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Canadian Supreme Court To Define ISP Role
Ubergrendle writes "The CBC is reporting that the Canadian Supreme Court is hearing a case regarding copyright royalties and the responsibilities of ISPs both here and abroad. From the article: 'The people who represent Canadian artists say everyone who has a hand in transmitting recorded music is liable. "Creative people should be compensated for the use and exploitation of their music," said Paul Spurgeon, general counsel for the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada. "We're obviously in a struggle right now trying to figure out the best techniques to ensure that they are compensated appropriately.'" This follows on the heels of the Canadian music industry asking that this case be heard. Given the trade relations, this case should have consequences far outside of Canada proper.
The people who represent Canadian artists say everyone who has a hand in transmitting recorded music is liable.
That's the person who copies it, whoever writes the software that copies it (whether p2p, ftp, samba, http), the person who pays for net access, the person who owns the phoneline or cable connection, the ISP, the ISPs between ISPs, the receiving ISP, and all those people again on the receiving end.
Wonder if they truly think about this. the RIAA and their equivalents worldwide can't all be so insanely silly and see that their distribution methods are so outdated that fewer and fewer people are using them. Could they?
RST
Now, I'm not 100% sure on this (and I didn't RTFA), but someone posted in a different article a while back (and got modded up) that due to the tax on blank CDRs, people in Canada could download music legally, so isn't this kind of a moot point?
Following SOCAN's logic, I guess we should sue General Motors the next time somebody uses a Chevy to rob a bank.
We're obviously in a struggle right now trying to figure out the best techniques to ensure that they are compensated appropriately.'"
As a Canadian, I already pay a copyright levy on cdrs, am I supposed to pay more to my isp now? Judging by the line above..I'd have to say it isnt completely out of the question.
They remind me of SCO. Try and blame everybody and sue everybody, and see what sticks. Just no integrity left in the business community it seems.
So if two ppl plan a crime using a phone is the phone company partly to blame?? Of cource not.
Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada == SCAM Publishers of Canada
Sorry, just found that mildly amusing.
Jason Lotito
It wasn't a comment in response to an article, it was the article itself.
Occationally in the US there is a court case where the family of someone who's been murdered tries to sue the gun company. They never win. The major problem with this concept that the Canadian music industry is trying to pull a fast one is that if the enabling technology is legal then there is no justification to sue them for doing their job.
So, for example, in the US it is legal to make and sell guns. The gun manufacturing companies, although are creating a dangerous tool, are not breaking any laws. If someone buys that gun and shoots someone else, they are violating the law, but there is no reason why the gun manufacturer should be held liable.
If there is any logic in the Canadian supreme court, they will see that the ISP is just the enabling technology. The ISP is doing nothing illegal. They should not be held accountable. Yeah I know that this cannot be used as a precident in a Canadian court, but I think its more of a logical argument, not a setting of a precident.
I also wonder how they think that they're going to collect from foreign ISPs.
"Everybody knows the moon's made of cheese," Wallace.
If the worst happens and SOCAN gets their own way, the ISP needs to fight back in any way possible, from charging outrageous fees to SOCAN and any other music body using the internet. If they can't let us have our internet free, then they should be paying a lot for it also...
To think of an ISP as anything other than a carrier opens up such a big can of worms that to do so would be disasterous. Canada has a very distributed population, and the internet is necessary here for communication and business. This stupid SOCAN idea is anti-business. Perhaps businesses should also band together to do anything possible to screw SOCAN and their musicians into the ground. After all, we're paying the stupid CD levy for all the source code we back up.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
The rest of the Spurgeon quote seems so reasonable. Why do people have to exaggerate and make things seem so dire? I know,I know. Money. To me it's just dishonest. I get tired of the fact that everyting is an con, or a sell of some sort.
If a musician is being exploited, the publisher is the most likely culprit. Somehow, this is twisted and suddenly it's the people using the internet to download files? Please.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Yep, because you can't get much more creative and original than Britney Spears and her fellow artists. I also notice that the words 'rewarded appropriately' were used instead of 'rewarded fairly.'
Watch out, Monster Cable!
Money for nothing, pix for free
I AM CANADIAN and I and so f@#$'n tired of these poor starving artists who claim to be suffering so much because people are downloading and/or sharing their music...PLEASE get over yourselves
I have a hard time believing that all but the very best... maybe 10% of Canadian artists are being traded, even moderately.
And this tax the ISP for others is truly Canadian and just as f@#$'n stupid.
Canadians pay more taxes to "protect" Canadian businesses that peddled in international television signals, music distribution and now possibly internet access... talk about a racket!
Whenever I hear these statements, I'm wondering how much of that is "someone rights are not infringed" and how much is "someones business model must be protected".
There is no god-given right to make a living off whatever you choose to be your profession. Circumstances can change, and your business model can become unviable. Facts of life 101. Everybody has to deal with that (cf. type-setters, weavers, ...). Thus any argument similar "those poor XXX, YYY destroys their income, thus YYY must be banned" is IMHO just wrong.
The correct approach is to look whether somebody need legal help to ascertain his right to the fruits of his labor. That he's not wronged in the legal sense of the word. Whether his income would be enough to sustain his life is not the court's business.
If the state decides that it really wants a certain tradecraft to be a viable business, then that's a purely political question (cf. farm subsidies, military spending, art funding) and should not be decided by a court of law.
'The people who represent Canadian artists say everyone who has a hand in transmitting recorded music is liable.
Perhaps it's just me, but wouldn't this fault the recording industry as well? After all, they are the ones who have effectively transmitted the music from the studio to the average Joe listener. The average Joe has then ripped the CD, made it available on the internet, where it has then been downloaded. Hence the recording industry has had a hand in transmitting recorded music.
---
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
Well, if you want to get all technical aboot it, the people usually refer to it as the Supreme Court of Canada, eh.
I know god exists. I read it on the internet, so it must be true.
This is the same supreme court that ruled that Canadians can't get American satellite signals even when willing to pay for them. We are forced to only view Canadian content even when we are willing to go to extremes and set up an american PO box and pay american dollars. This is not a resonably thinking court. Don't think for a second that the right thing will be done here. I wouldn't be surprised if they came down with a ruling that decided that Candaians couldn't download any foreign music and if they did you must pay a levy. They will make a ruling that has no way of being enforced and spend millions trying to enforce it. Rational thinking has nothing to do with it!!!!
Stay tuned for new sig...
Here in Canada we put a relatively large focus on supporting Canadian artists, and culture and media in general. Some of our taxes and levies(like on CD-Rs) help fund arts groups and artists, and this is somewhat in that line, I feel.
Even our big media group, the CBC, recieves government funding. I for one I'm glad for it. Sure, it's socialism. But it's just a touch. And when I dial in the CBC Two late at night there's always the most interesting music on. We pay a bit more in taxes and get a lot back in continuingly interesting art. I think that's a good thing.
Its proper name is the Supreme Court of Canada.
/. doesn't want to keep the circonflexe over the 'e' in Supreme when I hit 'Preview'. what-ever.]
Tsk, tsk.
If you're going to be an asshat, at least get your facts straight.
"Supreme Court of Canada" is NOT its "proper" name. It is ONE of its coequal names. The other, of course, being "Cour supreme du Canada". There's that whole official bilingualism thing going on up here, doncha know?
[NB. Dumb-ass
First of all, the blank media levy is not 'compensating' artists - to this date, not one cent of the levy has been given to record labels, let alone artists. And if/when the money does get handed down to the music companies, what makes anyone think that they will actually pass it along to the artists? It's been awhile since I saw a record contract, but that's never been a line item - it's not a unit sale, so the artists won't see a dime.
Second of all, should this go into effect, why should music companies be compensated, when this affects everyone who makes/produces anything that could be traded? Will there be a separate levy for software companies? Book publishers? Movie studios? Or will these other industries be given part of the existing levy? (You can bet not - like the blank media levy, any law will probably specify music companies only.)
This is so fundamentally flawed it's unbelieveable.
I'm a starting struggling author as well as a software developer. Should I not receive a "payment" for potential software piracy?
I already pay a levy on CD-R material [which I never use to pirate audio] that goes to the music industry.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The onus on the Recording Association to prove that the main purpose of the ISP's is to facilitate illegal downloading of music is simply too broad to be logically proven. Most sane people (which I'd hope a Supreme Court judge would be) would conclude that since the music association is already being recompensed they have no legal need to demand this additional tax, if they want a cut of the CDR tax they (the artists) should talk to the industry association (the Canadian version of the RIAA). I believe this has already happened and they were rebuffed in the backroom, thusly they felt this is the only alternative and they needed a new tax.
Just another piece of fluff news ment to try getting people up in arms.
Copyright Law takes its origin in the will to protect the revenues of authors / musicians / other artists, so that they have an incentive to create. Right ?
Originally it protected the real authors from the misappropriation by others and ill-profiting from their works. Right ? This particular intent was first turned into a travesty when the middle-men started buying these rights from the authors to enforce it themselves. It even agravated when they launched the infamous "Work for hire" type contracts, where the author is totally deprived of authorship.
Now it goes even further: they are expanding the travestied concept (based on an unnatural compromise between public domain and a need for incentives to create, originally) of copyright to leverage more and more control and extort more money from each side of the industry ?
And, pray-tell, what will happen when the Associated Agents rule almighty on culture and distribution of information, and collect the Tax on Everything Digital ? All this in the name of a parody of an already flimsy concept of "copyright". Sheesh.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I don't download music. I do listen to Internet radio but I assume that royalties are already paid for since these are well known/popular radios stations.
So if my ISP does pass on the any charges, then I am paying for something that I don't do. (They might not either way if they develop some niffty technology which can tell if I download an mp3 or not (but then I question it since there are many ways of fooling it)).
Why shouldn't I download music? I am paying for it regardless.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
This will legalize P2P sharing just as well as it legalizes CD-copying.
There's a lot of music that I'd like to download. So far, I've been restrained in the matter. Now I'm gonna have me some fun.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Yeah right. The PC police are out in full force and it's only getting worse here. Now, you can actually be locked up or forced to pay damanges if the authorities here don't agree with your point of view. It's scary.
I'm shocked more people aren't aware of what's going on in this country. If this keeps up, I'm moving to the USA.
Quotes like this "Creative people should be compensated for the use and exploitation of their music" irk me so. Replace music with the word software and I'm more likely to see why authors should get compensated, but oddly it's the music industry that is protected wholeheartedly by the law. In the software industry, if someone pirates your software, it generally is an exact duplicate of the purchaseable item (minus the copy-right protection and adding in some advertising). In the music industry, if someone distributes a lossy version of your song (for the most part, it's the labels song) or recorded off the radio (difference between this and taping shows on your VCR and sending it to others is what?) you have to pay - and not only pay for the indiscretion, but also for the potential indiscretion thanks to CD-r levies.
Where is the equality in that? Why is the music industry so favoured? You haven't seen ISP's fined for the transferral of illegal software; up until two years ago, my ISP used to have a mirror of alt.binaries.warez among its other newsgroups!
For that matter, what constitutes use? How much of the file must be copied to be considered an illegal use? Almost all OS's will copy a file and then delete it to safely move a file from one partition to another - does this situation insinuate 2 copyright violations?
Most of these cases seem to be that of "guilt without evidence". A filename does not an illegal download make, nor a hash value a confirmation.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
As a SOCAN member, I was horrified by the news of their lawsuit with the ISP's. It *may* have been relevant three years ago, when people signing up for high-speed internet were likely doing so to get onto Napster 1.0 and other "file sharing" networks. It may have been fair if things did not change as fast as they do. But SOCAN is hopelessly living in the past. here is the full text of the letter i sent them: My name is Sam Blue, owner of independant label Artefakt. I am writing on behalf of myself and Kim Kelly, songwriter for The House of Mary. We would like to make a formal complaint regarding the court case which has recently been publicised between Socan and the Internet Service providers. As SOCAN members, we are strongly opposed to this type of lawsuit, and feel the cost, time, energy, and publicity can only do harm to SOCAN and the interests it represents. I think it would be worthwhile to investigate some of the trends that are now taking place in the online music industry. A lot has changed since your lawsuit began three years ago. The opportunities for artists selling their music online, through legitimate, secure music services are tremendous, especially for independant artists like ourselves. And the popularity of illegal file-swapping networks seems to be in decline. This is mainly because services like Apple's iTunes simply work so well that people can't be bothered with illegal downloads, which ultimately take more time and effort, and are less reliable than the one-click downloads you can get on iTunes and comparable services. In the earlier days of napster [again this was only 3 years ago] we made a point of putting select tracks of our own music on Napster in hopes people would be exposed to it on an international scale. We also made a point of putting half of our CD on our own website [at lo-fi quality] so people would have a previos of the CD. We pressed our CDs on a short run of 500. In three years, we have sold perhaps half of those. After doing our own distribution, promotion in the atlantic area, we concluded that the entire business model of selling CDs in music stores is one whose days are numbered. We look forward to the launch of iTunes in Canada and other countries. We see this as an opportunity to market out music internationally, without having to undertake the cost and effort of "physical" distribution. In short, we believe the future of the music business is entirely online. I personally hope that SOCAN recognizes soon enough that the online market is likely to be their greatest opportunity, not a threat. Suing the internet service providers seems to me like biting the hand that feeds us. There is definitly illegal activity still going on on a mass scale, which can hurt artists, but there is also a lot of promise in the legitimate music businesses that are now emerging. There are a number of things SOCAN could be doing to combat illegal file sharing, AND encouraging more royaltiy revenues online: 1. Secure partnerships with the legitimate online music stores like itunes, e-music, CD Baby, etc... 2. Identify promotional opportunities for driving legitimate online music sales - Radio, TV, Print, so people will flock to paid music services and abandon illegal file swapping. 3. Form a partnership with ISPs [internet service providers] to monitor network activity related to file-swapping. There may be ways for ISPs to "block" file swapping through programs like Limewire by re-configuring their network. 4. Research the growing trend of Internet Radio - radio stations which broadcast live on the internet. Many can be found at shoutcast.com These stations are tapping into an international audience and many are unregulated and have no advertising [and therefore no revenue] but have a growing audience. Some stations are now able to charge a subscription fee, part of which "ought" to be shared with the artists. 5. Investigate ways SOCAN can collect not only more royalties, but more RAW DATA through internet technology. The online music stores have the ability to track each individu
Oh yes, the consequences of Canadian trade relations. I can just see it now. Prime Minister Chretien on behalf of the Canadian people and industries attempts to complain to their neighbor and largest "trading partner".
Chretien: 'allo? 'allo? We needs these monies!
Neighbor: (no response)
Chretien: 'allo? We are angry!
Neighbor: (no reponse)
Chretien: (to the media) We weel take dis to dee highest world trade body posseeble!
World: Oh no, it's Canada again. Quick, hide!
Chretien: 'allo?
Okay, I know it's not entirely accurate. It will likely occur involving soon-to-be-PM Paul Martin in place of Chretien. But then you lose the accent and that would just make the whole exchange even more unbearable.