IFPI 'First Wave' Sues 247 In Europe & Canada

securitas writes "AP and many others report that the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry - IFPI - has sued 247 accused file-sharers in Germany, Denmark, Italy and Canada as part of an unprecedented, coordinated attack. The IFPI represents the global recording industry through its members - national associations like the IFPIG, DRIA, FIMI, CRIA and RIAA - and says it will launch more international lawsuits in the months ahead. You may also want to read the official IFPI 'first wave' press release/related documents and a statement by the IFPI's chairman and CEO. Lots of coverage at AP/AJC, USA Today, the New York Times, Reuters/CNN Money, ZDNet/CNet, Bloomberg , netimperative and the BBC. The timing of the international legal attacks is especially interesting in light of the recent study that indicates file-sharing has a negligible impact on music sales."

Comments

Re:Someone clue me in here...

[Zweistein_42]

You can legally _download_ music in Canada - it is covered by the levies we pay on the media (yay!:). You cannot legally _upload_ (i.e. share) music, as that makes you a "distributor" (and thus not covered under any form of personal use). It's the same reason why it is legal (in Canada) for me to borrow your CD and make a copy of it... but NOT for you to copy your CD and give me the copy. Same end result of course, but in first case, I'm copying for my personal use - in the second case, you are distributing something you don't have a right to distribute. IANAL, but I've followed Canadian copyright law for a while - the particular statute is reasonably clear once you understand the distinction between personal use (copying for myself) and distributing (copying or making available to others)

Re:Someone clue me in here...

[Mordaximus]

It is illegal to distribute copyrighted materials. You Can download an mp3, you cannot share an mp3 (Distribution).

You can make a personal copy of a CD, you cannot make a copy for someone else (Distribution)

Assume that when they say they are suing file sharers, that they are after those who make the files available...

Re:Ignoring a Common Cause?

[MoonBuggy]

The point is that copyright infringement is a crime, and the recording industry associations have the duty to find and prosecute those who commit it. (emphasis mine)

Why? The recording industry association don't create music, the recording industry association aren't needed to get the music out to the public anymore, the recording industry don't give the settlements to the artists and finally the recording industry lobby the fines up to rediculous amounts that would bankrupt any normal person and then offer to settle displaying that they don't need the fines to be as high as they are (the average settlement is just a few percent of the original charge, if they can afford to carry on this way then the fines are disporportionate) and that they are purely extorting money since nobody can afford to risk the full fine.

If the artists submitted the songs straight to ITMS, Magnatune, Napster or a similar system they could sell them at half the price and still make a greater amount since the middlemen who take most of the profit are gone. In the past artists couldn't set up CD presses or advertise themselves, but now they just need some studio time and a website - the RIAA and co. are redundant. With this system the artists could also, quite fairly, sue copyright infringers for the value that they deprived the artist of (say $50 per song to account for repeated uploads, and force them to pay legal fees if they loose).

If there's a gaping hole in this argument feel free to point it out, but I don't see anything that the artists can't do themselves/pay for independently rather than signing their rights to the RIAA's companies.

How You Can Fight Back

[MichaelCrawford]

I know that in the US at least, there are more people sharing files on peer-to-peer networks than voted for George Bush in 2000. I suspect the numbers are proportional in other countries.

If you work to reform the copyright laws, you can make the sharing of any file legal.

Here are some steps you can take to do this:

• Speak Out
• Vote
• Write to Your Elected Representatives
• Donate Money to Political Campaigns
• Support Campaign Finance Reform
• Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Practice Civil Disobedience

In the US anyway, copyright is not a Constitutional right. I suspect that it's not a fundamental right in most countries.

The reason I ask you to googlebomb my article in my signature here is that I'm trying to educate the peer-to-peer network users. I attract the readers by offerring links to lots of free, legal downloads, but give them a political education while I've got their attention.

Re:How You Can Fight Back

[Catamaran]

Right, but the emphasis is on LIMITED. Here are the words of Supreme Court Justice Breyer, dissenting:

The U.S. Constitution's Copyright Clause grants Congress the power to "promote the Progress of Science ... by securing for LIMITED TIMES TO AUTHORS ... the exclusive Right to their respective Writings.." The statute before us, the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, extends the term of most existing copyrights to 95 years and that of many new copyrights to 70 years after the author's death. The economic effect of this 20-year extension, the longest blanket extension since the Nation's founding, is to make the copyright term not limited, but virtually perpetual. Its primary legal effect is to grant the extended term not to authors, but to their heirs, estates, or corporate successors. And most importantly, its practical effect is not to promote, but to inhibit, the progress of Science, by which word the Framers meant learning or knowledge...

Re:Ignoring a Common Cause?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is called "Correlation not causation" and it is a major fallacy. Just because A is correlated with B doesn't mean that A caused B. Not only is the RIAA and the rest of their ilk making seriously flawed judgements about this, they are ignoring any other potential cause in favor of blaming the more convenient and profitable avenue, P2P applications.

If true, then p2p is perfectly legal there

[FreeUser]

You can legally _download_ music in Canada - it is covered by the levies we pay on the media (yay!:). You cannot legally _upload_ (i.e. share) music, as that makes you a "distributor" (and thus not covered under any form of personal use).

So if I have a song on my hard drive (legally ripped from my own CD), and I open the door for you to come to my hard drive and download that song, I haven't uploaded anything. Therefor, under Canadian copyright law, running p2p software such as bittorrent should be completely legal. Everything is being downloaded ... nothing is being uploaded to a server (except perhaps a message saying "hey, there's a file on my system and the door is open").

File sharing LEGAL in Canada

[diodeus]

Accoriding to an article I read:

"On March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the (Canadian) 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."

-- Copyright Board of Canada: Fact Sheet: Private Copying 1999-2000 Decision

See: http://techcentralstation.com/081803C.html