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CRIA Prepares To Sue P2P Copyright Violators

Posted by timothy on from the cold-up-there dept.

ergo98 writes "The Canadian version of the RIAA, the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association), has begun laying the PR groundwork for an initiative similar to that pursued by the RIAA in the US - threatening to file lawsuits against individual file sharers (specifically uploaders). They claim that CD sales have dropped by 23 per cent since 1999, attributing that drop to P2P, and apparently it isn't enough that the Canadian music industry gets a hefty presume-you-are-a-criminal levy attached on various devices and media." Many readers also point to the Globe and Mail's version of the story. dsanfte writes "They will apparently only be targetting uploaders, because in the Copyright Board's judgement, P2P downloading is legal under Canadian law."

5 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. Stay out of trouble by downloading legal music by MichaelCrawford · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads:

    You don't need to worry about getting sued by the Recording Industry Assocation of America or arrested by the FBI if you download legal music. Many independent and unsigned musicians offer downloads of their music in hopes of attracting more fans. Here's some music from my friends The Divine Maggees, Oliver Brown and Rick Walker's Loop.pooL.

    If everyone started downloading legal music instead of violating copyright with the file sharing programs, we would make short work of the RIAA, because people would start buying CDs directly from the artists and seeing their shows instead of enriching the major labels by buying CDs from the bands the labels have chosen for us to listen to. The RIAA would also have no cause to complain - these music downloads do not infringe copyright because the artists give you permission to download them.

    Besides giving you lots of links to legal downloads, the article goes on to discuss how you can change the law to make p2p filesharing of proprietary files legal. I think that could happen if I could get all sixty million US file traders to read the article in time for the November 2004 elections. So far the article is getting read by about 500 people a day, but it needs to be read a couple of orders of magnitude more often between now and November if it's going to effect the election. Please read What You Can Do To Help.

    Please copy and distribute this article. It has a Creative Commons license.

    --
    Request your free CD of my piano music.
  2. Should taxpayers pay for this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When my car is stolen, when my house is broken into the police says "sorry, no resources" to catch them...
    Should taxpayers really pay police, FBI, etc. for playing collection agent for the RIA?

  3. Recording Industry vs. World - round 2. Ready, ste by grmb1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    BTW, in Russia downloading music is too expensive. Average home broadband bandwidth is around 0.1$/MB. However pirated CDs full of MP3s cost about 2$ and are on sale everywhere - flea market, regular shops (govt. doesn't give a fuck). The choice of MP3s is amazing - rarities, bootlegs, full discographies, etc....

    So, USA people, welcome to Russia!

    Hmm...could be a good idea for business... "Fuck RIAA, buy our exclusive 'Russia CD-Tour'.".

    --
    -- grmbl woz heer
  4. Fair enough... by rokzy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...IF THEY GET RID OF THE LEVY

    I thought the justification for the levy was to legitimise downloading mp3s? If they now want to get rid of that "service", where's the justification for the levy? Maybe they're trying to pull another scam like when CDs were new;

    1980s
    1. raise prices because of set-up costs
    2. forget to lower after making money back
    3. profit

    2000s
    1. raise prices because of mp3 traders
    2. forget to lower after putting traders in jail
    3. profit

  5. Re:yes.... by CrowScape · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually it's probably more due to competition from the DVD arena. When I spend money on entertainment, it's in the form of a couple DVDs that I can pick up for 17-23 USD, a much better bang-for-my-buck than even $13.50 for CDs. And no, I don't download mp3s. My DVD collection has fast outpaced my CD collection, and I wouldn't compare DVDs to VHS, as I rarely touched that God-awful format. For Christmas I used to have people asking for CDs, but as my friends and relatives started aquiring DVD players, they also started replacing their CD requests with DVD requests.

    Of course, this is all anecdotal

    --
    common sense: noun
    What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.