mailto:ghenderson@cria.ca

Close, but Canada's equivalent to the MPAA/RIAA is not the CRTC (which has no equivalent elsewhere, Canada's FCC is "IC", or Industry Canada [Was "DOC", Department of Communications] -- the CRTC's job is to censor about 35% of all TV/Radio and replace it with Canadian content -- that's why most first world countries don't have an equivalent, because most first world countries have learned the censorship lesson better than Canada -- I'm sure Iraq/Iran/Cuba/'stans have an equivalent though).

Canada's MPAA/RIAA would be CRIA. CRIA, while nasty and annoying (they are the ones that pushed for the CD-R taxes, etc) doesn't bust people anywhere nearly as often at the MPAA/RIAA (luckily).

The RCMP usually take most of these types of "missions" on of their own accord. This is unlike the RCMPs satellite busting "missions" which are generally done under supervisement from ExpressVu/StarChoice/DirecTV (illegal in Canada)/DishNetwork (also illegal in Canada).

http://www.cria.ca/

Canadian Recording Industry Association

Where are America :

C ourageous
A mericans
N oble
A mericans
D efender of
A mericas

Where not "of" , where it ...

The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) is the Canadian equivalent of RIAA.

Some of these posts are really ignorant.
Ok first of all it's not the RIAC- it is the CRIA.
The levy is going to the CPCC.
For all the people who are saying this is a bad thing- you are complete morons. We are in a common law system- putting music on a hard drive is not going to be suddenly illegal because the courts found the CPCC levy illegal. The CPCC does not have unlimited powers of taxation-- and I am glad that this has happened.
So for all you trolls- nothing has changed regarding your rights, and it is doubtful that the Liberal government is going to start passing laws limiting your rights-- it is political suicide for them.

I don't know if Canada has had record sales, but they are up over last year according to stats published by the Canadian record industry association. Sales up 7% year to date, profits up 1%.

This sounds too much like what happens in Canada, where an extra fee is included in the price of most blank media. This fee is SUPPOSED to be re-distributed to the artists, but it rarely is.

it's a good thing I am Canadian, we don't have to deal with the various **AAs

You're right. We don't have the RIAA in Canada. Instead, we've got the CRIA! (Canadian Recording Industry Association)

I'm sure they'd love to sue the pants off Scott MacLean too, fortunately our judicial system is a little more sane.

The stuff the RIAA gets away with in the US just wouldn't fly in Canada.

"The Canadian RIAA shot themselves in the foot with that levy."

I assume you mean the CRIA.

I wouldn't say they shot themselves in the foot, though. The organizations that collect on this levy reap about $24 million between them each year.

Thanks. Interesting, they seem to be exactly the same as the RIAA. Look at their "news" section and the "news" section at the RIAA. Also, their about pages are nearly the same.

I still cant figure out why other industy's trade organizations behave like the music's trade organizations. I guess that the rumors about the music industry just being sleezy is true.

I referred to it incorrectly in my original post... the CRIA is the Canadian Recording Industry Association, the Canadian RIAA equivalent.

We also have something colloquially called CANCON, short for Canadian Content. Our equivalent of the FCC mandates that media formats distribute a certain volume of Canadian created/produced content to compensate from the inevitable avalanche of American culture spilling over our boarders. It is somewhat effective, and has led to the rise of a domestic music and television industry. Unfortunately it has also contributed to the existence of some artifically supported recording companies and mediocre airwave content. I'm indifferent on the matter, as are many Canadians.

There are two separate rulings (although only one was by a judge). Whether both of the rulings stand is still to be determined.

In December 2003, the Copyright Board of Canada issued a decision stating that downloading copyrighted music from peer-to-peer networks is legal. This is not a court decision and not surprisingly, the Canadian Recording Industry Association disputes the decision. The board also noted that it believed uploading copyrighted works online appeared to be prohibited by law.

Fast forward to April 2004. The CRIA is in court trying to force major Canadian Internet service providers to divulge the names of suspected copyright violators. Not only did federal judge Konrad von Finckenstein deny the request but went on to rule that placing copyrighted works in a shared directory is legal, akin to the photocopiers mentioned above. The CRIA does not agree with Finckenstein and has appealed his ruling.

To buy his argument you have to believe that placing a copyrighted work in shared directory doesn't amount to distribution. "Before it constitutes distribution, there must be a positive act by the owner of the shared directory, such as sending out the copies or advertising that they are available for copying," Finckenstein wrote.

In response to the ruling, Helene Scherrer, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, has promised to fix copyright law as quickly as possible. This may also push the government to ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties. According to the Canadian Coalition for Fair Digital Access, ratifying the treaties may double the levies already imposed on blank digital media.

Canadians are currently permitted to borrow a friend's CD and make copies for personal, non-commercial use. However they are not allowed to make a copy for someone else. It is widely believed that this allows downloading but not uploading.

The CRIA has launched John Doe lawsuits against uploaders but recently suffered a legal setback when a judge ruled that they had failed to provide sufficient evidence of a copyright violation to subpoena the identities of some anonymous uploaders. However, members of the federal government have promised new legislation to close what they call "legal loopholes". That may just have been election year pandering. We'll have to wait and see.

In any case there are many Canadians who would willingly pay a reasonable amount per song to purchase music via download in order to get known quality, selection, and lack of liability. I would be one of them except that I refuse to pay money for DRM-encumbered files -- if I pay to buy something, I expect to own it.

Currently in Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada and Federal Court of Canada have both ruled (in response to the music industry lobby) that downloading and copying music for yourself is allowed under fair use; sharing your music with friends is fair use; and ISPs do not have to reveal the identity of their customers to an angry recording industry.

Now it looks like things are going to change, and soon we will have the same situation as there is in the United States. The recording industry lobby, spearheaded by Canadian Recording Industry Association, CRIA is pushing our legislators to overhaul Canadian copyright law. The model for the changes is WIPO, which is implemented in the United States as DMCA.

Dammit, doesn't this look familiar? Are you scared yet?? The corporate lobby is rewriting laws that our courts have already decided are fair. Please speak up! Sign our petition for user's rights, if you're Canadian. Sign it, mail it to us, and we'll take them all to Parliament. We need to show parliament that we have demands as users of media, and that we will exercise our votes.

I'll just keep my figners crossed that we dont "import" this or a similar law to Canada.

If you go to the CRIA web page, you'll see that CD sales (and gross revenue, though not revenue from CDs) were up over the same month in the preceding year in both January and February. The CRIA is the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA.

DVD sales are way up in all of the months I looked at. VHS and cassette tape sales are down, which isn't too surprising.

That's *so* good! Its just sad that Videotron are such a jerk company, which are probably still willing to collaborate with the CRIA.

Videotron is the cable / ISP division of Quebecor, which sales music records through Archambault and also produce records for its "artistic" reality show, Star Academie. That's why they are so eager to give names to the cria.

I can't resist feeding an ignorant troll

Who in hell made you God and gave you the right to decide what constitutes an honest job or enterprise? Where does this "corruption of minds" crap come from? Don't you think that perhaps it was humankind tht invented it? I'm sure you'd be the first to go along with prohibition too?

As for "double standards" what do you say about a music industry association that says downloading is illegal when it clearly isn't?

Come to Canada, where the CRIA (the RIAA equivalent) has the gall to suggest downloading is illegal. The CRIA perpetuates a myth that downloading music is illegal - its not!

Section 80 of the Copyright Act specifically gives Canadians the right to download and copy music. Even the Copyright Board of Canada stated that downloading is legal

/Rant on. The CRIA (and presumably the RIAA) are lying skunks, trying to mislead the public. Personally, while there are many CDs I would LOVE to purchase, I won't. They can go to hell.

Perhaps this indicates a lower limit of who they will be targeting, people who have four thousand songs available to share? Yes? Maybe?

gotta go through the Canadian ripoffs of it... like PureTracks

It's no wonder that people are starting to refer to PureTracks as "PureCrap". It really is as bad as you've described. Unfortunately, we don't have any other choices (except to use P2P clients or get our American buddies to buy music from iTMS for us) until Apple completes its negotiations with the organizations that oversee music licensing in Canada. One of those organizations is the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA) and the other is...

...the Canadian version of the RIAA (whatever the hell they're called)...

...the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). So, far, the CRIA hasn't been doing all that much about music piracy. Most of their efforts have been half-hearted, at best. For example, see this Globe And Mail article covering the way that the CRIA has been dealing with music piracy (or not dealing with it, as the case may be). Some of their efforts are just plain silly.

Perhaps the folks that we should be more worried about are SOCAN (which was recently mentioned in this Slashdot thread related to the responsibility of ISPs in regards to the transmission of copyrighted music) and the CPCC (the rat-bastards that instituted levies on recordable media in Canada, and are now trying to get levies put on MP3s players here (as described in this Slashdot thread)).

D.

gotta go through the Canadian ripoffs of it... like PureTracks

It's no wonder that people are starting to refer to PureTracks as "PureCrap". It really is as bad as you've described. Unfortunately, we don't have any other choices (except to use P2P clients or get our American buddies to buy music from iTMS for us) until Apple completes its negotiations with the organizations that oversee music licensing in Canada. One of those organizations is the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA) and the other is...

...the Canadian version of the RIAA (whatever the hell they're called)...

...the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). So, far, the CRIA hasn't been doing all that much about music piracy. Most of their efforts have been half-hearted, at best. For example, see this Globe And Mail article covering the way that the CRIA has been dealing with music piracy (or not dealing with it, as the case may be). Some of their efforts are just plain silly.

Perhaps the folks that we should be more worried about are SOCAN (which was recently mentioned in this Slashdot thread related to the responsibility of ISPs in regards to the transmission of copyrighted music) and the CPCC (the rat-bastards that instituted levies on recordable media in Canada, and are now trying to get levies put on MP3s players here (as described in this Slashdot thread)).

D.

If someone could explain how the DMCA makes sense... actually I totally agree that it's strange and bizzare, so I've taken a bit of time to find an article which explains things better. Which is a good thing, because as you'll see, I was incorrect about the right for Canadians to share files - we are in fact allowed.

I also browsed the website of the CRIA to see how they approach the filesharing networks. As far as I can tell the CRIA uses the term "illegal" because they officially feel wronged by those who use P2P networks - not because it is actually illegal under the law. If you find any info to the contrary, I'm all ears. Most people are just waking up to the reality that companies are cracking down on piracy using very drastic measures, but most of the news we hear (at least in mainstream media) is from the USA. The average Canadian is not very well aware that the crackdown of p2p networks for 'illegal' music is only across the border. There are crackdowns on other things, and groups will still flood the network with dummy files, but we're only talking music here. Sure the CRIA will protect it's rights too, but their language would lead a person to believe that downloading or sharing music in Canada is "illegal" as in "you are breaking a law." When they use the term "illegal" they really are trying to say they're against it, and it's "wrong" as in "William Shatner singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

This article, "They can blame Canada", clearly describes how Canadian copyright law is applied to Canadians. I wish I could find such an easy to read doc from a more credible source, like gov't, etc, but I think it does suffice.

Key quotes from the article:

On RIAA litigation: "As the RIAA wages its increasingly desperate campaign of litigation in terrorum to try to take down the largest American file sharers on the various P2P networks, it seems to be utterly unaware of the radically different status of private copying in Canada."

On Private Copying: "While the Digital Millennium Copyright Act may make it illegal to share copyright material in America, the Canadian Copyright Act expressly allows exactly the sort of copying which is at the base of the P2P revolution.

...""Private copying" is a term of art in the Act. In Canada, if I own a CD and you borrow it and make a copy of it that is legal private copying; however, if I make you a copy of that same CD and give it to you that would be infringement. Odd, but ideal for protecting file sharers.

"Every song on my hard drive comes from a CD in my collection or from a CD in someone else's collection which I have found on a P2P network. In either case I will have made the copy and will claim safe harbor under the "private copying" provision. If you find that song in my shared folder and make a copy this will also be "private copying." I have not made you a copy, rather you have downloaded the song yourself."

Furthermore - copying music without permission is illegal. And just because it doesn't involve organized crime or knock-offs sold on street corners doesn't mean that it isn't taken very seriously.

Still, I don't forsee in the near future that Canadians will be at risk of lawsuits for filesharing. Firstly, there is no legal requirement as in the U.S. for an ISP to provide user information to the CRIA (Canadian version of RIAA). Secondly, the political will to implement such a law, or to do anything for that matter isn't there.

In November, the Liberal Party will be appointing Paul Martin as new leader, but Jean Cretin will not be stepping down as PM until Feb 2004. Basically the government will be at a standstill until Martin takes over power. That gives the government about 1 year to prepare for re-election, surely they aren't going to piss off a large percentage of the population right before an election.

It will probably be mid to late 2005 before anything similar to the DMCA is established here in Canada. Until then, the chance that Canadians will receive lawsuits like the ones in the U.S. is quite low. A good ISP that doesn't have any conflicts of interest with a media firm, will probably not disclose their customers' information to anyone who can try a lawsuit which for all intents and purposes would be unproven in Canadian law.

On Sept 10th I received several IM's on my k-lite from CRIA (google cache). They seemed to be under the impression that I was somehow breaking the law and needed a reminder of that. The notice came across as well-intentioned and non-threatening, just an appeal to traders of mp3's to think about the poor artists and how wonderful the industry is.

If anyone is interested in reading the message text I could post it, just ask.

A lot of the record labels in America are duplicated in Canada. I don't know of a link that shows all of them, but you can get a sample at http://www.cria.ca/gold.htm

Notice EMI Music Canada, Warner Music Canada, Sony Music Canada, Virgin Music Canada, etc,... You might not see the smaller labels there, but a lot of American companies have Canadian divisions..

Riight.. So you think Canada doesn't care about illlegal filesharing? You can bet if RIAA has success with it's lawsuits, the CRIA will be happy to follow up with their own.

According to this article: "Canada will be added to the Apple system when the CRIA completes its negotiations in the fall"

CRIA = Canadian Recording Industry Association.

Letting the content industry dictate it's terms of use regarding computer equipment not only to flagrantly violate their customer's fair use rights...

I'd be very careful trying to use the concept of "fair use" as it exists in the U.S. outside American borders. I've heard at least one head of a Canadian copyright agency (the CMRRA) tell a class that Canada doesn't recognize "fair use" as it exists in the U.S., but a system called "fair dealing," which he defined as "if the content provider doesn't explicity provide permission, it's infringement." Considering that the jerk saw my DeCSS shirt and automatically assumed I'm a pirate kiddie (his exact words were "so you work for free too, eh?" upon my explanation), I tend to take his words with a grain of salt.

We've also had CRIA goons in before, giving another class a slanted survey that generally made MP3s out to be the devil's work. Naturally, I made a few modifications, based on things I'd observed in reality (artists using MP3s to promote their albums, etc.) One of my friends went even farther, discussing his issues with the survey with one of said goons afterward.

You ever get the feeling you're being led to slaughter, and told it's a good thing?

Recently the Canadian Recording Industry Association sent our ISP this ceases & desist letter. Fortunately our ISP called us up and told us that they wouldn't be shutting us down unless they received a court order. We then fired back this response to CRIA pointing out the absurdities of their letter to our ISP.

A good source of info on copyright in Canada is Michael Geist's website. He actually wrote an article entitled Napster north of the 49th parallel outlining the current copyright situation faced by file shares up here.

Matt.