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Canadian ISP to Name Music Swappers
Daemon writes "The Globe and Mail reports that Videotron, a Canadian ISP, will not be fighting the request to turn over the names of music swappers to the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). According to a lawyer for Videotron, producing the identities of Internet users alleged of wrongdoing happens so regularly that they believe that it is justifiable to hand over the names of people who share large volumes of songs on-line. The five Internet service providers named in the case -- Shaw Communications, Rogers Cable Communications, Bell Canada, Telus Communications and Videotron -- can't divulge the information without a court order because privacy legislation requires them to keep customer information sealed."
Shaw Cable is the source of a lot of the spam that I see. I think people should just vote with their feet on this one.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Canada is the one place in the world that you're actually shielded from being sued because you use file sharing software. So this is a scare tactic.
Don't subscribe to Videotron, because they don't give a shit about my rights.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
I guess that "pirate tax" on all recordable media is redundant and can be removed now? It was there to "protect the artists," but now the lawyers on the hunt trying to "protect the artists."
Not if it's actually illegal for them to give up customer information (due to privacy laws).
This is part of why I use a small-time isp. Not only am I supporting a local small business but there are so few customers (comparitively) that it wouldn't be worth it for anyone to ask for a list.
[..]"Piracy of music, piracy of TV, piracy of film -- it's all the same. It's piracy of intellectual property and cultural products," Mr. Sasseville said Thursday from his office in Montreal. "Nobody gets paid. Not only the big companies but also the creators. It's really important that we protect our culture."
IMHO that file shareing does not harm ones culture. The only thing it realy harms is big business. I am a musician myself and am under the camp that music should be free and people get paied for doing SHOWS.. The music itself should be promotional for the shows. And having almost signed a contract untill i read what i would get the musicians do not much per copy at all. They do make money on merchandizeing and doing shows.
Its a shame how deeply rooted the music industry is and what it can pull off. I just cant see how they are pulling the "culture" flag out of their pocket in this one. How does free music ruin culture? It only enhances culture due to the fact that more people are able to share in this cultural music. Atleast its just one ISP for now that is not protecting your privacy rights. But how long is it till others follow suit?
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The second you turn around and share something you downloaded, ripped, whatever, is when I believe you're breaking Canadian copyright law.
It's all about the amount of proof that exists and where the request is coming from.
Pedophiles are investigated by the feds who watch users on chat rooms, web sites, credit card bills, etc. They can get a court order for a net tap after they have sufficient evidence. Once they do gather this evidence the conviction is a sure thing because they've been thorough.
The CRIA matches Kazaa usernames with IP addresses and wants to know the ISP account holder's name so they can sue that person. They aren't careful enough to figure out who's actually sharing files and they don't download all of the shared files to make sure that they really are copyrighted. Who's to say they aren't mislabled personal tunes?
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Well, with Quebecor it's pretty simple. They use their newspapers to promote their TV shows. They use their TV shows to promote their artists and magazines. They use their "news" program, to present "news" about TV shows and music shows where their artist appear. They use their record stores to highlight their own artist. And they use all this media power to put out campaigns against downloading music on the web.
When you live in the province every day, you know it's all pretty well organized.
Although no one would seriously want to be exposed as a 'criminal' by the five corporations that control the world's music recordings, the only good aspect of being on this list is that you will be one of the few people that the music industry will hire to restructure their industry when they (finally) realize that their current business model simply doesn't work anymore.
One thing that the music industry doesn't seem to understand is that the MP3-P2P revolution has changed the way that people think about buying music recordings. In other words, the market is not going to go back to the way that it was ten years ago. If they do manage to stop all the file-sharing, it no longer follows that the file traders are going to restart buying recordings in the way that their older siblings and parents did previously. They will find other areas such as video games to spend their entertainment budgets.
It doesn't matter to the global entertainment corporations where people spend their entertainment budgets, because they own the entire global entertainment industry . They're going to get the money anyway; whether it comes from recordings, movies, concerts, games, whatever. It's just a matter of time before this concept sinks in on the upper management levels of the entertainment corporations and they tell the recording division executives to finally stop harrassing their customers to the point where those customers will make a focused effort to avoid buying any product produced by the company. This is the only real scenario that they have to worry about.
Eventually the copyright situation will change from micropayments from individual recordings (sorry, superstars) to a more cloud-like revenue stream shared by all the musicians of a particular genre. Recordings will be sold in giga-byte chunks with less emphasis placed on individual musician's product and more on 'bulk' collections of recordings of the same type of music. In a manner not unlike today's swapping of hard disks full of MP3 files among music collectors.
"It's peculiar, added Mr. Sasseville, that the ISPs are fighting the order so fiercely since many of them own entertainment subsidiaries that produce TV and film content"
So let me get this right... It's "peculiar" for a monopoly to NOT abuse it's position? What kind of world are we living in? It's normal for a business to take advantage of its conflict-of-interest position... and it's "peculiar" for a company to actually resist the urge to violate customer rights in one subsidiary in order to benefit another subsidiary.
Frankly Quebecor Media Inc. should be sued for monopolistic practices, conflict-of-interest, abusing their power, and violating customer rights.
I was not aware that sharing was ruled non-infringing. I stand corrected.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
According to a lawyer for Videotron, producing the identities of Internet users alleged of wrongdoing happens so regularly that they believe that it is justifiable to hand over the names of people who share large volumes of songs on-line.
What kind of justification is that? "ISPs get strongarmed into sacrificing customer anonymity all the time, so it's right whenever it happens-" remember way back when people were actually afraid of what people could get away with using the anonymity the internet provides? It'd be one thing if all it took was a lawsuit to get ISPs to release customer data- nowadays it merely takes the implied threat of a suit. I understand that ISPs do not want to be held accountable for the illegal activities of their subscribers, but I think there is a middle ground somewhere between omerta and apparently being the result of a merger between a utility company and the Stasi.
And however you may feel about the issues of illegal music downloading and intellectual property and whatnot, I think you can agree that industry associations have acquired far too much authority- how on earth did we let the RIAA, CRIA, etc. transform from professional organizations into law enforcement? As befits my name, I pronounce that TOTAL CARP.
First they don't want us to buy/sell EQ merch over ebay. Now they want the exclusive contract. TOTAL CARP. -mfh
Honestly, flaimbait as this must be, I think people who get caught illegally swapping deserve it... you people are talking about the invasion of your privacy... as if you have the right to illegally distribute music. If you get away with it, then good for you. No real harm done. If you get caught, don't bitch, it is illegal. Just like smokin marijuanna.. It's so good to get away with, but you expect to get in trouble if you're caught. *shrug*
Speak for yourself.
The position of the CRIA is tenuous at least due to the media levy. They have either already been paid, or are attempting to eliminate the levy-they can not have both, and the levy is rather supported. Canada, despite the minor cultural similarities in some areas, is not the US and is not governed by its laws. Providing support for the CRIA is not valid as they have been paid already for the music distributed. This case likely is only fodder for the media so that they can claim it necessary to increase the levy to cover the long-term effects of the heroically large distributors.