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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
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I hate it when its perfectly legal to do illegal things.
This space available.
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!
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.
"(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)"
Given up reading slashdot have you?
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I know what you are getting at, but if you use the net, with the laws as they currently stand, it is practically impossible to not download (in some fashion) copyrighted material. That is one of the big problems with the laws as they stand. Pretty much (with a few exception perhaps) everything that gets created and recorded is automatically copyrighted.
all the best,
drew
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R U Kiddin Me?!?!?!
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Are they going to expand this levy to cell phones as well? Mine has 2 gigs of memory and I use it all the time as a music player. There's also my hard drive and all the other components that store music information on my computer and play it back, will there be a levy on that as well. Then there's radio receivers and internet access itself...I think it's time that major record labels realize that they are no longer needed. Aside from the sparingly relevant music that they put out there, they only exist to exploit their artists and their customers. I have no pity for any hardship that they encounter.
Are they going to expand this levy to cell phones as well? Mine has 2 gigs of memory and I use it all the time as a music player. There's also my hard drive and all the other components that store music information on my computer and play it back, will there be a levy on that as well. Then there's radio receivers and internet access itself...I think it's time that major record labels realize that they are no longer needed. Aside from the sparingly relevant music that they put out there, they only exist to exploit their artists and their customers. I have no pity for any hardship that they encounter.
You have to remember that there are multiple players here, and they don't all want the same thing. The CRIA represents multinational labels, and they now hate the levy because they hardly represent any Canadian artists, so they don't get much of the payout.
Then there's the CPCC and the other collectives, who actually collect the levy. They'd love to expand it to cover everything.
And there's the Copyright Board, the government body who gets to hold hearings and make decisions. They're actually pretty good at finding a balance. The rule they seem to follow is that if a medium is mainly used to hold recorded music, then it gets the levy, with the amount depending on exactly how often it's used for music, and how big it is. So generic hard drives are probably safe, but the ones in MP3 players probably aren't. (They were nearly taxed once before, but escaped on a technicality. If the levy survives the multinational lobby, I would guess they'll get hit.)
If your phone's memory is mainly used (i.e. by most people, not just mainly used by you) for downloaded recorded music, it might end up being levied.
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.
This isn't true, the CMCC represents only 179 artists.
Also, the CRIA was formed in 1963 as the Canadian Record Manufacturer's Association, and aren't a 'wing' of the RIAA. They are the RIAA's counterpart in Canada.