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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."
Article sez:
For example, it has been legal in Canada since 1998 to make a single copy of a recording for personal use, such as copying a CD onto your hard drive or MP3 player. But the practice is illegal in the U.S.
Uh. Did I miss something? Did MP3 ripping from CD get banned in the USA while we weren't looking?
Hi. I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such popular Canadian albums as "Nothing But Rush: A History of Canadian Popular Music".
Oh wait a minute, that is pretty bad.
Oh happy, happy days
Article sez:
Videotron is in a unique position because its parent company, Quebecor, also sells music, Videotron says it is concerned about copyright protection and considers file sharing to be "theft."
Well, there we have it. ISP attitudes on copyright and privacy issues are completely tied to how much content the ISP's parent company owns. Road Runner customers beware, and Comcast customers better hope the Disney deal doesn't go through.
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)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I don't understand why nerds get so up in arms when people defend their intellectual property.
If people are breaking the law and sharing music then they deserve what happens. Yeah yeah yeah, they should make sure the person they're suing is the right one and they should be reasonable about the penalties. But they certainly don't have to just stand by and bend themselves over a barrel.
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...
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
>For example, it has been legal in Canada since 1998 to make a single copy of a recording for personal use, such as copying a CD onto your hard drive or MP3 player.
>But under the Copyright Act, it remains illegal to give or sell a CD copy to a friend, since it's not for personal use. In the same vein, distributing copies to friends online is prohibited.
I have a solid legal footing why I am a Kazza-leach.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Why does Canada have to imitate the U.S. in all things? It would be nice to have our government to take a stand against the oppressive RIAA and stop this litigation before it gets going too far. The Canadian people do not want Big Brother to be accusing and convicting the 12 year old swappers like the U.S.
Stay tuned for new sig...
I guess in this case you CAN really blame canada :)
I'm glad this crap isn't taking place in the Netherlands. For now downloading is legal here, uploading isn't.
Some dutch artists are trying to influence the government into changing the law here to go after the downloaders as well.
If cds were cheap here, I would say "all power to them" but right now they cost about $30,- each.
What is the approx. price of cd's in the US? a somewhat empty mind wants to know.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Not entirely on-topic, but I'd like this to be heard...
I've never had more trouble with any internet/TV company in my life. Horrible customer service, no explanations for outages, outrageous rates. I had to hire a lawyer to get out of a $900 cable TV bill. Not only did I never sign up for cable TV, I don't even own a TV!
But with the way the market works here in Canada (I don't know about the states or elsewhere) there is only one cable provider in each of the major urban centers. So, so much for healthy competition. I'm not at all surprised that Videotron will simply hand over IPs/names to the CRIA, it saves them paperwork and hassles, and fits in with their total disregard for customer service and respect that they've made themselves known for in Montreal.
Why doesn't it surprise me that videotron is willing to roll over? Videotron is a Quebec based company.
Typical French, "We surrender!"/
Maybe its because they are owned by a huge media conglomerate that's also has music label?
Next up: Sun rises, sun sets.
Anyone else getting really tired of reading about *IAA? We're all well aware of the issues involved, I don't really see the need for this to be front page material nearly every day.
Let's have some priorities, please. Like our daily SCO story...siiigh. It's times like these that I wish we had voting rights like Kuro5hin, because every morning I load slashdot, I have trouble telling whether it's actually new news, or the same 2-3 topics over and over.
Please help metamoderate.
"Working on behalf of major record labels, the CRIA is reportedly hunting for 29 Canadian customers from at least five different ISPs"
Damn! they're on to me and my 28 cohorts!
Peer to peer sucks bandwidth, a direct cost to any service provider. The only reason any ISP is going to stick up for users is for the PR, Fact-o'-life.
Spyder
when you see an industry suing their customers, i can't wait till this spreads to other industries
You must be new here. You can pay your $699 on your way out.
All your base are belong to us!
Actually quite the opposite. Here in Canada, Quebec is famous for refusing to go along with anything that the Federal government or other provincial governments want to do. Unless it somehow results in them getting more money or more rights. Subject of course to them being able to use the funds however they wish.
Does this mean the CRIA is going to rebate or cancel the levies I pay on every CD-R I buy so that I can presumably burn CRIA content?
Something tells me we'll be hearing from Canadian music-swappers about how "the record companies only put one or two good songs on a CD...". If they, and all their U.S. counterparts, vote with their money (i.e. don't buy CD's, or iTunes songs, etc) and stop downloading music, the *IAA will have nothing to explain away lost profits, and the record companies will be forced to produce decent music to survive.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Videotron customers beware: they say that they're 'actually delighted that the CRIA is doing what it's doing.
they're delighted because that would reduce users bandwidth usage. in videotron's POV, they only care about the company saving money. i dont think they really care about the "non-ethical" aspects of music sharing. they're one of the first ISPs in quebec (quebequeers) that started the monthly download quota limit. and of course by saying they're delighted, it just makes themselves look "ethical".
i used to use bell canada, and all of a sudden in a month they charged me $100 because of going over the bandwidth download limit. i didnt get any sort of notification. about 12 months later, many people started to complain and they took off the cap. it's all about ISPs making and saving money.
my blog
Slashdot Response: "Why do the police have to do the **AA's dirtywork! This is blah blah blah corporate shills blah blah blah."
Scenario 1B: Copyright holder privately goes after copyright infringers.
Slashdot response: "Can you believe the nerve of these people. This is what the police are for! blah blah blah nazi stormtroopers blah blah blah."
Scenario 2A: New, obviously-designed-primarily-for-warez-pr0n-and-m
Slashdot Response: "Technology is blameless! Go after the infringers, but leave technology alone!"
Scenario 2B: Infringers gone after.
Slashdot Response: "Can you believe the nerve of those people shaking down college students!"
Scenario 3A: Copyright is used to protect somebody else's intellectual property
Slashdot Response: Copyright has outlived its usefulness! Viva la revolucion!
Scenario 3B: the GPL is violated.
Slashdot Response: Hang em high!
Hasn't the CRIA hurt us enough with CanCon?
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.
In India, Bollywood makes P2P servers for us.
In America, Hollywood attacks P2P servers for you.
I have doubts.
Don't start saying "We love you Quebec!" because we're different. Are you Don Cherry's brother?
Damn! This means I can't download the movie Strange Brew along with Bryan Adams songs anymore!
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
Thanks God, today you can download tons of various (good and bad) music files using just Google. I don't even know, why people use P2P? Using a simple script you can have easily few gigabytes of music just in few days.
But is it safe?
Less is more !
Are you Don Cherry's sister? From la belle province.
Despite all the arguements I think this whole thing is pretty increadible. The Canadian government has been taxing media and using the funds gathered to pay artists. Now they are allowing the RIAA to pursue a legal recourse (albeit through nominally Canadian channels). It appears Paul Martin is Bushs .
Canada has a pretty decent history of not prosecuting laws that are still being debated (While weed legalization was being discussed police stopped small scale arrests,[Still busted some big grows]) I don't think there are any (Canadian, American's are stupid) politicians who don't have doubts about enforcing the ridiculous American IP laws.
My only conclusion is that this issue has been sacrificed as part of a deal. I'm enough of a realist to know that deals of this nature need to be struck. I don't think that whoever allowed this to happen realizes the consequences.
First we are bowing to the American's in such a way as to forever compromise Canada's reputation as an honest unbiased power (Lester B. Pearson, etc.), second we are an example to other countries. If we fold IP law will remain restrictive and useless until society once again returns to a sane level of socialism or another technological breakthrough on the order of magnitude of the internet takes place causing people to reconsider intellectual property. (Trying to think of something that fits this description leads me to a short list.) Either way you are condemning people in the third world to ignorance and poverty for another hundred years, the death toll is on your head. Depending on how seriously you think knowledge = power = life, Paul Martin might be worse than Hitler.
Simple form: Paul, if you are willing to negotiate our intellectual freedom we may decide to negotiate for it back, is one life too much to pay?
But under the Copyright Act, it remains illegal to give or sell a CD copy to a friend, since it's not for personal use. In the same vein, distributing copies to friends online is prohibited.
and a related article:
Canada deems P2P downloading legal
I'm in Canada and I've sampled a number of songs from the binary newsgroups: alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.* as the law allows me to (for now)
That's not a P2P service, obviously, but from the ISPs own newservers. So wouldnt the ISP make a better target? After all, arent they distributing content to 900,000+ subscribers (according to the article)?? Think of the damages one could claim against an ISP if they were found guilty of copyright infringement on that scale.
Why pick out 29 individuals to pursue legal recourse? Because it's about fear and publicity. These 29 people are not likely to have the inclination, resources, or will to fight an expensive legal battle. Like the RIAA cases, they will settle for a couple thousand $ and a press conference where they tearfully apologize for thier wrongdoings. Fellow canadians who do not follow the legal aspect of such issues closely will simply hear 'file sharers get sued' and freak out and think the downloading music is wrong: mission accomplished. Will the press make the point that personal copying in Canada is LEGAL when reporting these stories? Possibly, but I'm not betting on it.
The CD itself probably costs less than $0.21 to manufacture. What it boils down to is this: the music industry (and all of its lined pockets) want, pure and simple, a welfare program that's tailored specifically to them. And they have it. Hope all these CEOs feel good about being on the public dole.
If this happens in the US, it will be a blatant violation of due process, as such a tax implicitly accuses, tries, convicts, and sentences someone without ANY indication that they've even so much as THOUGHT about copying something.
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.
No. This would be an example of distribution, the same as if you made a copy of a CD and gave it to a friend. Both cases are not allowed.
isn't 29 the number of people in Canada who can actually get broadband?
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
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.
Coongratulations! you are supporting the legal effort against you.
And if you're buying Pepsi....
20 years? Are you kidding? Capitalism has survived at least twice that and this pattern repeats itself, over and over again.
Lenin was almost right. The consumer pays for the rope that business is going to hang them with.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
Rogers Cable is my ISP. The other day I got snail-mail spam from them, promoting their Digital Video Recorder and a movie-on-demand service.
I suspect they might crackdown on bittorrent movie downloads pretty soon... considering they have no monthly download cap.
Hopefully they upgraded their cable infrastructure to support the additional load for the set-top movie boxes, otherwise I'll be one unhappy high-speed cable customer.
And for those who dont know, Rogers also offers TV cable, Cellphone services, and operates a video rental store chain.
can be found in this FAQ.
- Audio cassettes (of 40 minutes or more in length): 29 each
- CD-R and CD-RW: 21 each
- CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio and MiniDisc: 77 each
- For non-removable memory permanently embedded in a digital audio recorder: $2 for each recorder that can record no more than 1 Gb of data, $15 for each recorder that can record more than 1 Gb and no more than 10 Gbs of data, and $25 for each recorder that can record more than 10 Gbs of data.
The number seems to be valid.
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
" [Videotron] they say that they're 'actually delighted that the CRIA is doing what it's doing.' "
...
... buy music " and they are accompanied by some of the "commercials" artists of Quebecor.
Well that's no surprise. Videotron is owned by Quebecor which owns a big part of the music market in Quebec. They own the music, the artists, their careers, musicstores
They are totally opposed to music sharing. Since a couple of months, they are leading a big campaign against file swapping. They also owns television channels and newspapers, so we are constantly reminded that getting music for free is illegal and bad.
You can see a couple of the ads they have on their website, one of the most "important" Quebec website, here.
They translates to " swapping harms the music artisans
Quebecor is evil.
that sucks. Don't associate us with Frenchs. We kicked ass in WWII and way before americans did so.
I'm sorry to say this already happened in the U.S., and even earlier than in Canada (the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992). At least we Canadians can legally make copies as partial compensation for this rip-off, you Americans just get to pay.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
2004-02-13 15:32:16 CRIA Seeks All 29 File Swappers in Canada (articles,music) (rejected)
It had a sense of irony and humour, y'know? Anyway, I really can't wait until they start handing out subpoenas. If I get busted (highly unlikely), I am *so* taking this to the courts! First of all, it's civil and not criminal so I won't go to jail, and second, we've got some fairly intelligent judges up here who would definitely be able to make a fair ruling on this case.
My defense: as soon as I heard that the CRIA was going to be following in the footsteps of their older American brother, I decided to never buy another CD and never download another MP3. This also includes refusing to buy music-related merchandise as well as concert tickets. I'm in my early 20's, so I've got many, many years of not purchasing music ahead of me.
Besides, if it's legal to download, then why shouldn't it be legal to upload? I mean, come on! The ONLY WAY you *can* download is if somebody sends you the file! Either prosecute both or neither!
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
maybe the ruling Liberal party in Canada is a bit busy at the moment with public corporation scandals and an internal witch-hunt?
That's not insightful, it's Flamebait
Typical French, "We surrender!"
Typical anglo-saxon bigotry.
:wq
Videotron was the brainchild of Claude Chagnon, a very successful businessman in Quebec, who had a lot of interest in medias. Videotron had interactive TV in the late eighties, and invested a lot of money into bringing out cable internet to cover the most customers possible.
All changed when he decided to merge with Rogers Cable. Quebecor saw this as an opportunity and used nationalistic rantings and political influence to get the "Caisse et Placement du Quebec" to invest with Quebecor and avoid having a Quebec company join up with one from out west. I couldn't believe people actually believed all that BS but it worked. Instead of winding up with a coast-to-coast network with tons of users, a media giant wound up getting the biggest cable and high-speed internet provider in Quebec.
I was a tech support monkey when that happenend, and I couldn't believe it. We quickly saw where it was gonna go. Pierre K. Peladeau (that's french for Darl McBride, he's the a-hole son of one of the richest man ever in quebec, who passed away in the nineties) started complaining that the management of Videotron was one of the worst one he ever saw. He proceeded to turn almost all of the cable installation/service call work to sub-contractor, to get rid of the highly payed and qualified techs. He also wanted to lower the salary of the tech support people (making barely 15 bucks an hour on average), and transferring some of the load to his 8 bucks an hour slave call centers. The techs went on strike for a year (I was gone at that point), but Quebecor had the infrastructure to make it work without them (with the help of scabs).
Of interest is that our IP telephony project was in highly advanced stages before the buy-out, with techs using it at home for beta testing. That was quickly thrown out the window after Quebecor stepped in, along with many interesting R&D projects. That could have been big in a few years, but thank to the short sightedness of greedy PK Peladeau, Videotron will miss the boat. PKP managed to suck the soul out of the company to make it the most profitable for his short-sighted, greedy, spoiled kid mind.
I don't know if you can tell, but I don't like him too much either.
What's more, you have every right to get together with friends and make tape copies or digital copies of music on digital audio recording equipment.
I'm not sure what this means about copying a CD someone else bought to a tape, but copying a CD for a friend using digital audio equipment and audio cds is perfectly legal, and copying an audio tape to another audio tape is also legal. We pay a "tax" to the RIAA on every piece of digital audio equipment, audio CD, and audio tape to allow this per The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992.
Two items of interest: 1) This summer, through a fluke, I found that at least 3 unique IPS can run over TELUS' ADSL service. Technically, the DSLAMs are supposed to only allocate 2 IPs. This potentially destroys any basis for TELUS to claim unique identification of users by IP address. 2) It is possible, by looking at the HTML code for a Canadian online music retailer, to figure out how to get their entire music library to stream in high quality wma. The retailer appeared unconcerned when notified of this and deemed its exploit unlikely. Nonetheless, they've essentially made the copyrighted material "freely" and knowingly available on the web. Does anyone have feedback or thoughts on whether their actions constitute illegal file sharing per Canadian law?
Not exactly.
IT's more like "We KNOW that "audio cd-r" are specifically for copying audio, so we can tax that at the going rate.. but standard cd-r is not all for audio.. so we won't be able to get away with charging as high a levy on it.. so we'll just charge a tiny one for everyone, and it will work out".
I don't believe it is actually any seperate levy for pirating or legit copying.... it's just considered a different form of media with a different market.
Which it is.
In the music industry's twisted world.
Certainly newsworthy, if only because it's somewhat related to one of the biggest US stories of the last few years, so It's appropriate that /. posts it.
But, this is very early. It will take a while to play out, and there will be more news to come.
Before any of this can even get off the ground, there's Privacy Legislation to consider. Not a one of these ISPs can comply with the demand for names (even if they are suspected of wanting to, such as some have said about Videotron) unless they vet the order with whole bunch of lawyers.
Chances are the lawyers will nix it right there; the penalties for complying if it violates the Privacy Act are very serious, and will be assessed on the ISPs themselves.
Certainly CIRA is not a law-enforcement agency, and John Law won't be investigating any part of a civil complaint. So, a court order will have to compel the ISPs to provide any information before any of this can start.
Canadian courts can consider judgments from any jurisdiction, so although it won't be a legal precedent that must be followed, the recent US cases denying the names to the RIAA will almost certainly be part of the ISPs arguments against complying.
Then there's the matter of violations of the Copyright Act. It's quite clear that uploading music is against the law (there are quite a few paragraphs in the legislation that spells out a wide variety of specific examples), so not much problem there.
Finally, there's the matter of penalties. This is where it gets kind of strange. CIRA can't hope to get much money from anyone it successfully sues; there's no statutory penalty scheme as in the US and even if there were, Canadian law requires penalties to fit the level of harm.
The penalty phase would be pure speculation, but as food for thought I expect the courts are going to value the cost of uploading a song in mp3 format as worth perhaps 99 cents if they base it on market value (PressPlay online music store in Canada). That's 99 cents once. Next song, next 99 cents.
I would be shocked if they value it higher without any financial gain from the defendant; cases of "true piracy" (1) don't extend much beyond confiscation and a fine loosely based on the value of goods duplicated.
Certainly I could be wrong, but I don't see anyone getting dinged for anything even remotely approaching the statutory penalty for a single instance of infringement in the US.
CIRA can hope to get some favorable rulings, and wave that around as a warning to others. But the cost of each prosecution is going to vastly exceed the value of a judgment, although they might be awarded costs as well.
And there's great danger in a precedent that doesn't advance CIRA's position (starting with the Privacy Law obstacle). It's risky for them to start this stuff up, but since they have, we can assume they're willing to accept the risk.
(1) I've used the definition of Piracy used by IFPA, the umbrella organization for such national agencies as CIRA and the RIAA. They define Piracy as commercial copying and sales of CDs; essentially what legislatures refer to as Counterfeit duplication. By their own definiton, sharing music is not Piracy, which is why I used the phrase "true piracy" here.
I'm well aware that the term Piracy itself is somewhat controversial, but I take the position that English is a living language and definitions are as much about use as references in dictionaries.
I don't pay a cent to the RIAA when I buy CD-Rs here in Virginia. You'd better find someone else to blame for that bad policy -- America isn't responsible for this one, you guys came up with it on your own.
Besides, people keep telling me that it's wrong to label other nations as evil, but for some reason that doesn't apply when they get to talking about America.
Too late, Australia's got it now :-)
Or maybe these guys just beat them to it...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?