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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.
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.
"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
You think you're cool 'cause you're all "rational" and stuff.
expandfairuse.org
The OPP only counts if you live in Ontario. There's a QPP for Quebec. None of the other provinces AFAIK have provincial police forces. They all depend on the RCMP. In some places, such as the far north, and other sparsely populated areas, the RCMP are the only police. Also, looking at this from a different angle, what I think they are saying is that the RCMP has bigger fish to fry. People that are much more dangerous. It's not worth the resources to hunt down personal file sharers, because they aren't hurting anybody. I imagine that the OPP would probably feel the same way. The local police might care about catching people doing petty crimes like this, but probably don't have the resources or technical expertise.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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)
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.