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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.
Isn't music swapping legal in Canada since the courts struck down the law making it illegal? What's going on here?
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."
Class action suit, anyone?
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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... is that Videotron is owned by Québécor Media, who also owns a healty chunk of the local music industry. In other words, they are highly motivated to fight file-sharing of copyrighted material.
This has a strong Sony feel to it.. the same company owning entities in domains that have conflicting interests, and end up shooting themselves in the foot.
Ah, yes. Terrorism and pedophilia.
Two boogeymans to allow any kind of invasion of privacy.
Bot Assisted Blogging
well, clearly neither the tax on blank media nor lawsuits galore are doing a sufficient job of protecting the artists.. I think its time to pull out all the stops:
Encase the artists in a solid block of lucite and store them in a secure warehouse.
Think about it. Lucite offers a good level of protection to recording artists like Bryan Adams, Celine Dion and Avril Levine, shielding them from pirates, pigeons and the corrosive effects of oxygen. Also Lucite is clear which means they can still be viewed and photographed, which I believe is their strongest skillset.
Now there are those that say "how will they record music when they are encased in a solid block of lucite?" Thats the beauty of this plan: They've already recorded their music. More of the same is simply redundant, and the world is spared the 'come-back' album where they croon the greatest hits of Frank Sinatra, but with a moog synth and a drum machine backing track.
I do believe this is the only plan that will really be a 100% effective way to protect the artists.
Starsucks
It's clear to me that using FUD, Quebecor (using Videotron) wants to raise up the profits in its music division.
My 0.02$.
okay? let me get this straight:
I paid a 25$ levy on my iPod because it was assumed that I pirate music. This money was supposedly sent to the artists, to compensate them. My iPod is full of CDs I own and ripped myself.
We have to pay double or even triple the price on our CD/DVD media because it is assumed that we pirate music. Again, this music is sent to the artists. Most of the stuff I burn is my own personal data.
So. The artists get paid, and the music swappers get sued. Where does the money go? With all these 'taxes' you would think it would be legal to download music. If it is not, then can I get my 25$ levy and the difference in recordable media prices back?
The MIT student newspaper publish the RIAA complaint today . They listed the IP numbers, dorm address, song titles, but not students names.
Now lets assume that the sharing and downloading of music files is free and legal.
Then lets assume that people continue to go to concerts and bars where musicians play as they have been doing.
What happens to the music industry?
The large record industries go under. What are the impllications of this? The Britanny Spears, Jessica Simpsons, and Clay whatshisnames fall off the music radar, and smaller bands gain more attention.
By making music sharing and download illegal, whose interests are we serving (big record business, or small local bands)? Can small local bands survive without selling cd at HMV?
This is my last post.
[6th Estate]
I'm not all that keen on Videotron's capitulation here, but I'm not going to change ISPs over it.
Now, just to clear up some misconceptions....
Back when blank media became a consumer good, the media companies feared losses of revenue to copying. They convinced the federal government to assess a fee on all blank media and recording devices to make up for those losses.
There was a catch, however. The government can't tax an illegal activity. In order to mandate these fees, the government had to legalize the duplication of content for personal use. So we Canadians have been able to tape our albums, record TV shows, etc. within the bounds of the law for the longest time.
Then came the digital revolution.
The entertainment moguls demanded that the same fees be assessed on CD writers, blank CDs, blank DVDs, etc. The government agreed and extended the financial protection - but as a consequence also had to extend the right to make copies on the new media. As a result, downloading content is (still) pefectly legal in Canada.
Uploading copyrighted content, however, is not legal and never has been. It may at first seem odd that we can download but not upload, but it's a consequence of the laws that give us the right to copy, not the right to share.
The Canadian Recording Industry Association went to the Copyright Board to change this right and was Heismaned. The board ruled that they have been collecting the assessed fees and that that money was the industry compensation. Furthermore, the board ruled that such rights extend to downloading files. The board did extend the fee to cover digital music players.
More here: http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5121479.html
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
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.
I did vote with my feet - and became a Shaw subscriber. You see, Shaw is the one ISP in Canada that is fighting the hardest against the requests being made by the CRIA. Of the five big players in the ISP market, Videotron sides closest with the CRIA, and Shaw is the farthest. The others (Telus, Bell) are playing a wait-and-see game.
Why report this as a new story? It's an old story - Videotron took this position 2 years ago when the case was filed. It was decided against the CRIA last year. The CRIA have recently appealed, but they appear to have few grounds, given the judgement that they had no case on multiple grounds.
Though admittedly this is a shameless plug (please forgive), I've created a website for just this purpose. BlackListedISP.com is where you can go to see which ISPs are compromising your privacy without a fight. Currently you can just submit ISPs, but soon I'll have a page up with a full list.
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