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Canadian Minister Promises to Fix Copyright Law
Mashiki writes "In Canada, we can download Mp3's and their assorted goodness without too much of a hassle, recently the CRIA and their friends lost the court case. Well, it would appear that the new Federal Heritage Minister Helene Scherre, has spoken and those words were: 'As minister of Canadian Heritage, I will, as quickly as possible, make changes to our copyright law.'"
Her experience/resume doesn't seem to indicate that she might be well versed in the intricacies of the legal system regarding this issue:
Helene Scherrer, Minister of Canadian Heritage
Remember it isn't the act of obtaining an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work that is copyright infringement, it is the act of making such copies available to other people in the first place (if you didn't make then available to anyone else, then the copying would fall under the jurisdiction of fair use, and you would be fine).
So putting copyrighted files, whether or not someone else actually bothers to download them, is violation of copyright (unless of course permission to distribute in that fashion has been granted, of course) because you are distributing an unauthorized copy of the work.
An analogy might be a bookstore that photocopies a book without authorization, rebinds it, and puts it on the shelf with a price tag on it. Whether or not someone actually buys that book, the store has committed a copyright violation.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
see, in order to actually prove that there was a download they either have to either intercept a download in progress (good luck doing that...)
You have a lot to learn about tcpdump & ethereal, my friend.
Uploading is perfectly fine. The Judge in this case is clarifying the grey area that existed in Canadian copyright laws with regards to file sharing and the Private Copying extension to the Copyright Act. The Private Copying extension to Part 8 of Canada's Copyright Act allows people to make copies of other people's CDs/Tapes/Whatever for their own personal use. The judge is just clarifying the act by saying that file sharing falls under this law. This happens all the time with other laws as new technologies and ideas become mainstream, technologies and ideas that could not have been considered when the law was written. If file sharing had been prominent in Canada when the extension was written, it may have very well been mentioned as being legal (or illegal for that matter) in the Private Copying extension.
Or, if you want to let her know what you think personally, you can e-mail her here.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
But putting a copyrighted file that you have not received permission to distribute in your shared folder *IS* unauthorized distribution, no matter how you slice it.... even if nobody has yet downloaded it
I don't see a significant difference in the photocopier analogy.
Putting a file in your shared folder enables distribution, but it is not in itself distribution. In fact you point that out yourself in that perhaps "nobody has yet downloaded it". If nobody else has it, then it's not distributed.
Just like putting a photocopier in a library enables distribution.
Canadian ministers are legislators. Ministers must be members of the House of Commons (or Senators, but that's rare nowadays.) The executive branch of government limited to the Governor General, who gives royal assent to bills that have been passed by both chambers (and little else.)
As a member, the minister can certainly introduce a bill for consideration (indeed, in practice only bills introduced by ministers get passed, as there are few free votes in Canada.)
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
Or bands like Matthew Good, Hot Hot Heat, Propaghandi, etc.
There's a lot more to Canadian music than celine (celine sucks. Noone up here likes her...)
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
Fair use, btw, is granted permission by the copyright act and the copyright holder has no choice but to implicitly grant that permission.
There's no fair use under Canadian copyright law. The Copyright Act has exceptions provided for what it termed 'fair dealing'. Canadian courts have specifically refused to use examples from American case law with regards to fair use, as the provisions under the two different schemes are different in fundamental ways.
So in what world is putting a file that you do _NOT_ own the copyright on, and have not actually obtained permission from the copyright holder to copy for purposes beyond fair use, in a publicly shared folder for others to obtain _not_ a violation of the copyright act?
The argument that was used is that placing files in shared folders is passive. Distribution, which is what is prohibited, is active. It seems to be comparable to someone who sends out a list of CDs they have, and then sends out copies to whomever wants them, but with a computer automating these steps on the user's behalf. This finding is contrary to what I assumed the courts would find on the issue, but I can at least understand the argument in this case.
_nfotxn
There are identical levvies (well, not in dollar amount but in structure) in the US. We pay money to the RIAA for every blank digital tape and CD sold. We also pay for recording devices which write to those types of media.
We only pay for Audio CDs. Data CDs used as audio CDs don't have that cost.
Implicit Evaluation with PHP
I've already emailed my MP to say just that. You can go here and enter your postal code to get your MP's email address.
New news forum for Canadians - CanadaSpeaks
The record companies will lose money as a result of slashing prices to compete. This will lead to them representing fewer acts and those will be only the ones that are safe bets (the heavily produced Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Enrique Iglesias, etc) and less of the risky (read: interesting) ones. Diversity in record stores will suffer as p2p flourishes. If you want an actual packaged CD of a band that is more intertesting than the aforementioned acts, you're eventually going to have to actually go out to their show and buy it from them yourself. I personally think that's a great thing. Supporting live music, giving more money to musicians and less to distributors is all good in my books. If you're a proponent of p2p filesharing as I am, don't later whine that there's nothing good in the stores.
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I'm afraid I have to disagree. Firstly, since cd sales do not appear to have suffered ANY ill effects in the 5 or so years that mp3s have been available to the public at large through file swapping services, I think its highly unlikely that the music industry will feel compelled to slash prices.
But more to the point, I think that the very bands you mentioned are the ones more likely to suffer as a result of fileswapping. Independant bands and lesser known names get exposure and sell more cds, while the big names who put out overmarketted crap are the ones who are downloaded.
The marketting may have convinced you that you have to have the new Britney spears album, but why ask mommy for the 15 dollars when you can just as easily download it. Meanwhile nearly all the cd's I've bought in the past few years have been of groups I've NEVER heard played on the radio and never would have heard of at all had I not downloaded a song beforehand.
If anything, I think the reason the music industry fights file sharing so hard is not because it hurts cd sales (we already know otherwise) but because it works against their efforts to create those "safe bets" you mentioned. Suddenly using media monopolies to ensure that the latest piece of crap the backstreet boys put out is played constantly on the radio doesn't have the effect it used to . .
...the copy is made on-demand. Is it made by the sharer, or the downloader?
Sharing a file in itself makes no copies. So, there's no copyright violation until an actual copy is made. And when a copy is made, one of the two parties is making the illegal copy, the question is which one.
Yes, it is made on the sharer's machine. But you may again argue that this is like making it on the library's photocopier. What the court seems to have found is that it is the downloader that is initiating the copy, and thus the downloader that is guilty of copyright infringement.
That, combined with the legality of making a copy for private use, means it looks like Canadians are home free. At the moment, neither sharer nor downloader can be prosecuted for copyright infringement. Something tells me that'll change. Quickly.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I was reading a Montreal newspaper a couple of days ago and they have picked up comments from some artists on the decision of the Canadian court to allow file-sharing.
So there's a singer who commented, can't remember his name, and he said that it's bad for the industry. He said that he himself haven't been affected because around here the customers are "loyal" but he's sure that p2p have a dramatic effect on the english part of Canada and on the US.
In short. UK and Australia try to hide record-breaking sales, this singer says that Quebec is not affected and yet the music industry is saying that p2p is a huge disaster that's gonna ruin there industry. Odds are that they are lying. Why? I'm not sure. The industry seems too old and too tired to adapt itself to change.
Probably not.
In Finland we pay similar levy, and nobody is talking about removing it even as they propose completely moronic new Copyright law based on the recent EU directive that, for example, makes it illegal to circumvent a copy protection to make a legal backup copy.
They want to have their cake *and* eat it too. And politicians are too clueless to stop it.
Don't blame the yanks for this one, it's all our (the British) fault.
No power? She's the MINISTER. This means her department drafts the laws, and subject to the wishes of the rich white guys in the back room, they get passed. If the government wants the proposed "fix" (ie, if the Liberal party gets enough payola), it gets the usual sham of democratic debate in the House of Commons and then gets passed by the majority government, who vote with their party or face falling off the gravy train. What country have YOU been living in that you don't know this?
I'd like to ammend your proposal. - Remove the position of Heritage Minister - Take away the CRTC's power to regulate content
Actually, with the Federal election around the corner, the "bitch" was invited to speak at a record industry function and no doubt has high hopes of being bribed (in the political donation sense).
I work in a Canadian government office, and an e-mail is treated exactly like a paper letter. In fact, the Heritage Minister's web site says that explicitly.
. cf m
http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/min/contacts/index_e
Sending an e-mail ensures that the minister will get feedback quickly after her comments, letting her know that there's a fire to put out.
Frankly, I don't see any new law happening before the next election, so the easiest solution is to vote the Liberals out. But be sure to let them know your intent anyway. I sent my e-mail off last night.
Yogurt in British Columbia
With a tax, the money goes to the government, with a levy, the money goes to a private (unelected) company/organisation/etc.
Not exactly. From my understanding, US Law allows for a 3% royalty payment on digital audio medium, which are such things as DATs and CD-R-Audio... not the regular CD-Rs that can be used for data or audio.
In Canada, we pay a much higher fee, $0.21 on each CD-R and $0.77 on each CD-R-Audio. So, on a 10-pack of CDs for $10, we pay an additional 21% for the levy.
Dave
FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
There is no way any government will willingly give up any revenue stream. We Canadians now pay a surcharge on the hard drives of devices like the iPod, which, like the CD-R tax, assumes that the average consumer is a copyright criminal and must be fined in advance.
Except that the "CD-R Tax" isn't technically a tax. If it were, it might actually be easier to swallow (though not much easier). It's a levy. It's collected by our government "on behalf of the music industry" and while government likely gets a percentage for collecting it, the majority of the money actually goes to the music industry. It's a revenue source, alright, but it's going towards padding the music labels' bottom line, not funding social programs.