Slashdot Mirror
Canada Immune From RIAA?
Nick McKay writes "Tech Central Station is carrying a story on how Canadians are legally allowed to copy music not only in the home environment, but also on P2P networks such as Kazaa."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Considering we're 1/10th the U.S.'s size, it's foolish to think this'll last for long. The Canadian variant of the RIAA has been making noises here as well. The law here on copying files is a little murky - the articles up here indicate that a similar "sue-em-all" campaign could be launched, just that it'd be harder. Some of our ISP's (Bell for example) have ownership by U.S. corporations/parent companys, and you could expect some leverage applied that way.
I guess it'll give more mileage to South Park's "Blame Canada!" song...
-- "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" [Oscar Wilde]
Canada != Cuba. There is an extradition treaty between the USA and Canada so if you commit a crime in the USA and then run across the border you could still legally be extradited.
Read the act more carefully. Back-ups of any and all digital media for personal use is absolutely covered.
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
Screw file trading. Canada is more free in ways that *really* matter, like drugs. In Canada, if you want to ingest pot, you can without being arrested by jack-booted Ashcroft thugs and thrown in prison for the rest of your life. On that same subject, their gov't isn't still feeding them the "Reefer Madness" bullshit from the 20's.
Canada seems to be a lot better in other ways too. Just watch "Bowling for Columbine"...
Some of our ISP's (Bell for example) have ownership by U.S. corporations/parent companys, and you could expect some leverage applied that way.
Are you nuts? Bell (I assume you mean Bell Canada, not Bell Helicopter) is a Canadian-owned company and must be by law. Many people don't like the ownership restrictions on Canadian telecom companies, (Rogers and AT&T in particular)
The big Schedule I banks (CIBC, Royal, TD, BMO, Scotia) have similar ownership limits.
from the copyright faq:
To paraphrase the introduction to an early Copyright Board ruling:
On March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the Copyright Act came into force. Until then, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright. Part VIII legalizes one such activity: copying of sound recordings of musical works onto recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy.
It does not matter whether you own the original sound recording (on any medium), you can legally make a copy for your own private use.
To emphasize this point, endnote 4 of an early Copyright Board ruling says:
Section 80 does not legalize (a) copies made for the use of someone other than the person making the copy; and (b) copies of anything else than sound recordings of musical works. It does legalize making a personal copy of a recording owned by someone else.
Note that the Copyright Act ONLY allows for copies to be made of "sound recordings of musical works". Nonmusical works, such as audio books or books-on-tape are NOT covered.
The wording of the Copyright Act gives rise to some very odd situations. In the 6 examples below, "commercial CD" means a commercially pressed CD that you would normally buy at a retail store.
2 1337 4 u!
Yes.
Immigrating to Canada as a Skilled Worker
I don't know how diffiacult it is or about their acceptaince ratios, but if you got an education it should not be that hard.
Kind of strange that there are so few from US that emmigrate to Canada given that Canada is objectively a better place to live.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
On your last point. There are some differences in the Canadian governmental system than American, and buying off our representatives is a bit harder. Not impossible, mind you.
Our Senate is appointed, not elected, so campaign funding on that front isn't really viable. Although out-and-out bribery could still be a possibility.
The Prime Minister is the leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Commons, not a separately elected individual, and therefore controls how the party votes.
The ethics minister (theoretically) is a watchdog to prevent abuses of power or introducing bills based on the needs of special interest.
Add into this that each MP has limited power, based on the fact that their ridings are relatively small compared to US electoral areas (population-wise, I'm sure many of the geographical areas are quite large), and it would take a very concentrated effort to garner enough support through bribery and financing to make a dent.
Of course, this is all from the deep recesses of my high school social science memories, so I could be a bit off.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
Says who?!?? There's plenty of people that are opposing this, not just manufacturers: here and and here, there's plenty more. Plus I've sent letters to whatever MP I could contact.
It's had some effect, since the 'new' rates were supposed to be introduced in Jan 2003.
I'm hardly 'indifferent' about it!
AC comments get piped to
As for banned books, he's probably talking about this, the case of Little Sisters Bookstore vs. The Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Revenue, and the Attorney General of British Columbia. Little Sisters is a gay and lesbian bookstore in Vancouver, and the case involved repeated seizures of imported books on the grounds that they were obscene.
As for thought crime, he's probably talking about an overly restrictive law on child pornography, which prohibited even personal drawings and writings that had child-pornographic content. The law has since been struck down.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
The Canadians on-upped us by including copying rights into their legislation though. We just pay "compensation" taxes for the possibility of infringement by others. Damn clever Canadians...
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
We Canadians don't pay $0.77 for each blank CD we buy -- only for blank AUDIO CDs. The blank Audio CDs can be bought in audio stores for much more money and have some magic bit pre-burned or whatever. Normal DATA CDs that don't have this audio flag on them won't work in consumer audio CD burners that go in your stereo, only in computer burners.
Next -- this law may legalize downloading from P2P, but does NOT legalize making your copy publicly available on P2P systems, which is all the recording industry cares about anyhow. That would be a "public performance" or "publishing" or "distribution" -- none of which are legal.
Oh, and just for the record, pot isn't legal here. You just get a ticket now instead of a court date. This means that the cops will no longer be ignoring pot because of the paperwork burden, and the likelihood of potsmokers getting busted has gone UP.
http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/news/c19992000fs-e.html
CD-Rs and CD-RWs: 5.2 cents per unit
A substantially lower levy applies to these digital media due to, among other reasons, the fact that only a relatively small portion of sales of these media are to individual consumers and they are used for a wide variety of uses other than copying sound recordings (e.g., computer data storage).
On your stack of 100 Knoppix CDs, you actually paid $5 worth of tax. Unless you're only paying about 2 cents per disc, that's not really "quadrupling" your costs.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
You are allowed to make a personal copy from an original, meaning you can borrow an original from a friend or the library and burn or rip all you want ([Canadians] pay for it when we buy blank CD-Rs).
From what I understand, you CANNOT copy the copy. See this for some details.
So if that follows, you can legally download from P2P *only if* it's an original. Since you typically have to rip it, it's already one generation away from the original.
In addition: this seems to indicate the resulting copy *has to* be on a medium for which you have paid the levy. To quote:
IANAL, and when it gets this complicated, I'm kinda glad for that...
Interestingly, the levy only applies to BLANK media. To sell a hard drive MP3 player, prerecord a little "welcome" tune on there, and you're off the hook.
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
While we're on the subject of correcting misconceptions about Canada...
"Pot" is NOT legal in Canada. The federal government is simply de-criminalizing posession; that is, changing the rules so that if you're caught posessing some, you won't be thrown in jail, and won't wind up with a criminal record.
You can, however, still be fined. Cannibis is still a controlled substance in Canada, and not legal for sale. The penalties for illegal grow operations are still quite stiff (there are, of course, a few legal grow operations to service the needs of the experimental "medical marijuana" system).
Thus, "pot" isn't legal here in Canada -- they've just removed the criminal aspect of simple posession.
Yaz.
Statute of Westminster in 1931. So Canada did have a choice.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Thus, "pot" isn't legal here in Canada
Actually you are wrong.
The legislation you are referring to has yet to be introduced in the
house and looking at the current time table for the fall session, it is
highly unlikely to be introduced until spring (if at all).
The interesting bit is that last year the Ontario Court of
Appeal deemed that the portion of the criminal code dealing with
pot is unconstitutional and gave the Feds 1 year to change the law or
the current pot laws would be declared void. This was the reason the
new law was drafted: the Feds had little choice in the matter. Well, 1
year has been up for quite a while now which means that all laws
concerning pot in Ontario (and only Ontario) are now void. The courts
have instructed that the police not to arrest people in possession or
even selling of pot (since all the laws are now void) because the they
will not be heard in court. The courts have also instructed the police
not to even seize pot from people because they are not allow to seize
private property and could be sued for doing so.
--PCB
'Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.' B. Pascal
The Copyright Act 1985 c-42 Canada is available here. It's been amended a few times (latest, April 2003) but those changes have little bearing on the slashdot subject. Users with little time want to check out Part VIII, Private Copying; and in particular Section 80; Copying for Private Use.
Some comments on the discussion so far:
The Recording Industry Association of America represents US record companies. They don't now, and never have, anything to do with Canada or any other country.
The RIAA is a member of the IFPI, which represents the recording industry worldwide. Their website has a great link called "Anti-Piracy" and a defintion under What is Piracy? Please note the definition has not a word about dowloading, or copying a buddy's CD, but instead refers to what the RIAA tends to call Counterfeiting.
The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CIRA) is the body which represents the industry in Canada. They are the equivalent to the RIAA in that country and if anyone was suing anybody in Canada, they would be doing it, not the RIAA. Ever.
Uploading music is completely illegal in Canada, as is allowing it to be shared. CIRA can and probably will sue anyone who does it, and they will win. Damages, on the other hand, won't be even close to the numbers the US courts give out, which probably explains why they're not hiring a floorful of lawyers about it, so far.
What the Copyright Act allows, is the copying, for personal use, of music from any source. So, downloading is fine, as is borrowing the CD from the public library (most Canadian libraries have extensive music collections available) or a buddy, or any other source you can imagine. There are no restricitons, of any kind, on the source of the music you use to create a copy.
Steal a disk and copy it; the crime remains the theft of a $20 disk, not the copying of that "illegal" disk.
The restriction is only the person making the copy has any right to use it. You cannot lend, give away, or otherwise distribute a Personal Copy made under authorization of Section 80.
Thus, allowing your mp3s to be available to others via a shared drive or network is against the law in Canada, as is making a disk and giving it to Grandma for Christmas. Granny has to run her own burner. And moving to Canada would not protect any of those who the RIAA has sued recently; what they do is still against the law north of 49.
The US media, especially the RIAA, has done a great job of marketing their message worldwide, not just in their jurisdiction. Thus, almost every Canadian (and absolutely every journalist; lazy no check-facting idiots that they are) is completely unaware of the Act, or how it applies to copying. They all think it's illegal to burn CDs in Canada.