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RCMP Won't Go After Personal Filesharers
mlauzon writes "The RCMP announced that it will stop targeting people who download copyrighted material for personal use (Google translation). Their priority will be to focus on organized crime and copyright theft that affects the health and safety of consumers, such as copyright violations related to medicine and electrical appliances, instead of the cash flow of large corporations. Around the same time that the CRIA successfully took Demonoid offline, the RCMP made clear that Demonoid's users don't have to worry about getting prosecuted, at least not in Canada. 'Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted,' Noël St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the RCMP, said in an interview. 'It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it.'"
It was too hard to get the horses into people's bedrooms, basements, dorms, etc.
They won't chace Windows users because there's no mount. They will chase *nix users though.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In a sudden outbreak of reason and common sense, a government has decided that its own people are not "the enemy". The US quickly responded that such subversive hippie-dippy communist ideas will not be tolerated on their doorstep.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
The RCMP don't speak for other police forces in Canada--in particular, the provincial police forces (e.g., the Ontario Provincial Police). While I suspect that they won't be aggressively pursuing individuals either, this is no guarantee. I believe the OPP has fairly extensive technology-related policing resources, but I can't substantiate that...
'It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it.'
That's because there is no way to stop it. If I can look at a string of numbers, I can write them down somewhere else. If my computer looks at a string of numbers, *it* can write them down really, really fast somewhere else. And so it isn't possible to stop anyone from making a copy of a digital "work."
You can shut down places where transfers occur, you can *try* to scare people into not copying... but you can't *stop* me from writing down all the 1's and 0's that make up your program or data except to stop me from reading it in the first place. And if you don't let anyone read it, it might as well not exist.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
The RCMP resources are stretched thin like any police force anywhere. Its good to see that they have decided / realized that they have far more important things to do with those resources. Its the right move. I want violent crimes, family abuse, gang related issues, grow ops & drug related crime, and corporate fraud investigated, not children and families who listening to music they downloaded over the internet. I don't need my tax dollars protecting the interests of American megacorporations from children.
Note that this doesn't mean filesharers now get a free pass; the recording industry is still free to prosecute what it views are attacks on its business, but it never should have been allowed to the use the RCMP to do it for them. And its good to see the RCMP come around.
This is a bit ot but hasn't been reported here and my submission was rejected http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/news_events/news/Tariff22_07.jsp
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
"Illegal file-sharing is not proper theft but it is without a doubt a fraud, as you are getting a service (entertainment) without paying for it."
Wrong. Canadians DO pay for it, via a levy on recording materials (blank CDs, etc) that goes back to the recording industry, so its not even "fraud."
Kevin Smith on Prince
The US would have little choice. The UK has nukes and subs, and protects Canada.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Selective enforcement is a tool of totalitarianism.
Maybe it's a 'good start', but ultimately the law has to be either changed of enforced.
While we're deciding not to go after people for petty things: How about they stop going after people who commit truly victimless crimes like smoking a joint?
Both will piss the United States off to the same extent.
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
For profit piracy is wrong. Personal duplication/sharing is not.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Maybe the government is realizing that copyright law is outdated? It's not a fundamental right of human beings, just a tool that was used in the past to jump-start the publishing industry. How about a new model that doesn't require any enforcement, where people fully pay for the labor used to create the product, then it becomes freely available?
Maybe if we embraced the fact that copying was essentially free, we might find an even better business model which created more wealth.
Northern Minnesota has been itching for an "incident" for 150 years. I don't think an abstract idea like "Mutually Assured Destruction" will deter an incursion. One photo set of a captured American partisan fighter being Labatt Blue-boarded and you've got yourself World War III.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
You think you're cool 'cause you're all "rational" and stuff.
expandfairuse.org
Canada's got way more land mass than the U.S. Only country with more land mass than Canada is Russia.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
I know at least twenty people that would volunteer for a Labatt Blue-boarding.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
...'It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it.'...
I know how to stop it but no-one heres going to like it. Taking a page from Snow Crash where the network routers police traffic according to democratically arrived at laws, Internet protocols should be regulated in such a way that the network itself enforces distribution licenses. You download you're Linux iso's for free because thats the license in appropriate field of the Bit-Torrent 2009 protocol while material requiring payment has it automatically debited from your account on download, again depending on whats in the license field of the torrent. Regulating the network itself in a way that all licenses from free to ad-supported to subscription to purchase are enforced where it would be difficult to circumvent them (on the network not your computer) would ease issues in other areas that suck because of the lack of regulation of the network: having to put up with the likes of copy-protection on our computers and various nasties (think of the children being exploited) being filtered at the network level. The Internet is not a new phenomenom that magically facilitates people circumventing payment based licenses: before it was the SneakerNet but now that the Internet is a reality, it has become the tool of choice to distribute things beyond their intended audiences.
And just a quick word to people who think all bits should be free: If someone wants to give it away for free then more power to them *but* in our economic framework it takes effort to organize all the bits in software and you paying the publisher then them paying their employees then the employees paying their bills is a great way to spread the effort around. Entertainment is hard to make for free right now - operating systems are different, they're infrastructure and there are more obvious benefits to cooperation in them.
Shh.
Basically, people have found a way to get for free what they used to pay for. The fact that they have little chance of being caught have empowered people to break the law, but that's about it. You still have not substantiated your implication that what they're doing is wrong. Just because technology previously made it easy to limit distribution via an artificial monopoly doesn't make it right. You're engaging in the Bare Assertion Fallacy. Justify the state of the law.
And please don't make a lame ass 'civil disobediance' arguement next. If you feel that strongly about it, don't listen to the RIAA's tripe *at all,* pirated or not. So are you saying bad law should be obeyed because somebody makes money off it? Because there's no moral justification in civil disobedience unless it's a great injustice, like segregation? Because it's the law? You're saying the best way to fight bad law is to obey it and mount futile boycott? A debate strategy of telling other people not to bother to defend their position rather than actually presenting arguments in support of your position is intellectually bankrupt*.
* that means "you're a fucking idiot"
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
FFS, I said I was sorry.
I won't eat the curry again.
Ahh, no I must disagree here. In all seriousness, any law which makes the majority of citizens into criminals by its design is a law which is perverse and illegitimate on its face. After all, laws are codifications of the boundaries of expected social behaviors; if they do not serve that function, they become broken and do damage to the society in which they operate. Laws also operate to describe to individuals in a society that society's priorities; if those priorities do not serve the person whose asked to obey them at least in some bare capacity, then they cannot be expected to obey or respect them. Laws which seem to demonstrate to a public that they are not the priority to be served will only breed disregard for the authority emanating from all laws, even those which are legitimate. This is a corrosive pattern.
This is not a "lame civil disobedience" argument, just a sober view of the facts on the ground: no law can require respect of principles which are not respected, and by and large by their actions many people, especially of the younger generations, demonstrate they simply do not respect the concept of enshrining exclusive distribution rights for digital content. In such a situation, a government may continue to attempt to instill through the use of force such a respect (e.g. also drugs, prostitution), or realize that resources can be better spent elsewhere and instead decide to try to address the issue in another way, such as Canada seems to be doing.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Is it that hard to translate from Canadian to English?
I like music
It seems that the RCMP has looked at the media levy, which, as you mention, exists precisely as a concession to the industry because copying of music for personal use is permitted in Canada. And it has looked at a number of serious copyright issues that do require enforcement, and it has looked at its own finite enforcement resources.
And the RCMP has decided that it makes no sense to target personal music downloads for enforcement. I recall a few years ago that a similar decision was made by the provincial courts here in BC regarding minor drug posession. Not deemed a big risk to society, not enough resources, better things to do with them.
It makes sense to me too. Canada, you'll notice, is not exactly falling apart in comparison to the United States. We actually have a lower rate of recreational drug use than the States, according to a report aired on CBC Radio yesterday, despite a much lower rate of enforcement and sentencing. And our dollar isn't doing too bad lately, either.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Wrong. Canadians DO pay for it, via a levy on recording materials (blank CDs, etc) that goes back to the recording industry, so its not even "fraud."
Quite so, although it should be said that the copyright levy only covers copying of music. Copying video etc is still a problem.
Certainly doesn't seem that way on a map - but most map projections are incredibly deceiving. CIA factbook figures:
RUSSIA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rs.html
total: 17,075,200 sq km
land: 16,995,800 sq km
water: 79,400 sq km
CHINA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html
total: 9,596,960 sq km
land: 9,326,410 sq km
water: 270,550 sq km
USA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
total: 9,826,630 sq km
land: 9,161,923 sq km
water: 664,707 sq km
note: includes only the 50 states and District of Columbia ( add some for the all the islands, if counting )
CANADA
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ca.html
total: 9,984,670 sq km
land: 9,093,507 sq km
water: 891,163 sq km
Reasons to move to Canada:
1. You won't get prosecuted for piracy
2. Our dollar is now worth more than the US dollar
3. We don't have perfect leaders, but most if not all are more intelligent than Bush
4. We still have some degree of privacy left (aka. our telcos dont spy on us)
5. We have beautiful natural wonders
6. We have much greater diversity of cultures, weather & landscapes.
7. Our beer is much better (& stronger)
8. You can throw a rock in urban cities and hit 3 starbuck locations.
9. We rule at ice hockey
10. You get to wear a tuque, pet a beaver, eat maple syrup, and say eh? instead of huh?
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
According to a study by Industry Canada, file sharers actually buy more music than non-file sharers. All file sharing allows people to do is to find music that they like much easier. The more stuff they find that they like, the more money they will spend on music. If you've only ever heard of Britney Spears, because that's all the radio ever plays, then you can't buy that many CDs.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
11. free health care!
Area
Total: 9,984,670 km (2nd)
Water (%): 8.92 (891,163 km)
Thus, Canada has 9,093,507 sq km of land mass.
United States
Area
- Total 9,826,630 km [1](3rd2)
3,793,079 sq mi
- Water (%) 6.76
Thus, the United States has 9,162,350 sq km of land mass.
9 093 506 sq km (Canada's land mass) is less than 9,162,350 sq km (the US land mass), therefore your statement seems incorrect. Canada does have more total area, but more of that area is water.
"According to a study by Industry Canada [michaelgeist.ca], file sharers actually buy more music than non-file sharers. All file sharing allows people to do is to find music that they like much easier. The more stuff they find that they like, the more money they will spend on music. If you've only ever heard of Britney Spears, because that's all the radio ever plays, then you can't buy that many CDs."
This study was torn to bits when it was first covered on Slashdot a few weeks ago. The non-file-sharing group includes people who have no significant interest in music; they don't buy music anyway. But 100% of the music file sharers are music fans and thus there's a possibility that they'll buy music. It's a bit tricky to explain here; this is one of those instances where Venn diagrams come in handy. It's all too easy to confuse correlation with causation here, but it's not the case.
A more useful study would compare two groups of music fans; one made up of people who acquire their music via P2P; the other made up of people who do not. I doubt that the end result would be the same.
Either way, there's a false dichotomy here: if you're a P2P fan you have lots of ways to find new music; if you don't pirate music as a "try before you buy" mechanism, then you do not. Yet I (and plenty of people like me) have absolutely no trouble finding new music and exploring new artists and genres, without resorting to piracy. iTunes is set up quite well to encourage this sort of exploration; there's also Pandora, last.fm, and countless alternative streaming radio stations. While I've no doubt that there are P2P fans who've used P2P to find new music, anybody who attempts to imply that piracy is the only way to find new music is simply trying to justify their behavior, at the expense of honesty.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
As a Canadian myself. All I have to say to you and others who make fun of Canada is... Bahahahaha!!! I can download whatever I want now!
Make fun of the horses all you want, their obviously smart enough.
-hps
Ask you mother if she's ok with you copying one of her CDs. If she says no, that would be against the law and she thought she raised you better than that then the law is just. Otherwise, if, say, she says "sure, whatever you like son", then the law is neither wanted nor needed by society. The music industry makes less money than the self storage industry.. I don't see why we need special laws to protect their broken business practices.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Quite so, although it should be said that the copyright levy only covers copying of music. Copying video etc is still a problem.
It should also be said that only Canadian artists can receive disbursements from levies collected. That means that Canadian artists are theoretically earning revenue, indirectly, from downloads of non Canadian music.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Dear Mods,
Different viewpoints than your own != Flamebait.
Yes, a few hundred years ago they used to hang the hungry peasants for hunting game on the Landlords Estate. That was the LAW, but times have changed and that law no longer applies. And neither does a pile of other crappy laws that created class distinction by giving certain groups of people "SPECIAL RIGHTS".
Patent and copyright laws are no different than the segregation laws that finally got knocked down. It is an anachronism, belongs in another time and place, where the monarchy could control the presses and thus control the dissemination of subversive (to them) ideas.
Everyone who ever wrote a sentence, or came up with an idea, was educated in the school system, and by the society that they live in. And since the actual nature of thought being what it actually is, it needs foundational material on which to build. Ideas are not actually unique they are just recycled and applied in different context. The working concept of a computer existed many years before there was an actual computer. Ever hear of Charles Babbage? Shakespeare or Newton or Angelo are always somewhere in the background. So then where do these special RIGHTS come from????
... they trample on peoples lefts too ;)
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
The usual fallacious argument. I'm not a fan of the RIAA's *tactics*, but the fact that a whole lot of people break the law doesn't make it OK, [...]
Uh, yes, yes it does. In fact, if "a whole lot of people" break a law, that's prima facie evidence that the law is, in some way, flawed and should either be struck from the books or reimplemented.
[...] and that seems to be the crux of your argument.
The crux of your argument seems to be the law is unchanging, infallible and objective. Given that it is none of these things, I'd say your argument is baseless.
and by your logic the drinking age should be lower as more people drink under the age of 18/19, speeding should be legal and marijuana should be legal since more people have smoked it.
Exactly. Did you have a point ?
"Ask you mother if she's ok with you copying one of her CDs. If she says no, that would be against the law and she thought she raised you better than that then the law is just. Otherwise, if, say, she says "sure, whatever you like son", then the law is neither wanted nor needed by society."
I don't think it was intentional, but you're slippery-sloping here. "it's okay to copy a CD owned by a family member" does not equal "it's okay to offer a copy to 1,000,000 of your closest friends on P2P."
"The music industry makes less money than the self storage industry.. I don't see why we need special laws to protect their broken business practices."
Well, to answer your question literally, the constitution puts it thusly: "to promote the progress and science of useful arts." But beyond the touchy-feely stuff, IP is a huge money-maker for the US; we probably put out more of it than any other country. If you're perplexed by the relative size of the music industry (viz. vs. the storage industry, as you mentioned), keep in mind that IP laws also protect books, films, software, and so on. And as other countries continue to get better at doing the things that have traditionally been money-makers for the US, our collective creative output is going to become an even more vital part of our economy. Remember what Neal Stephenson wrote in Snow Crash: the US excels only in music, movies, software, and high-speed pizza delivery.
And, that's why the US has strong copyright laws: to protect our economic interests. It's an ugly, unfortunate situation, but our government sees the US as being in an economic cold war with pretty much the rest of the world.
Copyright law isn't "special" -- it's been around in some form or another for hundreds of years -- and I'm concerned that you chose that word deliberately, like Red State politicians stating that gays don't "special" laws giving them the same rights as others. Pick any industry and it's susceptible to loss; the retail industry deals with shrinkage and nobody here would claim that laws against shoplifting are "special" and in place to prop up the retail industry.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
On the other this is a bad precedent, they are essentially saying that "if you can't beat them, ignore them".
Um no. This is fantastic precedent. It is actual democracy. If society overwhelmingly commits an action in defiance of 'the law' then society accepts and approves of that action. What else *should* government do but respect the wishes of the majority of its citizens?
Illegal file-sharing is not proper theft but it is without a doubt a fraud, as you are getting a service (entertainment) without paying for it.
Really? I have MTV, Much Music, Commercial Free Digital Music via my Cable Service, Commercial Free XM Satellite Radio... if its a current Top 40 track I can hear it dozens of times a day, and I *do*. So, if I decide to download that track instead of record it off the radio or TV, what is the real difference? And 90% of the infringing p2p music traffic is top40 crud and fits into the category.
I already have the right to record it myself any number of the dozens of times I hear it per week, but suddenly I'm committing a fraud if I download the track over the internet instead? And storing it on media I paid a music levy on? (And I pay that levy even if I store my own digital photos on the discs instead??)
Yeah that's what I thought too. Doesn't he have any good examples of widely-broken laws which are actually good laws? Because drinking age, speed limits, and marijuana prohibition are downright terrible examples. The drinking age should be lower. I don't know how low, but lower, maybe graduated or something, but certainly the current state of that law is suboptimal. And it's not that "speeding" should be "legal", rather that speed limits should be higher, especially considering the high-quality cars with great handling that we have today. Older crappier cars should drive slower, and big trucks should drive slower, but a Jetta can do 75 safely, perhaps higher. And marijuana, don't get me started.
What is the most widely-broken law you can think of which is (in your opinion) a good law? None come to my mind.
A personal belief that piracy is okay (and thus not paying for something someone else has created) is the crux of your argument. I disagree with that, I think it is wrong. Given that, every other argument you make is pretty much immaterial.
Jesus could walk on water, so if Canadians are as Jesus-loving as some Americans, water counts too.
I'm bothered by both sides of this argument.
I think it actually is wrong, not just illegal, to download music and movies without paying for them. Making those things costs money, and without people paying for content, nobody gets paid and nothing gets made. I suppose a lot of people have some kind of faith in the notion that generous, creative people will somehow fill the void, but I'm not so sure. I admit, I like those ridiculous, high-budget movies that Hollywood makes. If the industry plays by the rules, makes the movies, pays everyone for their services to do so, distributes the work so they can be reimbursed at a profit, and offers options for us to be able to watch their movies over and over again at home, it seems that circumventing the system just to avoid paying is a bogus thing to do.
On the other hand, I don't think downloading a movie is exactly the same as running a dvd cloning factory. At worst, I'd think it's fair to be fined along the same lines as a seatbelt violation. The many thousands of dollars in penalties that people get hit with is out of control, which makes it impossible for me to even hear the industry's side of the story. I don't buy the whole, "It's costing us TRILLIONS!", for all the reasons everyone here is already familiar with. I also don't like the idea that I can't make copies of the movies I've bought. But I just don't think it's ok to take a copy and put it online for everyone to view without paying, unless the movie's maker said it's ok.
I guess I think of it like I think of software. I try to respect all software licenses. If it's closed source, I don't download without purchasing and I never redistribute. If it's OSS, I respect the author's choice of licenses, try to contribute when I'm capable enough to do so, and while irrelevant to all this, I often donate. Now if I don't like the conditions under which a piece of software is provided, I simply choose something else. I don't circumvent the whole process. Now, if someone started offering movies for download, at a lower cost, in a timely way and in a format that works equally well on all of my equipment (dvd player, windows pc, linux lappy), I'd gladly take my money elsewhere and buy that instead. I suppose that pipe-dream would require a method by which you could consistently enforce the seatbelt-ticket-type fine... which may never happen.
So anyway, maybe it makes me the chump, but I guess it is a case of right and wrong for me.
Steal this MP3...
Don't forget that the media market has not been a level playing field for a very long time. Britney Spears didn't become popular because the marketplace heard her and said "hey, we like that, give us more." Britney became popular because a large corporation who with a few other large corporations completely control the non-internet marketplace, decided to hype Britney into popularity. This was done at the expense of many other talented artists who were never heard at all by the public. These corporations have essentially decided what music is "good for us."
Piracy is a means far more effective than boycott of undermining the control of the media corporations that are harming large numbers of independent artists by pushing them off of the shelves via their market tactics, some of which are specifically illegal (payola) but they get away with it because they have money and media access with which to attract government corruption. Under such a system, the musical talent "cream" does not rise to the top, only the marketing and market control talent "cream". Piracy is more effective than boycott as it doesn't require that one deprive themselves in the process, and makes the material more generally available, useful for those who don't otherwise know how to pirate it (or fear getting caught).
In quite a few areas (patents and copyrights is actually the most benign of them), it's clear that government is no longer working for the people, largely due to an ignorant or oblivious populace who have been convinced that their choice is between two corrupt pro-corporate parties, neither of which seem to be working for them. Piracy is one of the few powers that individuals have over the big corporations, and frankly, I can't blame people for seizing the opportunity and using it to the hilt.
But, personally, piracy is not my cup of tea. If it is yours, more power to you. For a variety of reasons though, I chose to go another route to fight the system. I do in fact, enjoy quite a bit of media, but I do it all legally (to the best of my knowledge anyway, IANAL). I buy things used, I sell things used, I check them out at libraries, I trade them with friends. I also refuse to buy any sort of digital download because there can be no legal second-hand market for it. I also download a lot of free music on the internet as there is a lot of it out there though it can take a little digging to find stuff you may actually want to listen to.
I also make some of my own musical compositions available, completely free-- I'm on several of the music sites out there but never utilize any access restrictions on content (fortunately I have a day job). Even given a level playing field it's doubtful that I'd rise up far enough to stay afloat, but the idea that the majors are somehow doing us a favor by screening out crappy music that we wouldn't want to listen to anyway is totally laughable-- most of what I've found most interesting to listen to in the last several decades has been unsigned bands and other independents, and I'm not adverse to paying list price for that sort of thing when I can get it directly from the band itself.
And as I am attempting to do here, I counter the bogus moralistic anti-piracy arguments cited by shills and the ignorant or brainwashed. My methodology may not be quite as effective a weapon as piracy, but I feel it is better than just rolling over and suckling at the corporate teat.
And to those of you who have made their living in music and are now complaining that you can't make that living anymore-- I have only one thing to say-- GET A JOB LIKE THE REST OF US, BUM!