Canadian Music Industry Copyright Class Action Settled

limber writes "The largest Canadian copyright class action suit has been settled for $50 million. The offenders? The four labels comprising the Canadian Recording Industry Association — EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music, and Warner Music. Ahem." The terms of the settlement are a compromise — anyone with works on the pending list can receive compensation while the music industry is absolved of further liability. The two major Canadian licensing agencies (CMRRA and SODRAC) will be tasked with improving the licensing process to prevent future abuse.

Comments

Good luck with that.

[Hatta]

The CRIA has had years to pay these artists. Why would they start now?

Also notice how this is less than 1% of what the CRIA actually owes its artists. Settlements like this only encourage them to keep stiffing their artists.

So...

[Ecuador]

So, for willfully and illegally selling 300,000 works, the recording companies paid just $50 million, or $166 per song. And careful, that is per song, NOT per copy! So they are most likely giving a fraction of their illegally gotten gains - forget about any punitive damages, they probably even get to keep a lot of the stolen money!
Next time you are sharing a song online, make sure a) you make money of it b) you are a big corp.

Love this ...

[gstoddart]

The record companies commit wholesale copyright infringement, and take the stance they should be allowed to do it and will settle the costs later.

The rest of us download a fucking Brittany Spears song and they want to sue us for eleventy trillion dollars.

I think it's time to start feeding recording executives to wild dogs -- they want draconian laws to make sure we can't do anything, but they just walk around them and pretend they didn't do anything wrong. Arrogant bastards.

I've said it before, if they keep extending this "copyright levy" to everything under the sun, I'm going to start pirating on a large scale. I'm already paying for it, I might as well get my money's worth.

Re:All our base are belong to whom?

[smelch]

So I guess the thing to do would be to not sell works when it is unclear how to do so legally. Especially when you're constantly suing people for copyright infringement.