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CRIA Admits P2P Downloading Legal in Canada
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist is reporting that the Canadian Recording Industry Association — the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA — this week filed documents in Canadian court that seeks to kill the expansion of the levy on blank media to iPods since it fears that the system now legalizes peer-to-peer downloading of music in Canada. CRIA's President Graham Henderson argued in his affidavit that a recent decision from the Copyright Board of Canada 'broadens the scope of the private copying exception to avoid making illegal file sharers liable for infringement.'"
I guess that makes it ok for people purchasing blank media for completely legitimate uses to get charged extra for other people's piracy?
):
To our dear neighbors to the North, since your government seems to think it's OK to just assume you're all breaking the law anyway, and charge you accordingly with the extra price on blank media, you might as well do your best to get what you're paying for. Fill those torrent queues with music, movies, and games you already paid for with this levy!
;)
Also, if you don't mind, keep seeding when you're done
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
I hate it when its perfectly legal to do illegal things.
This space available.
They wanted that levy in the first place, now they don't. Make up your damned minds!
(and as a note: I don't download copyrighted material at all -- for the most part, it isn't worth it. I am just getting fed up with their have-their-cake-and-eat-it-too philosophy)
- Cassette Tape - copies 1 album
- Compact Disc - copies ~12 albums (mp3)
- Apple iPod - copies ~10,000 songs
At 99 per song, I'm sure the average college student with an iPod, has spent $10,000 on iTunes, but perhaps the CRIA feels differently.Is it any surprise that they will try to change the laws when they don't suit them?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Rationalize this: I'm PAYING a levy on hundreds and hundreds of CDs containing my own data, and I've used perhaps a handful of CDs to store music copied from my own, purchased music CDs (i.e. mix CDs).
Who is stealing from whom again?
The private copying levy exists on the premise that people are paying to allow for certain types of private copying. The law excludes some activities (e.g., if you copied music from any source and then started selling it -- illegal), and allows others (e.g., if you borrowed a music CD from a friend and copied it for your own personal use -- legal). It still makes distribution of music illegal, and, yes, as far as I know, it doesn't cover software or DVDs.
It's my personal decision that even though it is legal in Canada to do some types of copying thanks to the private copying law and the CD levy, I still buy my music. Why? Because I think the levy deal sucks for the artists. They get hardly anything (even less than normal), and the agency involved in distributing the money can't properly account for what people actually buy (i.e. the popular artists are the only ones likely to see much).
But would I be on a firm legal grounds if I did decide to exercise the rights granted under the private copying law? Absolutely yes. I'm paying for it. So, shut up. It's the record companies that are being inconsistent here by lobbying for the levy in the first place, but still claiming that people making any kind of copy are "stealing" music. No, in many circumstances it is already paid for. In Canada, if Billy loans Jane a CD to copy it is NOT stealing, it is entirely legal.
You're absolutely right. But while it is against the law right now, millions of people do not have a moral qualm against it proven by the fact that they are downloading. With all the lobbying the copyright driven industries have done to increase their exclusive rights to ridiculous terms the phenomenon of P2P is likened more as a popular revolt against an unjust arrangement than what is "right" right now.
Shh.
Looks like poetic justice to me. They're the ones who asked for that ridiculous tax in the first place, and now its coming back to haunt them. Serves them right- it was an obvious corporate cash grab, apparently rammed down the throat of innocent Canadians (with the aid of the government, no less) for no good reason. I say, don't let them repeal it.
You are now an undocumented copier.
Software and video DVDs aren't covered by the levy, so copying those does "steal" from the artists. But the artists are being paid (by the levy) for copies of music, so that's not theft any more than buying from HMV is theft from iTMS.
Here in the U.S., we pay a 2 percent royalty on all medium capable of storing and playing back music.And we've been paying it since 1992, when the "Digital Audio Recording Technology Act" was passed.
However, our Congress hasn't set up a legal link between the paying of that tax and our legal rights to use the devices in any ways that exceed thing on which we don't pay a tax.
It seems that in Canada you have that right attached to a tax. Hm - being taxed for something and gaining a benefit. How novel!
IANAL, but my own thoughts on it are that since I have paid the levy I am free to copy whatever music I want onto those blank CDs. I would be interested to know if the artists actually are getting the proceeds - if so then I would think this would be doubly bad for the Canadian mafiAA. After all, if the artists are getting paid then most mafiAA claims to the moral high road go out the window.
At the time the levy was imposed DVDs were not available as a storage medium for the mainstream. Now that it is time to update the laws I hear of not only DVDs being potentially included, but also iPods and other mp3 players, HDDs over a certain capacity, etc. I have a bit of a problem with HDDs because I believe the majority of them never see a copyrighted song file. But DVDs work for me.
All I have to say to the mafiAA concerning these levies and their unintended consequences is this: careful what you ask for - you just might get it.
it will be interesting to see how long will this "loophole" stay on, and will some arms be twisted in canada before it is "closed". the international copyright "protection" organizations seem to cry a lot about some "rights" being abused and laws being violated. at the same time they keep using mafia-like tactics on a large (twisting the arms of the Russian government to close mp3.com early and the Swedish government to raid the pirate bay) and small (frivolously suing left and right in the US) scale. i for one won't be surprised at all if we see a lot of both if really downloads are recognized as legal in canada.
Microsoft: "We'd like to update our JVM that we include with Windows"
Sun: "Screw you!"
Microsoft: "But our JVM is getting outdated and we can't run the latest Java stuff"
Sun laughs evilly and twirls his moustache.
Microsoft thinks for a moment and smiles.
Microsoft: "Well, okay." Microsoft goes off to create C#
Sun thinks for a moment.
Sun: "Oh shit!"
Sun, like CIRA, needs to think a little harder about this.
Now excuse me while I go back to my legal downloading.
Yes. And it's panic that the cash monster they created is coming back to bite them.
Look, it's a really silly idea that the incumbent group gets a government/taxpayer subsidy to make sure they stay in business, particularly when that group is nothing more than a middleman between the customer and supplier (musician). It's bad from the standpoint that it doesn't encourage efficiency in that middle layer and that stems from the fact that there is no competition.
But that aside, the government and middlemen decided they should get a subsidy in the form of a tax on blank records. That way everybody says "We all know what blanks are for, and that's to copy music, so we'll tax you and we don't have to sue people, etc etc". So everybody is happy. Music can be copied around, and while it's not perfect, it keeps the money going to enough place that the middlemen are happy because they get billions for doing nothing, and people are somewhat happy because everybody acknowledges that for the tax they get to copy music around.
Except the fly in the ointment is that less and less people actually burn to a CD. CD's are clumsy because of their limited capacity, and so people want to take 100, 1,000, and 10,000 songs with them. And it all goes onto a media where there's no tax. Worse, people are trading songs from all over the world via P2P there's no control over how quickly music gets copie,.. so the government in it's limited imagination says "no problem, we'll slap a tax on iPods and all is good". Except that it means the iPod levy, besides bringing less money proportionally to the record companies, also fully legitimizes P2P in Canada. To which the taxpayer says "Of course it does. You get your money, so you have to acknowledge that this is fine. At long last, the record companies (a.k.a. "the Middlemen") finally see the trap of their own doing. In accepting the fee all along they've legitimized the concept that non-profit copying is okay.
And since they've accepted the premise of "copying okay as long as we get money", they have no philosophical argument that P2P is wrong or hurts artists. And now the only thing we're arguing about is the price. From their standpoint, they feel they're owed $10,000 per iPod, except they know they would never get that. At most a few hundred. But even then, people would just come south and buy in the U.S.
So they've lost the argument in Canada. The only thing left is for them to crawl back into their hole and figure out how to make the musicians pay for all of this.
I find the way the Internet is slowly cutting up the record companies fascinating, and it will be interesting to see how they either adapt or die in the next decade. My bet is on "dying", but we'll see.
The CRIA didn't admit that P2P downloading is legal here: "While Henderson and CRIA make it clear that they disagree with this interpretation, they are obviously sufficiently concerned that it reflects Canadian law that they have burned their remaining bridges with Canadian music in order to try to persuade the Federal Court of Appeal to allow them to intervene in iPod hearings."
I'm pretty confident that if the Copyright board ruled that P2P downloading was legal that the act would be amended in short order. My own interpretation of the act is that the right to copy is circumscribed by the fact that you can't make a copy for 'distribution'. If you were downloading it via bittorrent, I think that would be caught by the distribution rule.
This is not to say that it would be impossible to write a filesharing program that was not caught by the distribution rule, but it would be a less efficient system because it would encourage leeching, unlike bittorrent which rewards sharing.
Look at this from a different angle. There are no drift net style copyright law suits clogging up the system.
Copyright owners are always stealing from the public by extending copyright beyond what it was intended for and putting DRM on media that does not expire when copyright right runs out.
The CRIA has actively attempted to fool Canadian consumers into believing that downloading music was somehow illegal. Anyone who read the Copyright Act knew better.
innocent. or something.
This space available.
And there are about a million devices worldwide that use java - from cell phones to computers to whatever
And no, mono doesn't count. It sucks (but then again, so does C3).
So, to put it back into the context - the CRIA wanted a guaranteed revenue stream by taxing blank CDs ... it no longer works in their favour, so they want to change the rules of the game. Sounds a LOT like Microsoft. The only thing left is for them to start throwing chairs, and secretly funding other groups to sue people a la SCO.
Yawn.
If something is legal, then it should not be called illegal. If I make a copy of a DVD, and give it to a friend, then that is legal, but the "copyright owner" say it is illegal. They are LYING!
It's just a rebranded wing of the RIAA.
The association representing Canadian artists is the Canadian Music Creators Coalition.
Ummm...interesting analogy but too bad you left out the most important part. Microsoft violated Java licensing by modifying the language and adding Windows only specific functionality to it. That is what Sun had a problem with and why for a short time between offering Java on windows and then C# there existed J++ which was what Microsoft had to call it since Sun would not allow them to call it Java.
"Copyright owners are always stealing from the public by extending copyright beyond what it was intended for and putting DRM on media that does not expire when copyright right runs out."
No.
Nothing is being 'STOLEN' from you. Simply don't buy music from companies that use DRM or companies that back the extension of copyright.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Artists don't receive much profit from CD sales either, but it makes them look good, which hopefully books them some more dates.
Supporting the bands you like is great, but I'm sure most of them would agree that they actually receive more money from ticket sales than CDs.
Sure, but when you do the companies will claim they are losing because of piracy, and then give them further fuel for the flame to continue to extend it.
agreed 100%. sadly, this is slashdot, home of thieves, kiddies and communists who think they are entitled to other peoples work for free. One day they will grow up, leave moms basement and work out how the real world operates. until then, expect to hear some real pseudo-intellectual bullshit trotted out in a vain attempt to justify what they do.
I wonder if buying a Canadian iPod, and paying the "copyright exemption tax", even if it's shipped abroad (eg. America, UK, Azerbaijan...) would exempt the owner from liability in that country. In the US at least, paying Canadian taxes usually exempts one from paying the US equivalent (Canadian taxes are usually higher). I'd love to see a good lawyer argue the RIAA's lame lawyers out of landing liability on these American users of Canadian iPods. Not least because iPods are like the drugs Americans are already turning to Canada to get without the expense and legal restrictions. And iPods are refillable across the Net.
--
make install -not war
I don't think downloading this is theft.
err no... in Belgium we already have levies on CDs, DVDs, hard disks & some others. They are collected for artist copyrights association which redistributes them essentially in function of artists sales. I think those taxes only go to music artist for the moment but that will probably change someday as software companies and computer games providers should get their share as well. As far as i know not one case of p2p copyright infringement from users has been brought to the court as copies for personal use are still respected around here. The only big issue has been Razorback, the world's biggest eMule network server, that has been brought down around a year ago. With the exception of France which has adopted harsh laws against p2p filesharing last year (which hasn't changed anything btw), most European countries are still on the right track. Come Canada keep the pressure & remove these stupid new laws about copying movies at the cinema!
Microsoft: "We'd like to update our JVM that we include with Windows"
Sun: "Sounds great, here's the source for the latest version."
Microsoft: "Oh... not that kind of update. The kind where we put in stuff that only works with Windows."
Sun: "Screw you!"
Microsoft: "But blah blah blah synergies paradigms etc."
Sun glares.
Microsoft thinks for a moment and smiles.
Microsoft: "Well, okay." Microsoft goes off to create C#
Sun thinks for a moment.
Sun: "Oh shit!"
Nothing Sun could have done, really. Microsoft is Microsoft.
The CMCC represents essentially all major Canadian artists.
The CRIA represents no Canadian artists, rather the American corporations who make up the RIAA. They use the "CRIA" name simply to suggest they have a Canadian connection; they don't.