CRIA Files Massive Canadian Suit Against IsoHunt

An anonymous reader writes "After claiming for years that Canada has lax copyright laws that can't deal with downloading, 26 record labels have secretly filed a massive lawsuit against isoHunt. The suit was filed three weeks before Canada introduced the Canadian DMCA, yet the industry did not disclose the suit and regularly claimed it was powerless to do anything about the site."

Comments

Cheapskates

[Mathinker]

You missed the part in the discussion which points out that the probable reason why the labels didn't bring the suit previously was because they prefer that legislation make it much cheaper for them to enforce their copyrights. I wouldn't be surprised if the timing of this lawsuit is designed to maximize its nuisance value versus its legal expenses --- if the industry is convinced that the new bill will pass in the near future, maybe they are hoping they can cause a lot of legal expense for Isohunt in the near term, and then suddenly be able to "refile" because the the change in the legislative landscape after the passage of the bill.

A comment on the blog quoted an industry source:

I quote Danielle Parr, executive director of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, who says exceptions to the protection of digital locks wonâ(TM)t work. "When you create a big hole in the law that people can drive through, the onus is suddenly placed right on the copyright creator to prove the infringement."

I had thought that the Canadian Supreme Court has already ruled that fair use is a right of the consumer, so how can this law be viable? Or does legislation always override previous judicial decisions in Canada?

<sigh/>When will the industry figure out that Whack-a-Mole isn't going to work?

Re:Characterizations

[dryeo]

B - people who download music illegitimately

How do you download music illegitimately (in Canada). Buy a blank CD and the record companies get a cut, so they're getting paid for people doing backups, copying their legitimately copyrighted photos to a CD and so on. This caused the courts to rule that sharing music is not illegal.