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The most disturbing point in this article, for me, is that the US may be the sticking point on allowing the discussions to be more transparent (link contained in TFA) http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4693/125/ I find this to be disgusting as we have yet another example that transparency TRULY being brought to Washington to be a farce.

The judgment itself (pdf) is quite an interesting read. It gives a good overview of the relevant case law, explains how contributory infringement works, as well as why the court is claiming jurisdiction.

Michael Geist also covers this, writing "This is crucial decision for all publishers both big and small. It represents a major win for freedom of expression in Canada and should remove some of the libel chill that arises far too frequently."

Sir —

As a matter of interest, the phrase "international law" covers the law governing the resolution of disputes on international trade, as well as disputes between states that are governed by treaties (among other sources of international law). The prior is known as private international law (see, e.g. UNIDROIT for the most recent attempts to codify the norm), the latter public international law. Private international law generally refers to the mechanism for choosing a procedural and substantive law to resolve a dispute between private parties (i.e. German law, U.S. law, Mercantile law, etc. governing a dispute over lost cargo between e.g. Apple in the U.S. and Acer in Taiwan), often referred to with the phrase conflict of laws.

The phrase "international law", though, is often interchangeably used to refer to both - although in a context-sensitive way. One would hardly ever use the phrase "international law" to refer to a situation where the dispute fell into both categories, although with the advent of such vehicles for private disputes against states such as ICSID and other mechanisms this is changing.

The phrase "international law" covers a great deal of to what happens in the Hague - at the Peace Palace, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, etc. Such happenings include both private and public international law. The international law that gives rise to these happenings generally require an accord between states, and in some states the ratification of that accord into law, which may (or may not) require the cessation of sovereignty (as the grandparent post suggests, though bald it was), subject to the actual enforceability of the treaty's terms as against a state in breach. However, the treaty may impose obligations (directly or by way of legislation ratifying the treaty) on private parties as to whom and how the dispute is resolved, which obligations are both domestic and extraterritorial and may often be enforced in any number of venues (Courts, arbitrations, etc) around the world (in other words a human or corporation in a state may have obligations enforced against it because the state has signed into law an agreement to a treaty).

Regardless of whether international treaties may constitute a cessation of state sovereignty, in my opinion the cessation of sovereignty is neither novel nor wrong. Quite the opposite, it is the defining building block of civilized global society from our current fractured set of post-Peace of Westphalia styled sovereign states. At present individual sovereign states are ostensibly adverse in interest on many issues, but nevertheless need to rely on each other and have to live together in harmony indefinitely. Without accords (treaties or otherwise) this co-existence would be counterproductive and ultimately untenable. Treaties such as ACTA may be heinous (in my humble opinion), but that example ought not to deprive humanity of forward thinking accords that are of mutual benefit.

You are quite right that ACTA is being brought in an unconventional and clandestine way. The media companies are using the EU as a political proxy to push for obligations on Canadian citizens, and the vehicle for those obligations is -at the moment- a proposed international treaty. I'm not as apprised on this as I would like to be, so I would parrot Michael Geist's comments on it.

This type of news is disgusting to me as a Canadian.

Throughout the summer, Canada held an enormous copyright consultation in which large corporations expressed an interest in these types of changes, and artists, creators and citizens expressed an interest in the exact opposite direction to this.

Michael Geist usually carries all the latest news about this topic.

At the same time, I think we have nothing to worry about. In a country that shows a 30% voter turnout (at best), that makes 6.9 million voters. Historically, over 500000 canadians joined the protest against the last attempt to bring laws like this. Thats a 7% swing in the vote towards the party that will stand up against this type of law making. Thats enough to win an election in Canada.

With all this hype over copyright and trademark law, I expect it to be a hot topic in the next election, and with us running under a minority gov't, we could end up with an election at any time.

I'm sorry, I don't think the poster I was replying to had comity in mind when he said this: "if the CRIA gets fined for willful infringement, I hope that this is the precedent that ends up being applied to the United States, not the reverse."

Also, I noted when I downloaded the statement of claim from Dr. Geist's website, that the companies sued are actually Universal Canada, Sony Canada, etc. Presumably comity won't be an issue, as the Canadian subsidiaries will just pay out the judgment or face sanctions in Canada.

But thanks for the detailed lecture of comity and stare decisis, it's been a few months since I studied that stuff in class. I try not to make long, technical posts on legal stuff because I'm not a lawyer yet, only a student, and I might miss some of the subtleties that a lawyer would be better able to explain. Also, I find that providing overly detailed legal explanations on a computer technology site makes me sound like a pompous ass. Note though that this knowledge has come from me making some long-winded posts and stupid errors, and learning the error of my ways. YMMV.

The article claims there were 300,000 songs infringed and the cost per infringement is $20,000. That only comes out to $6 billion. So something somewhere is incorrect. Either the math or the source numbers.

Good catch. Michael Geist sent a tweet about that recently.

Thanks to @niespika for pointing out embarrassing math error - record label liability could exceed $6 billion, not $60B.

He's updated the article on his main site with the correct figure of $6 billion:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4596/135/

The ISP is in Canada? Why should they comply with a US law?

Is that you, Michale Geist?

Harper appointed a creationist as science minister.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/17/canadas-science-mini.html

Harper and gang are moronic G W Bush wannabees.

The Conservatives think it's ok to sue a teenager for $20,000.00 per song for "illegally" torrenting a song that costs 99 cents on itunes,
so that the big media broadcasters can stay rich. Anyone actually vote for that issue? No? Gee, I wonder why the politicians think Canadian parents who voted for them might like this in place?

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3025/125/

It appears that http://www.michaelgeist.ca/ (the first three links in the article) has been slashdotted.

Because, don't forget, according to surveys, Canada has more piracy than the US.
These surveys which I refer to are the ones which they admitted they extrapolated from the American data, without actually considering Canada at all...
So it makes total sense to demand stricter laws.

And unless the CRTC grows a backbone and changes something, you will get 9Mbps to Rogers premium services, 4Mbps to external websites, and 128kbps for anything p2p. And that's if you are lucky.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4205/125/

They can't pull this stunt with a physical book . . .

They did something similar in Canada with a Harry Potter book.

Good law, good ruling. Maybe penalty is too small, but it's time to go after RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft and a whole host of others who set up 'authorities' to say what they want said, and then quote from them as if they were independent voices. As earlier reported on slashdot --- http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4079/125/

Interestingly, just prior to the release of the survey, one of the people who was called over the weekend (the survey was conducted July 9 - 12th) contacted me to report:

I took a Harris-Decima phone poll over the weekend and their questions about traffic shaping could be roughly summed up as "Did you know that your neighbour's movie downloading is slowing down your Internet?".

I disagree with your disagreement. If that were true, then why are DVD sales dramatically declining?

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/190848-DVD_Backend_Is_Dwindling.php?
http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/11879.html
http://www.nypost.com/seven/12042007/business/dvd_isaster_sales_806649.htm
http://www.cinemablend.com/television/Sales-Decline-Portend-Possible-DVD-Doomsday-2110.html

Meanwhile, digital sales of video content are on the rise:

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS148561+29-Aug-2008+BW20080829
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1621/125/

I'll grant you that online sales of video content is still a developing market. But it is a market that is clearly putting a dent into the traditional distribution model of DVDs.

I think your confusion stems from far too narrow a view of the market. You're looking at Bluray discs and noting that they are failing to dislodge DVDs en masse. The reason is that Bluray is not the future. The market is going a radically different direction with its technology.

The problem is not the "Research for Hire" approach, but the fact they are using multiple puppet fronts to launder their opinions or "Astroturf". The fact that these studies were bought and paid for is irrelevant. The fact that they are trying to make it sound like they are the only opinion in town is the problem.

The fact that they are actively trying to suppress studies that differ from their party line, and are citing multiple studies, all bought and paid for by them to make their bias seem to have more support than it actually does is what has allowed them to push studies through organizations that generally have a shred of academic credibility, like the Conference board of Canada.

Their mistake was not being creative enough, the fact that all the studies have almost the same wording would tip a 5th Grade English teacher off that there might be some plagiarism involved.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4718249.stm
http://torrentfreak.com/why-pirates-buy-more-music-and-music-labels-fail-090428/
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2347/125/

Dead thread, but i thought it was worth replying to anyway. There've been a slew of reports on /., ars etc, and they seem to have the numbers behind them unlike the industry's: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/05/ben-goldacre-bad-science-music-downloads

My concern with the Liberals is they tend to be all over the place on these types of issues. Geist pointed out in his article on the Conservatives' IP21C legislative package that it was very similar to a piece of proposed Liberal legislation that died on the order paper in 2005.

They are desperate to get back in power, and will mimic the NDP and/or Conservatives on any given policy as need suites them if they think it will get them another vote.

The encouraging thing about this is that it brings it more in to the public consciousness. It's one thing for geeks and the younger generation to go on Facebook demanding privacy, net neutrality and balanced copyright legislation; if my parents' generation (who have a lot of time on their hands these days) started blogging, writing letters and calling in to all those conservative talk shows they like to listen to demanding the government protect the Internet and mind their own damn business when it comes to everything else, it could spell trouble for a party that gets out of step with that.

The second group tends to vote, where the first tends not to.

It seams your senators are no better than Canada's own politician. As Michael Geist has explained repeatedly (and again today) http://www.michaelgeist.ca/. All this garbage about Canada being a haven of file sharing is based on very questionable 6 year old data.

From Prof. Michael Geist's blog BSA Admits Canadian Software Piracy Rates Estimated; Canada Viewed as Low Piracy Country, the following shows that these statistics are just made up...

This year the BSA reported that Canada declined from 33 to 32 percent. Michael Murphy, chair of the BSA Canada Committee claimed that "despite the slight decline, Canada's software piracy rate is nowhere near where it should be compared to other advanced economy countries. We stand a better chance of reducing it significantly with stronger copyright legislation that strikes the appropriate balance between the rights of consumers and copyright holders."

Yet what the BSA did not disclose is that the 2009 report on Canada were guesses since Canadian firms and users were not surveyed. While the study makes seemingly authoritative claims about the state of Canadian piracy, the reality is that IDC, which conducts the study for BSA, did not bother to survey in Canada.

This has been thoroughly debunked by Professor Michael Geist a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he hold the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law.

Additional information has come to light since the original posting. Some interesting blog posts from:

• Michael Geist
• Howard Knopf, and
• Jeremy de Beer

Stealing from a company does not make you a customer of that company

Downloaders buy more music. No, really.

By the way, it mentions that North Korea was taken off the bad-boy list. Does anyone really think North Korea instituted a DMCA-like law?

Do you really think Korea is a worse copyright violator than Canada? As far as Canada is concerned, this is obviously a pressure tacit to get them to write their own DMCA. Hell, even their own biased numbers show that we have the LOWEST piracy rate of anyone on the list, and yet we've been put in a category with the worst violators, all of which have, according to THEM, more than twice our piracy rate.

Shouldn't that be the U.S Trade Protectionist Lobby (USTP)

"Today's Special 301 Report guides our efforts to protect American innovation and creativity around the world," said Ambassador Ron Kirk. "Our creative and innovative products can hit the global marketplace sometimes with just a keystroke. If we and our trading partners are not vigilant in protecting and enforcing intellectual property rights, they can vanish just as quickly"

The Absurdity of the USTR's Blame Canada Approach

Chevron Lobbyists Misleading USTR Over Ecuador Environmental Case

Measures Concerning the Importation, Marketing and Sale of Tuna and Tuna Products

Actually the last time around many interested people showed up at the minister's office in Calgary to protest Bill C-61, and it totally caught the minister by surprise (Someone cares about this issue?).
If you can find a local group, you can physically show up and get in the face of the politicians in Ottawa. Also, you could blog/report about local Ottawa news related to this issue which would also be a benefit since the traditional news media have a severe conflict of interest on this subject.

Start by digging thru Michael Geist's web pages, I'd bet you will find contact info there..

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3860/125/

Someone else also mentioned this site:

http://www.onlinerights.ca/

Oh and if any of you Canadian slashdotters read this, check out Dr. Michael Geist's website and help prevent this sort of shit happening in Canada. The amount of lobbying by the industry is insane, and really needs some opposition.

I agree, it's not the authors that hate file-sharing. Essentially, file-sharing is advertising for the authors, "paid for" by the music labels. Muscians in general make most of their money from performances and concerts. I read somewhere that only 4 out of the top 50 top-revenue-earning-artists made more money from selling cds than from performing.

For some proof, there's a similar artist coalition in Canada called "the Canadian Music Creators Coalition"

Until now, a group of multinational record labels has done most of the talking about what Canadian artists need out of copyright. Record companies and music publishers are not our enemies, but let's be clear: lobbyists for major labels are looking out for their shareholders, and seldom speak for Canadian artists. Legislative proposals that would facilitate lawsuits against our fans or increase the labels' control over the enjoyment of music are made not in our names, but on behalf of the labels' foreign parent companies.

- CMCC

Here are some of their interesting press releases:

Montreal, January 30, 2007 - Nielsen SoundScan numbers released January 17th show that Canada's digital download market grew more than any major market in 2006. This exciting news has the Canadian Music Creators Coalition asking: 'Why are the record labels still pushing for ways to sue Canadian music fans?'

- link

And I'll throw one last link in:

And then in 2008, Canada again outperforms U.S. in digital sales, and Industry Canada commissions a study which shows a positive correlation between file sharing and music purchasing. CMCC argues against anti-circumvention legislation. link Michael Geist

The wonderful thing about the internet is that no matter what the U.S. might consider "national security", there's always bound to be a more civilized and transparent nation out there. The EU is bending, and will probably start releasing documentation as soon as there's a solid draft.

In the meantime, it's important to realize that this treaty is still a work in progress, and nowhere near finished. It will be months yet before there's even a complete document to leak, I think.

That notwithstanding, certain general provisions and a few specific passages have already made their way onto the net; you can find out more here, here, and here.

Recently, there have been a bunch of bills being pushed through to allow the police sweeping powers. I've also noticed a lot more in the paper about the police busting illegal pornography peddlers.

Seems that this is a pretty common pattern. If you're trying to push privacy-invading laws into effect, focus on a group that's rather universally disliked, generated a lot of publicity, and then say it's all part of the fight against (group X).

What a co-incidence, the Canadian government is apparently asking very similar questions.

I've seen notations to this effect in slashdot coversations about the DMCA for instance. It has also been useful in Canadian political discussions such as those at http://michaelgeist.ca/ where we could see that the minister responsible for communications law (Bev Oda, also known as Odious Oda) was heavily supported by the communications industry.

since 15th century, dutch speaking countries (low countries) have led the world in modern and visionary concepts, in areas ranging from humanism to trade. erasmus, spinoza and more. and now this ....

Actually, even if it's true that it's a modern way of considering file sharing, they are not the visionary leaders described here.

At least 2 existed :

• Nov 2007, a Canadian Government Commissioned Study
• Dec 2008, a Study led in Brittany (region of France)

both concluded that, the most common idea is that a file shared is a file that could have been bought, free file sharing doesn't impact file purchasing. Or more precisely : it doesn't kill file purchasing, it favours file purchasing.

The topic is misleading; the decision made was that Bell was not unfairly discriminating aganist wholesale providers (like Teksavvy) versus their own customers. The CRTC has not yet reached a decision about the whole issue of traffic shaping in general (though they did find that Bell had enough justification to implement it against their wholesalers so as not to discriminate against direct customers). Michael Geist explains it better.

However, the internet audience is extremely insular, rude, and just as selfish and greedy as the MPAA/RIAA (and member companies) when it comes to these things.

and how did you arrive at this conclusion? did you do any research, or did you just assume that all internet users are rude/selfish/greedy/etc.?

actual studies have shown that P2P file-sharing boosts CD sales. so P2P users actually spend more on music purchases than non-P2P users.

your post is a classic example of the reactionary mentality preventing the RIAA/Big Four/major labels from adapting to the new market climate. this attitude of antagonizing & alienating your best consumers is the reason why many RIAA labels are losing money and fans while the industry as a whole continues to experience a net growth.

sure, CD sales (particularly CD singles) are plummeting, but internet download purchases have more than made up for those losses. so it's internet users who are keeping the music industry alive, and even helping it to prosper. but i suppose exploring music online is rather "insular" and "rude." how dare consumers discover music for themselves instead of letting the radio tell them what to purchase.

or maybe the RIAA are just pissed off that their Payola scheme is losing effectiveness.

and if you want to know what's going on, Michael Geist does a good job of keeping on top of things, check his blog at http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

Let the wingnuts in Kansas and other red states teach creationism or any other loony idea they want and let those of us who are in the blue states teach real science and math and critical thinking skills and let's see which population is more successful in our knowledge based economy 10 - 20 years down the road.

I'm a Brit, and used to think like this too. What does it matter if a bunch of them crazy Yanks believe the world was created 6,000 years ago? Unfortunately for us critical thinkers, daft ideas spread . And now we have the Internet, stupid ideas can travel like wildfire.

One thing we need to learn: no state, province, county or country has a monopoly on stupidity. Being an idiot really is a game the whole family can play! :)

1) When copyright law was created it was done so to keep corporations in check. This does not scale to corporations vs. individuals because the vast majority of individuals do not have the ability to defend themselves in court. Also, a good indication that the law is broken when ~1/3 of the population breaks it http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080708-breaking-the-law-one-third-of-us-residents-rip-dvds.html
2) There is little to no evidence that piracy hurts sales. Some have even pointed that the opposite to be true http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2347/125/
3) In the case of MPAA and RIAA, for the first time in history we don't need them anymore. In the past the only way to "perfectly" copy media was through an industrial process. Now individuals can do so by themselves. What we need is an organization that will insure that artists are still paid for their work. The RIAA and MPAA have both proved that they fail spectacularly at this because to date, little to no money from their legal actions were returned to artists. Not to mention that are numerous accounts of labels taking the artist to the cleaners. Just google Trent Reznor.
So to recap, the MPAA and RIAA are using a broken law to support a service we don't need

I agree with most of what you said, but would add this: if anyone is interested in what's wrong with C61, check out Michael Geist's blog where he's running "61 Reforms to C61". It's scary as hell, C61 is MUCH worse than the DMCA.

And two, although Harper's government is complicit in the rendition of Maher Arar, Arar was actually rendered to Syria on Paul Martin's watch.

Good point indeed. I guess the best we can do in cases where abuse goes unpunished is to just keep hammering away. Use YouTube and Slashdot and Facebook and the comments section of news sites to draw attention to what's going on and shame them publicly. Talk to non-techie friends about these subjects. Most people may not care, but some will. It's a matter of finding some way it affects the average citizen.

I really hope these types of subjects come up during the debates in the upcoming Canadian and US elections. Copyright is badly in need of reform in both countries and - sadly - the types of reforms proposed have been worse than what we already have. It's time to get the general public engaged in these types of issues. People became interested recently in Canada when they learned proposed changes to copyright law would criminalize copying music you paid for to your portable media player (iPod, mp3 player etc), or time-shifting television shows. Any allowances made for personal copying were rendered useless by other parts of the legislation that outlawed defeating DRM under any circumstances, even to exercise fair use (known as "fair dealing" in Canada).

Speak to them in language they can understand about issues that affect them and they will make their displeasure known.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3241/125/

The legislation has already been delayed once due to public pressure. Any more broad but inaccurate sour grapes from the American peanut gallery?

Tell you what... if this doesn't pass (looks like January at the earliest), I'll happily eat my words in public. But my money still says it passes.

The legislation has already been delayed once due to public pressure. Any more broad but inaccurate sour grapes from the American peanut gallery?

That's what we though in Canada, until Bell started doing just that. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2782/125/

Thanks to the upcoming C-61, anybody picking "digital locks" placed on their own damned phone is liable to a $20,000 fine!

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3025/125/

Often sited but 100% incorrect - go read the bill. It is a copyright bill and makes defeating locks and encryption illegal with regards to copyright-protected digital media - it in no way implies that you can't jailbreak a telephone for the purpose of installing open-source applications or making it play public-domain media.

Thanks to the upcoming C-61, anybody picking "digital locks" placed on their own damned phone is liable to a $20,000 fine!

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3025/125/

"Saying "The world is too complicated" sounds like a cop-out. Sure there's more information available than ever before, but there's also far more effective methods of accessing it than ever before. Knowing how to use google and wikipedia (and evaluate the credibility of the resultant sources) can give you answers to just about any question you can think of."

It doesn't matter though, think of how much bullshit the copyright lobby is getting away with right now and shit they passed with the DMCA, it proves many of my points in the prior post. Theres too many old people who did not grow up with the technology to understand those political issues and we end up getting fucked.

See issues @
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

I've actually built an AI that has achieved (almost) human levels of intelligence. It is self-aware, capable of debating with other humans and has passed the Turing test. Unfortunately, it's a Canadian project, so DARPA can't have it. If you want to look the project up it's code name is 'Robo-Harper'.

There are a few problems: it lacks realistic human features (particularly skin, we try covering it with makeup, but that only partially helps, the hair also looks like that of a Lego man); it has a propensity for gullibility and self-gratification; the bot also has problems with large numbers of interrupts (we have a work-around for this: he just goes out via the fire exit, to avoid the crowds).

So there you have HarperBot: it could almost be mistaken for a human (once we get the bugs ironed out)!

Jim Prentice the Minister of Industry today released a Copyright Bill. Some commentary on the legislation is contained on Michael Geist's blog (a University of Ottawa law professor and Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law) here: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

A grass roots campaign has been started to send letters to Members of Parliament to ensure this legislation doesn't move forward without substantive input from Canadians.

I'd really appreciate your support in filling out the following:

http://www.copyrightforcanadians.ca/action/firstlook/

Thank you for your consideration!