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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."
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It seems as if Canada has become the land of the free, while the United States has become seemingly less thrilling to live in. I, for one, would be glad to be able to make legal copies of music and other goods, and only having to pay a small tax on media and (possibly) computer products. This would make it much easier to pay the RIAA and similar evil organizations, and would keep P2P infurioratingly legal.
... you know where to go. No more 3rd-world country that nobody has every heard of (Hurray!)
I have a feeling that emigration to Canada will become increasingly more common if it gets to the point where if you have a file on your computer that may have possibly originated from a P2P network or other illegal source, you could pay hefty fines and jail terms. Will Canada border-hopping now include underage drinking and underage stealing? You decide. So, now if you want to escape the U.S. Justice system
The only problem with this method is that companies cannot track who owes them how much, and which companies get the bigger share of the chunk of taxes. Why not have it so that, people report how many songs they downloaded and what they are, and that determines their tax (or refund, if they haven't downloaded anything). Then, the companies can easily divvy out the money to one another (but some companies will like the equal-split method better * wink wink *)
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Orppf urp mf y.ppcxn. yflcbi otcnnov C am yflcbi yr n.apb Ekrpatv (Dvorak -> Qwerty)
Wow....I bet a Canadian company could make a fortune selling high speed Internet access to those in the US, Or possibly just a high speed proxy service.
Then when the RIAA asked them for the user of the IP that is 'stealing' their music...they could tell them to take a flying leap.
Any bets as to how long it will take some enterprising Canadian to come up with this business model?
Or as to how long before the RIAA starts buying off memebers of Canada's parliment, the way that they buy our Senators and Representatives?
Therefore even if you own the CD, you have absolutely no right to transfer it to a different format. With your CD, you purchase a right to listen to that music on that medium only. You do not have any rights to transfer it to any other medium. There is no provision in law to allow you to do so.
Having said that, MP3 players are sold and the BPI (our equivilant of the RIAA) have stated that they have "no plans" at the moment to go chasing people who do download and transfer music from CD's to other mediums.
I know Slashdot isn't a hot-bed of legal eagles, but does anyone know of anything different? This somewhat spooks me a little that the CD I purchased cannot be legally transfered to my mp3 player for the gym.
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The blank CD levy was a tradeoff that gives Canadians very specific rights:
I can borrow a friend's CD and copy that CD onto a blank.
There's nothing about P2P networks, and until the levies come in on hard drives (in the works) I don't see how any copying involving hard drives can be considered covered.
From the article:
"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.
Note the bolded text -- "CD". P2P files are not CDs! Even if they come from a CD, they aren't on a CD when you copy them, and so you're not covered by the levy.
Comments?
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
According to the article, 70 million dollars was generated with the Candanian levy. I would be willing to bet that none of that money went to any artist.
They recently revamped it. Hard drives are now included, as are flash cards.
Note that in order to be legal in Canada, you need to copy off of original media -- second-generation copies are probably not allowed. Hence, the P2P implications are murky (unless you have that particular CD in your CD drive, and that's what you're sharing P2P.)
And, the DMCA may not be what makes file sharing illegal, but it enabled the RIAA to subpoena the ISP's for people's personal information. Without the DMCA, the RIAA wouldn't know where to find all the file-sharing 12-year-olds.
yeah only if you're dumb enough to buy the stuff labelled as "music discs"
;)
I can get a 100 "data" CD spindle for about $30 CDN. What? It's not meant for music you say? Well let me be the judge of that
> They have to pay "$0.77 CDN for a blank CD and .29 a blank tape, whether used for recording music or not."
Funny... I'm Canadian, I just bought a spindle of 100 CD-R for 29.99$CAD...
been like that for the past year.
Dunno where you get your numbers but they are wrong.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
In Sweden a similar audio levy is extended from tapes to digital media around the new year.
Low levies for CD-R and somewhat higher for CD-RW are extended on a megabyte basis to higher costs for DVD-R/RW but only to harddisks that are non-removable in dedicated audioplayers like the iPod.
Some have pointed to it's other uses as a PDA with calendar but they will probably not get away from a levy on about $20 for an iPod. I could accept this thing, at least it gives some moral support for copying music to your player. However for DVD-RW this tax will soon amount to more than half of the retail price which something that will haunt us forever even though the discs can be used for videos of your childrens birthday or backing up other types of data...
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.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
To think that they could make just as much money from levying a tax and spend less time aggrevating their customers seems so foreign to them that it must be a Canadian thing, huh?
Much of the World (especially Europe) has the same attitude. People will do what people will do. Let them. Get over it. Find a way to compensate or accept it.
Instead, in the US the prevailing notion is to resolve by bullying and brute force. How young and inexperienced a country the US is. As strong as it is, it still hasn't learned how to play nice with others.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Audio Cassettes (40 minutes or more in length): 29 cents
CD-R or CD-RW: 21 cents
CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio or MiniDisc: 77 cents
So the actual levy on CD-R/RW is 21 cents, not 77 cents.
I believe the Copyright Board is considering a proposed increase in the levy on CD-R/RW to 59 cents per CD and applying the levy to hard drives, blank DVDs and memory cards. No decision has been made and I honestly believe the Copyright board will back down from the proposed levy on hard drives and other computer related media since industry outcry has been substantial. The obvious benefit to the levy is I can legally borrow and make a copy of a friend's CD for my own personal use and know that I am not committing a crime.
Many people in Canada are also not aware that you can apply for an exemption from the levy if your primary use of the levied media falls under certain categories. So companies such as the one I work for have an exemption from the levy since we only use blank CDs for in-house software.
"A small levy on storage media, say a penny a megabyte, would be more lucrative than trying to extract 60 million dollars from a music obsessed, file sharing, thirteen year-old."
That's about $7 per CD-R, and $40 per DVD-R?!!! BOVINE SCAT!!!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
I worked in record stores for a while, and I began to notice that the CD-R's designated by the manufacturer (eg. Maxell) as being expressly for copying music were much more expensive than CD-R's intended for data storage. Even if the brand is the same. I asked why this should be, and a co-worker pointed out that the infamous Canadian anti-copying tax only applied to the former, not the latter.
Now, I am sure that both kinds of CDs work equally well for copying data or music. But some CD-Rs put out by the 'non-white-label' manufacturers explicitly specify on the package that they are only 'for music.' Apparently the levy only applies to these kinds of CD-Rs.
So, if my co-worker is correct, it sounds like you can easily avoid paying this tax. Can anyone confirm/deny?
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
Well companies have been doing it for some time its called 'globalization'---- live in one state, Canada - for the free downloads, and Buy in a different one, the US for cheap CD's & CDR's---- but whats the betting that now people, rather than corporations can do it the loophole gets closed, incidentally, and maybe a bit offtopic, the UK used to be known by the car industry as 'Treasure Island' due to the high prices, now there is a sizable 'net industry importing cheap cars from the continent
boycott-riaa.com reported on this several months ago. However, I just though of something. What if I could select an ISP in Canada? My traffic would all look like it originates from there, and the DMCA subpenas would be useless against a canadian owned IP. Any comments on the technical aspects? It would definately be worth an extra 10 bucks if I could find some way to do it.
The CPCC levy isn't the only reason why private copying via P2P networks is not a legal problem in Canada. There are privacy laws (about which the US has already complained are a hinderance to their terrorist investigations) that prevent the RIAA from issuing subpoenas to Canadian ISPs demanding their logs and subscribers.
This doesn't mean that your file-sharing information is not inaccessible. If you're sharing music, you'll be fine--you're not in violation of Canadian law and practice. If you're sharing kiddy porn or hate literature, the Canadian police can get the data because you're involved in another crime.
The CBC has a brief article and opinion about this.
If the RIAA was to follow the lead of Canadian direct broadcast satellite providers, they'd make an appeal to morality to address their problem, since the laws here won't help them.
The Seventh Rule: Take others more seriously than yourself, particularly when you are leading them.
I'd like to calm the rhetoric. Sure, common sense would indicate the RIAA's copyrights have been violated. But copyright has been heavily legislated over the past century to the point that common sense or common law is nearly absent. It has such things as compulsory licences and device royalties. Morality should be confined to governing personal actions and advocating revisions to intellectual property law. It is disingenuous for the RIAA to invoke morality when if anything they have had excessive influence in crafting legislation.
IANAL but lets look at the law. Once you know the tokens, legalese is not usually harder to parse than APL :) Apologies for a
US-centric viewpoint but I believe a statutory situation exists in
all other common-law countries with different details. There's an
excellent copy of the United States Code, Title 17 - Copyrights at Cornell.
Chapter 10 covers DIGITAL AUDIO RECORDING DEVICES AND MEDIA .
Particularly interesting is:
Sec. 1008. - Prohibition on certain infringement actions... No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings
Simply breathtaking! The words "this title" mean Title 17, which contains all of US copyright law. The first "based on" means these things are not actionable as contributory negligence ("burglars tools"). The second "based on" means non-commercial use of these things does not violate copyright. Wow!
The definitions in Sec.1001 would seem to include computers. They sure are designed, advertised and used that way amongst others. But all is not [Guns'N'] roses. The manufacturers of these recording devices would seem to owe a device tax that gets paid through the Librarian-of-Congress (of all people!) to the RIAA as specified. There are also requirements related to the Serial Copy Management System. I trust that RIAA have settled this with their long-standing antagonists, appliance manufacturers, now including Dell, HP, et al. But even if not, how does it affect me?
The term "noncommercial use" would almost certainly cover receiving music files to make recordings on a hard-disk. Offering to transmit music files might not be covered and fall under the exceptionally byzantine Sec.114 as an "interactive service". But a lawyer specialising in Copyright law should be able to give a better interpretation including case precedents. The Diamond Rio MP3 player case is probably relevant. Is there a lawyer in the house?
I'm really tired of this "Freedom and free market crap". Not trying to troll here, so here me out. I think you'll find your Freedom only applies when it's convient for major corporations, and that the free market reigns supreme largely for less affluent Americans. The rich get laws passed in their favor (DMCA comes to mind, so does that little executive order of Bush's that lets oil execs off the hook for any nastiness in Iraq), they get government subsidies and garanteed loans, the get free trade when it's good for them and tarriffs when it isn't. Meanwhile my Brother's job is being sent to India while he tries to avoid sending my niece to an abysmal public school.
I want the government watching out for me. It's the only thing big enough to stand against corporations like the RIAA. If I go up against the RIAA, I'll get crushed. Just like those 261 poor bastards that're about to have their lives ruined. Simply put, it's in my best interests to have the goverment do something like this (and please dont' start arguing this isn't in my best intrests. It may not be, but letting the RIAA run rampant certainly isn't).
I guess what I'm saying is, I'm tired of seeing people get behind policies that screw them over in the name of a free market that doesn't really exist anyways.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Being a Canadian I do get a special warm fuzzy feeling when people from other countries talk about my country like its some kind of snow covered paradise. Sure, I take pride in that. And I'm definitely one to slag some of the more stupid things that happen in the US. But let's not get crazy.
I'm currently paying about 33% in income tax. Think about that. For convenience, let's say you're making 30k CAN. That's about 20k US. My American friends pay about 10% in income tax, so when a Canadian is taking home 20k CAN after tax and an american is taking home 27k CAN. If I was making an extra 7k a year I could pirate a lot less music. 7k a year should more than pay for insurance to give me medical coverage equivelent to what I get for "free" here in Canada. It should also cover the music I'm allowed to pirate here in Canada.
This is getting into dangerous high-level political idealogy debate area but I'd personally be willing to give up a bit of the benefits I get from being Canadian for a bit more control over where my money is spent.
From the Copyright Board of Canada: What is "Private Copying"? On March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the Copyright Act dealing with private copying came into force. Until that time, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright, although, in practice, the prohibition was largely unenforceable. The amendment to the Act legalized copying of sound recordings of musical works onto audio recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy (referred to as "private copying"). In addition, the amendment made provision for the imposition of a levy on blank audio recording media to compensate authors, performers and makers who own copyright in eligible sound recordings being copied for private use. The Copyright Board's decision issued today sets a levy for this purpose.
Mr. Currie writes: 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.
He is correct to state that the copy he made from his own CD to his hard drive is covered under Canada's Copyright Act. He is wrong to state that downloading a copy from somebody else's P2P application is covered -- it is not "private copying" because the person offering that copy is already in violation.
The Copyright Act states in section 80, subsection 2 that it is not "private copying" if done for any of the following purposes (my emphasis):
(a) selling or renting out, or by way of trade exposing or offering for sale or rental;
(b) distributing, whether or not for the purpose of trade;
(c) communicating to the public by telecommunication; or
(d) performing, or causing to be performed, in public.
Did this guy even read the Copyright Act? Whomever he is downloading this file from is communicating to the public by telecommunication and thus that copy is illegal.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Half the kids got books published in the US and the other half got books published in Canada or other parts of the world. Much confusion occured because everyone with an American book thought the US won the war. Also interesting is that only a few of the American books mentioned that the Whitehouse was burnt to the ground.
According to this list the U.S. had just under 300,000 casualties vs Canada's 42,000. And as was mentioned previously we had about 1/10th the population.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
I wonder if you could claim refugee status for this. "I face persecution and imprisonment in my country for sharing music, a perfectly legal action in Canada." I bet you could.
That would be a lark, our refugee board filled with nerds clinging desperately to their 100 GB hard drives.
What are you smoking? In my experience, Canadians are a bunch of insensitive, prejudiced bastards. While living in Guatemala, I'd say about 3/4 of the Canadians I met were rude, insulting, and offensive to me JUST because I'm American. I never had any negative ideas about Canadians until I travelled out of the country and met several.
It seems par for the course to be assumed to be stupid, uneducated, and some how, less "sophisticated". I can't even count the number of times I was told I'm supporting an "Imperialit Regime" because I grew up in the US, paid my taxes, and didn't revolt over foriegn policy (which I didn't make).
I even met one Canadian who told me that "Americans don't know anything about the rest of the world". This is from some fucker not only couldn't speak ANY of the local language in the country we were living, but can't even speak his own country's two languages. I, on the other hand speak English, Spanish, and Chinese. Do most Americans? No. But a fair number of southern Californians do. It's not right to just say that ALL Americans are ignorant. The best part was when he gave me a "pop quiz" on how many provinces Canada has. I knew, and then I asked him how many states the US has. He didn't know. He didn't know.
I'm a gnu world man.
Possession of fewer than 30 grams of pot is sort of legal right now, with no penalties, not even a fine.
The pot laws were struck down because they were deemed to be unconstitutional. About 3 years ago, a person went to court to get access to marihuana, arguing that he had a constitutional right to use it as medicine. The court agreed, and said the government should pass a new law that allows him legal access to pot. The court ordered that the law be struck down after a year, to give the government time to pass a new law. After 364 days, the government introduced a new regulation outlining how access to medical marihuana would be awarded.
About a year later (about 6 months ago), a 15 year old was arrested for possession of pot, but charges were dismissed because the judge decided that the law against possession had been struck down; introducing a regulation did not replace the law. Since the part of the law that made possession illegal was struck down, it is no longer illegal to possess pot. The police can still arrest you for pot possession; but if the case ever goes to trial, the charges will be dismissed. In most areas, the police have stopped arresting people for pot possession; but some jurisdictions still do, they will defer prosecution until after a new law is passed.
The decriminalization law you mention has not been passed yet, and until it does, you cannot be convicted of pot possession. The "decriminalization" bill is actually a bill to re-criminalize pot. The current political speculation is that it probably won't be passed until after Paul Martin calls an election. Since the bill will "die on the order papers" when parliament is dissolved for the election, it is likely we won't see a new pot law for at least a year. If this particular bill does get passed into law, possession of small amounts will result in a fine. All the other aspects of marihuana prohibition, like production, will remain jail-worthy offenses; in fact the penalties have been increased for most non-possession crimes.
A bit of commentary on all of this: The government has an interesting pattern of delaying changes to the drug law as much as possible; I can only guess this is so the politicians won't have to actually make any decisions. Like the recent gay marriage situation, Parliament has known for years that there is a constitutional problem with the law, yet would rather wait for the courts to strike down the law before acting. It is notable that the new pot law does not address medical marihuana in any way; I'm guessing that is a deliberate error to ensure at least a few more years of Supreme Court trials before the politicians actually have to decide anything.
A few months ago, the Supreme Court heard a few non-medical marihuana cases, and the judgments are due soon. I'm guessing they will add additional fuel to the marihuana issue, and the government will probably be forced to pass a more liberal law than the current decriminalization bill; if only to directly address the issue of medical marihuana.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
We were not forced, per se, to enter WWII. But, since our independence from the USA was largely responsible to British intervention, Canada was OBLIGATED to join HMS and fight for Europe's freedom as Britain had for ours.
Until Pearl Harbor forced their hand, the US was simply going to pull the same tactic as they employed in WWI... wait until 3-4 years of fighting has gone on and then sweep in for the kill and be the world's hero.
Canada on the other hand was involved from the 'git-go' in both wars... and unceremoniously used as fodder by incompentent english twits who called themselves generals. IMHO, Canada has paid its debt to Britain with it's sons blood.