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CRIA Faces $60 Billion Lawsuit
jvillain writes "The Canadian Recording Industry Association faces a lawsuit for 60 billion dollars over willful infringement. These numbers may sound outrageous, yet they are based on the same rules that led the recording industry to claim a single file sharer is liable for millions in damages. Since these exact same companies are currently in the middle of trying to force the Canadian government to bring in a DMCA for Canada, it will be interesting to see how they try to spin this."
The big labels have been pulling this stunt world wide during years. Recently in Mexico, Police raided the major offices of Sony after it decided to tell Alejandro Fernandez (a Mexican folk country singer) they were going to publish some of his tunes with or without his permission. After the smoke had settled, the Police seiged over 6K pirated CDs from the same offices of those who can't keep their mouth shut when it comes to bashing pirates.
My other OS is the MCP!
Buying laws through "campaign contributions" is significantly more difficult for them to do in Canada... up here, it is illegal for a corporation (either privately owned, publicly owned, or foreign owned) to give *any* campaign contributions, or other contributions, to a political party, candidate, or electoral district association. There is also a maximum on an individual's personal contributions: they cannot exceed about $1100/year (it gets adjusted every year for inflation/deflation, and is currently just over $1100). Additionally, any contributions exceeding $20 are a matter of public record. They can't get around it by donating goods/services in liew of cash, either, as the equivalent cash value of the goods/services donated are counted against that $1100.
Breaking those rules is Election Fraud, and the bare minimum penalty for a politician being found guilty of Election Fraud would be that they lose their position in parliament and are barred from ever voting or running for office again. They could, potentially, go to jail. And if it were a party that's guilty of it, they could be de-listed as an official party and lose their access to public funding for their campaigns.
References:
Relevant section of the Canada Elections Act
Online financial reports for contributions, searchable by the general public. As a matter of public record, you can also request older records by calling the phone number provided on that page.
Obligatory disclaimer:
I no longer work for that department, but I used to work for Elections Canada, and it was my job to know the Elections Act inside and out in order to be able to answer questions like this.