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Canadian Recording Industry Goes After P2P Users
Txiasaeia writes "Taking its cue from its American counterpart, the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) has begun the hunt for music file swappers. Unlike the RIAA, the CRIA are trying to find 29 (!) swappers only who use either Shaw, Telus, Rogers Cable, Bell Sympatico or Quebec's Videotron. Some companies like Shaw are openly opposing the request, whereas others, like Videotron, are pretty much planning on rolling over once the paperwork is done. Videotron customers beware: they say that they're 'actually delighted that the CRIA is doing what it's doing.' Arguments in the case begin on Monday in Toronto."
This is the country that already has some pretty high media levies based on the assumption that illegal copies are being made. It's currently $0.21 (data CD) and $0.77 (audio CD), but there are proposed increases, including an $840 levy on each 40GB iPod! ($0.021/MB)
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I'm not surprised at all that Videotron would support that. They are owned by Quebec's biggest (only big) media conglomerate, Quebecor.. Which is also the world's largest printer (Quebecor World), but that's pretty separate from Quebecor Media...
So Quebecor media also owns, appart from Videotron (cable), the biggest TV network (TVA), the most read newspapers (Le journal de Montreal and Le journal de Quebec), quite a few magasines and more importantly in this case, Musicor.. a record label.. They are not well known outside Quebec though, because all of their media are in French... but they are THE dominant player in Quebec...
"Uh. Did I miss something? Did MP3 ripping from CD get banned in the USA while we weren't looking?"
It's more of a grey area in the US, especially since the DMCA. While it has historically been viewed as 'fair use' to create a backup copy of a copyrighted work, circumvention of a copy protection scheme (no matter how pathetic and ineffective it may be) was made illegal by the DMCA. Also, many CDs ship with a EULA of some sort, which often prohibits creating even a single copy of the works contained within.
Essentially, it's something for which arguments could be made either way based on previous rulings and copyright laws, but it's something which would probably never actually be prosecuted.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
As far as I know, making a personal copy of your own CD is still legal in the US. In Canada, however, you are allowed to make a personal copy of an album that you don't own.
In other words, I can borrow a friend's new CD and make a copy with no laws being broken.
In Canada downloading music from the net is legal. Owning music on your hard drive for which you do not have the original CD is also legal.
;-)
What is illegal is uploading (sharing) songs which you do not have distribution permission from the copyright holder to the general public. For example, if i open a private FTP site and i prove that only my friends have access to it, then it falls neatly under 'fair use' clause. More concretly if i go to my friends house and rip all my music on his computer, this falls under 'fair use' also.
The Canadian copyright act is also a reason why the CRIA gets a levy on blank medias and hard drives and can't sue file swappers as efficiently as the RIAA. Hence the 29(!). lol.
Don't take this as a legal advice though i could be wrong, or it could cost you a lot to defend this position.
(If anybody is going to contest this, at least do a search first on previous Slashdot stories. This has been covered many times and even the Copyright Board of Canada has ruled that downloading is legal, but distributing is not.)
There is no bypassing of encryption or other protections here (unless you count the idiot bit that's ignored by everything), so the DMCA doesn't apply. Also, ANALOG and digital copies to DAT (perhaps also MD, not sure) are explicity permitted by the home recording act.
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MP3's are frowned upon by certain "people". In fact, these "people" have setup a web site for consumers who are "confused" about file sharing. They even have a message board, which I strongly encourage you to post there about your opinion of the RIAA. This was orignally mentioned in orthogonal's journal.
Luc Lavoie
executive vice-president - Corporate Affairs
Quebecor inc.
Office : (514) 380- 1974
Mobile : (514) 236- 8742
lavoie.luc@quebecor.com
Yeah, this is the actual contact info, see the end of this page..
S
Here's a link to the The "Blank CD-R Tax" FAQ, which is a pretty complete FAQ on copyright with regards to CDs in Canada. The short answer is, there's a levy on all media (like CD-Rs, mp3 players, etc), but a provision the law that enacts the levy allows you to make a copy from the original for personal use.