Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Even for Canadians.
I wonder what she means by "Fix" when talking to the recording industry. I have a feeling that it would coincide perfectly with "break" to everyone else.
The real criminals don't break laws; They write them.
This is just one minister. Whether or not she can pass any bills is up for debate. The bottom line is that we pay levies now to download music, and the music industry shouldn't be able to make us pay levies and buy music. They can't screw us twice without someone noticing. Recently someone noticed too.
Hi there
There is no doubt that the singers and other supporting personnel do need to make money from their talents. For this to happen, people have to buy their music. But when people share music collections on P2P services, the artistes are, without doubt, robbed of their fruits of labour.
However, at the same time, it must be noted that more c90% of proceedings from CD sales go to the record labels. P2P sharing hits more the big record labels than the actual artistes.
A P2P system where the artistes get paid per song downloaded would be an ideal solution.
Canadian Idol winner Ryan Malcolm expressed skepticism, and suggested the Canadian music biz find a way to live with file-sharers.
"Whether people download or not, as long as they're listening to music," he said.
"I think it's a challenge for the industry, to try and find a new way to survive."
The vast majority of artistes vehemently support electronic means of music distribution over the CD method. They have been ripped off by record labels for too long. Sadly, the United States of America, has now become United Corporations of America, and all laws dealing with P2P file sharing has been enacted according to the dictates of the rich record labels and their lobby groups. The wishes of the artistes are hardly ever taken into consideration. It'll be a sad day indeed if the much more socially progressive nation of Canada follows in the footsteps of her corporacratic Southern Neighbour.
Moderate this comment
Negative: Offtopic Flamebait Troll Redundant
Positive: Insightful Interesting Informative Funny
Nothing to see here
Of course it won't.
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?
In the same world where a library can place a photocopier in the same room as books without getting sued. In fact, the judge in this case made that analogy and cited as precedent a case several weeks ago where a law library had been sued.
Why exactly is this rated +4 Funny? In canada, we pay a levy (not a tax, theres a difference) on our blank media that goes towards those music industries whiners. If they plan on making Copyright law such that Downloading becomes illegal, then fuck me paying extra for the CDs that I use for lagitimate uses.
.
Buy off a minister to change the laws for you.
Just think, our very own Senator! Cash value 1/100 of senate...
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Of course there's a difference between a levy and a tax. A tax would go into the same government General Account that all taxes do, but the levy goes to CRIA.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Yeah, and the irony is stealing is closer to what the Corporates are doing, because they are reducing the public's access to stuff - either by extending copyright periods (retroactively even) and reducing/removing "fair use".
When you copy something the owner still has full access to the original.
But when you extend a copyright on something that would have entered public domain, the public loses what would have been rightful access to it.
So who are the real thieves?
Pity too many people are too ignorant to see that - they have been intentionally brainwashed by the Corporates - with deceptive terms and phrases like Intellectual Property, Piracy, Copying=Theft.
I've written to my local newspaper regarding this, and they did print it (but naturally the industries concerned have a stronger lobby and voice than I do), maybe more people should write in and educate the rest.
Let's put it all on the table if we're going to deal with this problem seriously and take a good, hard look at how musicians are compensated from both ends -- producers and consumers.
I have a feeling a lot of record companies would tone down the rhetoric or employ frantic hand waving if their business practices were exposed to some scrutiny. I do not understand why artists haven't brought up the issue of royalties before the Internet and I'd wager the total value of royalties "lost" to file sharing pales in comparison to the amount record companies extort.
Personally, I do not download music from Kazaa and the like, but I have used Puretracks. If services like Puretracks or iTunes existed years ago we might not be in the mess we are now.
Just an ammendment to clarify my views:
While I support p2p, I think there are consequences that people should be aware of. 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.
Stack overflow: pid 352258, proc httpd, addr 0x11f7ffff0, pc 0x12000195c Segmentation fault (core dumped)
I hate it immensely when governments LOOSE court cases, and then cry poor baby, and then change the laws, like fuck the law, i mean if they loose, they really can 'force' it so they can win. Part of the court ruling should be that the govt cant then go back and 'fix' the laws. Why have laws, lets have a dictatorship since basically the govt does what it wants to a large extent, until they get voted out but the boys already have their big business deals and friends in high places...
It happens everytime btw, not just about (C) crap, but even minor laws or small so called 'loop holes'.
Rise up!! Revolution be cometh 2012.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Copyright Goon: Your honor, we want the ISP to turn over the name of the user who has IP adress 14.34.23.29 because they are sharing "Our Song", which is our copyrighted material on the Internet.
Judge: Okay, how do you know that a computer 14.34.23.29 is committing copyright infingement against your copyrighted material.
Copyright Goon: They're offering our material up for sharing over the StealTheirMusic protocol for anybody to download.
Judge: Okay, can you prove that anybody actually downloaded that material?
Copyright Goon: Yes, because we downloaded "Our Song" from that server.
Judge: Uhm... that's not an unauthorized copy being made if you downloaded your own song. You started the download, you authorized the copy being made.
Copyright Goon: Uhm... okay. Can we search the guys computer to see if there's transfer logs that prove he transfered "Our Song" to somebody else?
Judge: No. You've gotta show that there's been an infigement first. You can't go blindly fishing like that.
Copyright Goon: Can you make the ISP let us get a trace on that IP's outbound traffic so we can look for a transfer?
Judge: No. That's still fishing.
Copyright Goon: But we're sure they're stealing "Our Song" out there. Our sales are down!
Judge: Come back when you've got some proof...
If we're talking about someone making just over minimum wage working in a music store, yeah, that's a real job. If we're talking about the sound technicians who do the grunt work in the production of the music, yeah, that's a real job.
If we're talking about the corpulent assholes who sit at the top of the company, who actually make no music, who add nothing to the value of the CD, and who take the vast majority of the artist's record sale income, and yet whine about p2p (and the apparent loss of funds to such that makes them unable to purchase that ruby-encrusted crack pipe), then no, that's not a real job.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
The recording industry should not make artists sign over their copyrights. If the music execs purport to protect the poor artists, then they should do business with these artists without requiring that they sign over anything.
The music execs should stop promoting all the garbage music that they promote. This is the real cause of declining music sales. If the music execs would promote quality music instead of this garbage, they would most likely see increased sales. But instead of doing business wisely and increasing profits through smart management and marketing, they prefer to litigate.
The music execs should stop overcharging for CDs. This is probably the second cause of declining music sales. People simply don't want to pay $20 for an album, and one that contains 1 or 2 good songs and 8 filler tracks to take up space. If the music execs would lower music prices instead of raising them and then wondering why sales decline, they would most likely see increased sales. But instead of doing business wisely and increasing profits through smart management and marketing, they prefer to litigate.
The music execs should pay the artists the larger portion of the pie when it comes to music revenue. If the sale of a fifteen dollar album currently earns the artists about two cents, then that is a very sad situation, and it means that the music execs are the ones screwing the artists over, not those downloading MP3 tracks. The music execs should pay roughly 95% of the profits to the artists, and keep the 5% as their fees. Not the other way around. But instead of doing business wisely and increasing profits through smart management and marketing, they prefer to litigate.
In other words, the pirates are the music execs. But they use P2P users as their scapegoat, blaming them for a reduction in music sales, when the evidence is highly questionable at best, and is probably nonexistant.
MUSIC EXECS: *Y*O*U* ARE THE PIRATES!
It won't go away for a very simple reason:
The levy had nothing to do with the legality of the piracy in the first place.
The chronology was: levy, court ruling, minister's comments.
Now as for the court ruling, it doesn't exactly mean as much as its made out to. Check out the posting from Mike Jenkinson on the subject at http://www.the-newsroom.com (his "anti-blog" doesn't have day-to-day links, so you'll have to scroll).
Regardless, the levy already was in place when there was a "legitimate/illegitimate" discrepancy in the popular version, so it doesn't make a difference. Making a cassette tape of baby's first words for grandma still suffers the same levy as making an MP3-CD of 900 songs.
Please, take the extra 30 secs, hit Print buy an envelope and send your comments to:
Hon. Helene Scherrer
Member of Parliment
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
(Contact Page)
No postage required. (If your letter prominately states that it is going to an MP, no postage is required)