well, more specifically, i love the right to make legal home copies without being labelled a criminal. without the RIAA being able to threaten me with lawsuits, supoena my private information, and search/seize my computer.
if this means i have to pay a bit extra for blank CDs, even if i'm not using them for music, i don't mind. it's not very much, only a few cents. it's not the most ideal or fair way to collect the money, but it's better than the alternative of outlawing home copying. and yes, i would willingly pay a few dollars more for an ipod that i'm legally allowed to download music onto. although 200 euros seems a bit steep. in Canada it's only about 15 euros (that has been removed due to a technicality, but will come back the next time they ammend the copyright act).
however i do wish there was a better way of making sure that *all* the money collected really went to the musicians, and not the record labels and lawyers (who are the real criminals in all this).
another idea - since the charge is on *blank media*, why not just fill them up with free music or open-source software, then they're not blank anymore?
i'm not sure about holland, but in Canada this would definitely work. don't know why nobody does it.
you don't steal from big businesses is because all other customers are affected. A small store must raise it's prices to balance out the stolen items. Now everyone else must pay for that stolen item.
but that's a bad analogy. the tax (levy, actually) is not to pay for "stolen" items. first, it is *legal* for the Dutch (and the French, the Canadians, and a lot of other people) to make home copies. the levy is to pay musicians for this legal use.
second, copying, even if illegal, is not the same as "theft", where you remove the original from the store. me getting a copy of a song that i would never in a million years have paid money for, does not cost anyone anything.
finally, there are many studies and facts that show that home copying, far from "killing music", actually helps the music industry, by making music a more popular and desirable thing. the music industries' claims of billions in "lost revenue" are simply ridiculous (as if every download is a "lost sale"). since the introduction of cassette tapes, per-capita purchases of albums have doubled. since the introduction of the VCR, a whole new industry has grown, and the movie industry is making more money than ever. since the introduction of p2p, more CDs are being sold than ever before.
yes, overall revenue of the music industry has gone down in recent years, but that is compared to a period in the 90s when everyone was replacing their vinyl record collections with CDs, often buying 2nd copies of the same albums on CD (like i did). also, i believe that the actual number of CDs sold has increased, more people are buying more CDs, and naturally that leads to competition and lower per-CD prices. so the drop in revenue has more to do with Walmart's pricing structure than with p2p networks, which i believe have actually made music more popular and stimulated sales.
equating legal home copying with shoplifting is simply a bad analogy.
I would certainly see the tax levy as a license to copy any music I wanted.
the "license" for home copying of music comes from the law. which means it is not "pirating". the levy is charged on behalf of, and paid out to, musicians, for this legal use of their work.
every single sheet [of blank paper] is a pirated copy of that 4 minute blank soundtrack some doofus made.
hm, that "doofus" would be John Cage, widely hailed as one of the most innovative American musicians of the 20th century...
this is gonna give the dutch citizens the feeling that they're entitled to pirate music...They're charging innocent customers for the sins of others
but the Dutch *are* entitled to "pirate" music! only it's not "pirating" because that word implies illegal activity. there is no "sin" - HOME COPYING IS LEGAL!
i wish Americans would stop assuming that just because something is illegal in *their* country, it's illegal everywhere. in the Netherlands, France, Canada, and many other countries, private home copying (including downloading) IS PERFECTLY LEGAL and therefore is not "pirating".
the money charged on blank media goes to pay the musicians for this use of their work. there is no concept in the law that says it is to compensate musicians for being "victims of theft", it is to pay them for LEGAL use of their works.
you might think it's just "semantic whining", but it becomes a real problem when this kind of language and thinking makes it into federal laws that punish things like home taping with criminal penalties and jail terms similar to grand theft.
like it or not, the word "pirate" has inherent associations with criminal activities.
at various times, it's been common and accepted to refer to women as "dames", "broads", and "bitches" - all of which have degrading implications. regardless of the historical roots for this, there comes a time when it's a good thing for people to decide, "hey, you know what? this is inappropriate. we want to change our attitudes about this. let's not use this language anymore".
it's good to hear about the origins of the term. the reference to "pirate radio" is interesting, with people actually running stations on ships on the high seas, and "pirating" the airwaves - more about the aspects of piracy such as breaking in and commandeering, rather than the idea of theft. but certainly these people were interested in being cool, in announcing that they were operating outside the law.
with the early use of the pirate imagery by people who cracked games, i think there were similar ideas about the act of breaking in, as well as theft, and being cool delinquents. this still goes on, you'll often see "cracked by the XXX crew!" or some such, on warez. so in that sense, it's still apt. the word "piracy" implies a criminal venture, and these people are not only aware of that, but proud of it. people who sneak a video camera into a movie theatre, and then distribute it on the internet - well ok, i think it's not so unreasonable to put them in a similar category, with similar motives. i mean, come on, get a life.
however, i think there's a largely different history when it comes to home taping. i mean, now we're just talking about the average joe who bought a cassette deck or a VCR at the mall, and does what everyone else does with it. and there's a big battle continuing to be fought over that. up until now, the laws and courts have mainly sided with joe, eg. in the betamax case. but i get the sense that the tide is turning, and ordinary people are being turned into criminals, eg. with the DMCA. if you think the music industry's "Home Taping is Killing Music!" sticker and ad campaign in the 80's wasn't propaganda, well maybe you have a different meaning for that word too.
now the slogan is "don't steal music!" and "home taping" is now "music piracy" and "theft". it's getting nastier. now they can get subpoenas to search ISP logs for private information, just by asking a court clerk. they're busting 12-year old girls and making them cry on tv. the industry has a lot of resources to get its message and language out into the media, into common usage, and into legislation. and the more people hear words like "stealing", "theft", "piracy", and "crime" associated with sharing music, the more they'll think it's normal, and deserving of drastic punishments, unreasonable search-and-seizures, and jail terms. maybe it's just semantics, but semantics matters.
if home taping was killing music in the 80's, it would surely be dead by now. but *per-capita* purchases of albums have actually doubled since then, despite - and i would argue partly because of - p2p networks. in the six months following a federal court ruling in Canada making p2p music trading legal, unit sales of CDs increased 12% over the previous year. why should we go on parroting (sorry) propaganda phrases like "music pirates", and accepting draconian and unjust laws against ordinary harmless activities?
when my sister gives me a copy of one of her CDs for christmas, you might call her a cheapskate, but a pirate? when even president bush has a few mp3s on his ipod that he got from a friend... i think that the language strongly associating this with criminal activity, wilful pirates, crackers and thieves, just isn't appropriate and never has been. it's a construction of the music/movie industry, and we shouldn't propagate its use.
in the U.S., copyright infringement is a crime, if the value of the shared copies is more than $1000, even if it's not done for profit. it's a federal felony offence, investigated by the FBI, with prison terms between 1-5 years (note the average time served for a rape conviction is 5 years).
a modest CD collection can be worth more than $1000, and if these students put their collections eg. in their shared kazaa folder (as many people do) it could very well have constituted a criminal offence.
in this particular case, i suppose the FBI figures it has better things to do with taxpayers' money than go tracking down college students for trading mp3s. like maybe tracking down terrorists instead.
so it's left to the RIAA to prance through the civil court system in its attempts to protect Americans from the heinous activity, formerly known as "home taping", but in the new lingo "criminal piracy and theft" of music.
in Canada it's not a "pirate levy". it's a levy in respect of private copying, a perfectly legal activity. there's no idea that it's to compensate for any kind of so-called "theft".
in the U.S., it is a "pirate levy" in the sense that the copying it is supposed to compensate for is illegal. so yes, i think it's pretty strange that law-abiding people have to pay this fee in the U.S. in order to compensate a third party for the illegal activities of another third party.
of course it's also pretty strange that in order to back up your e-mail folder onto a CD in Canada, you have to pay a fee to Celine Dion. strange but true.
in Canada (and i think in France), you have the legal right to copy any CD whether you buy it or not - you can copy your friends' CDs. the money from the blank media tax (levy) goes to the musicians in respect of this copying. this is not true in the U.S.
if you can only legally copy CDs that you bought, then why do you have to pay a tax (royalty payment) on the blank media, if you've already paid for the CD?
also, in the U.S. you are not legally allowed to copy a CD that you bought and paid for, if it has copy protection on it. the act of defeating the copy protection is illegal, regardless of whether making the copy would be legal or not. furthermore, any technology or tools that enable you to defeat copy protection are also illegal.
since the common method for defeating the copy protection on audio CDs is to put some tape or black magic marker over a certain portion of the CD, that means that tape and magic markers are illegal in the U.S.
you have to pay for what you consume (stealing is BAD. final dot.)
sure. but copying is not stealing. in order for theft to occur, the owner must be deprived of the original item.
and how does one "consume" information? you can consume a physical DVD, but until the last remaining copy in the world is destroyed, the information is not "consumed".
i don't mean to be critical, it's just that this whole thing of equating copying with stealing, to me is just parroting the hysterical propaganda of the RIAA/MPAA. do you know that in former soviet countries, the RIAA has anti-copying campaigns, but there they don't talk about stealing, they talk about it being "communism". they spread whatever FUD and misinformation is necessary to protect their bottom-line profits.
the bible says "thou shalt not steal". but it doesn't say "though shalt not infringe copyright". it just isn't in the same category.
don't think there's much of a market for such deCSS software in the supermarket, since you can just download it for free. but i don't think there would be any legal problem with it (except in the U.S.).
"copy-protection-free DVD players" - i don't understand what you mean. dvd players don't create CSS copy protection, they decode it.
oh wait, i guess we are talking about macrovision here, if the guy's problem was that he couldn't record it to vhs. so a dvd player with a macrovision scrubber in it. i think the problem with that would be more to do with the manufacturer who needs to licence the dvd technology, and part of those licencing terms say that they have to make sure the macrovision works. so in that case it's not so much about the law disallowing it, but patent owners.
Anti-DRM leglisation is socialist and wrong. [...] the government should stay the fuck out of the way.
then shouldn't the government really stay out of the way, and not pass pro-DRM legislation either?
why should they protect the corporations any more than the individuals?
i strongly believe in free speech, and i believe that information is not the same thing as physical property. no-one should be compelled to divulge information. but once they do, if i get information from you, you are not deprived of that information. you still have it. i have it too, and i should be able to do whatever the hell i want with it. i believe the government should not step in to protect corporations' right to make a profit, by limiting what people can do with information, under threat of incarceration.
If you're referring to a levy on blank media, I think you'll find that most "first world" countries have one, including the USA, which had it long before Canada did.
correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't the difference that in the U.S., even though you pay these royalties, you still don't have the legal right to make copies?
If they don't want you to copy it, they have every right to put a copy protection scheme on it beforehand.
i'm always surprised when people say that producers "have every right" to put on whatever kind of conditions they want when they sell something.
there is simply no "god given" right to absolute unlimited copyright. whatever rights you have are defined by the laws of the country you live in. if the law (and the courts' interpretation of the law) says you don't have a certain right, then you just don't have it.
there are certain "inalienable" human rights that seem to be widely accepted - freedom of thought, freedom of religion, security of the person, due process, etc., that i think you could make a reasonable argument that those rights apply to say, people in china, even if their laws say the don't. but copyright just isn't in that category.
NDAs, EULAs, etc., conditions that try to say "this product comes with no warranty", and so on, always have some clause that says "except where prohibited by law" or some such. there are consumer-protection laws that say all products must have some sort of basic warranty. producers don't have the right to negate those warranties, whatever they might say in their EULAs.
programs such as DeCSS are legal everywhere in the world, except the U.S., which outlaws the technology even if it would be used for otherwise-legal purposes.
how can you say that videotron "did not refuse" the initial request, that they were "complying with what the CRIA has requested", and that "Videotron giving up personal client info voluntarily is old news" - but then agree that no information was ever given out?
either they complied and released the information, or they refused and did not.
they may make a show of being "willing to comply", to scare people, to generate FUD like this article, to make people think they will be easily caught for p2p use, because they are allied with the CRIA. but that is just posturing, they knew very well it would be illegal and never had any intention of *actually* complying.
people should know that ISPs can't and don't just voluntarily give out information without a court order. reports to the contrary are misinformation.
Citation, please. Please connect the dots for me on where the law states that copying for private use is allowed as a result of the levy.
the musician gets money from the levy in respect of legal private copying. that's what i said. that's what the law says.
you seem to be hung up on cause and effect. do i take CD from a record store as a result of paying for it? or do i pay for it as a result of taking possession of it? that was my point. it's a transaction. i get music. musician gets money. which one is a result of the other is just a chicken-and-egg argument.
The money paid into the collective goes only to Canadian songwriters and performers.
Videotron did not "fold under the weight of the CRIA". First, they are totally in bed with CRIA, because their parent company owns a lot of the music industry.
Second, in the news story you cite, they "agreed to comply" with a court order *if one was given*. Which it wasn't. And so they never gave out any information. All they really said was they supported the granting of such a court order, unlike Shaw, Bell, and the rest. The court refused to grant the order. CRIA appealed.
The "news" is that the appeal was just heard the other day, and now the judges will think about it some more. Not very interesting news.
They turn over data all the time when given a court order to do so. CRIA has to petition the court for an order. They can't go directly to the ISP. It is illegal for the ISP to give out data without a court order, even if they want to.
Videotron is just saying they won't object to a court order being given. They are down-playing the privacy issues, and saying they think it is perfectly justifiable, even with little real evidence. That's because their parent company owns a lot of the music industry.
Not correct. The law doesn't say anything about downloading.
It says that we have the right to copy music for private use. The source of that music is irrelevant.
It says that musicians are to be paid for their work in respect of this legal private copying, through the levy.
So, we get free music copying because we pay the levy. Or, we pay the levy because we get free music copying. I mean, you can just as well say we pay taxes *because* we get free health care. Either way it's not "free", it's paid for in one way or another.
It's true though that we don't have a "socialized" music industry; health care is paid for by income tax, a progressive socialist system, whereas the music is paid for by user fees, a non-socialist system.
It doesn't just take an implied threat of a lawsuit, it takes a *court order*. Videotron is not giving out any information - it would be illegal for them to do so - without a court order. CRIA applied for a court order last year, and lost. They're appealing the decision.
Videotron is just saying they would be "delighted" to receive such an order, that it would be "justifiable". Since their parent company owns a lot of the music industry, they're spinning it like "of course we should give out the names of these immoral pirates! and nevermind about privacy, it's not a big deal". They are basically in bed with CRIA, but still legally can't turn over the info without a court order.
You can't say "class-action lawsuit", because Videotron hasn't released any info. The title of the article is misleading. Videotron is only saying they will be "delighted" to give out the info *if a court order is granted*.
Videotron is *not* releasing any names. They are merely saying they will be "delighted" to if the court orders them (which is hasn't), whereas the other ISPs are arguing the order should not be granted.
Putting your music up on kazaa was ruled to be *legal* by a judge in this *very same case* last year, which is why he wouldn't grant the order then. The CRIA is now appealing the case, still trying to get the same order granted to identify the same 29 people as last year.
Videotron have not, and will not, give out the information until they get a court order. All they are saying is that they won't oppose the granting of such an order, and will be "delighted" to comply with it - unlike Shaw, Bell, and the rest, who are fighting it in court.
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well, more specifically, i love the right to make legal home copies without being labelled a criminal. without the RIAA being able to threaten me with lawsuits, supoena my private information, and search/seize my computer.
if this means i have to pay a bit extra for blank CDs, even if i'm not using them for music, i don't mind. it's not very much, only a few cents. it's not the most ideal or fair way to collect the money, but it's better than the alternative of outlawing home copying. and yes, i would willingly pay a few dollars more for an ipod that i'm legally allowed to download music onto. although 200 euros seems a bit steep. in Canada it's only about 15 euros (that has been removed due to a technicality, but will come back the next time they ammend the copyright act).
however i do wish there was a better way of making sure that *all* the money collected really went to the musicians, and not the record labels and lawyers (who are the real criminals in all this).
another idea - since the charge is on *blank media*, why not just fill them up with free music or open-source software, then they're not blank anymore?
i'm not sure about holland, but in Canada this would definitely work. don't know why nobody does it.
The US doesn't have a CD-R/MP3 player tax like other countries.
0 235,00.html
How much you wanna bet?
i will bet you the amount charged on all ipod sales in the US in the past year. which is zero.
http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,2
but that's a bad analogy. the tax (levy, actually) is not to pay for "stolen" items. first, it is *legal* for the Dutch (and the French, the Canadians, and a lot of other people) to make home copies. the levy is to pay musicians for this legal use.
second, copying, even if illegal, is not the same as "theft", where you remove the original from the store. me getting a copy of a song that i would never in a million years have paid money for, does not cost anyone anything.
finally, there are many studies and facts that show that home copying, far from "killing music", actually helps the music industry, by making music a more popular and desirable thing. the music industries' claims of billions in "lost revenue" are simply ridiculous (as if every download is a "lost sale"). since the introduction of cassette tapes, per-capita purchases of albums have doubled. since the introduction of the VCR, a whole new industry has grown, and the movie industry is making more money than ever. since the introduction of p2p, more CDs are being sold than ever before.
yes, overall revenue of the music industry has gone down in recent years, but that is compared to a period in the 90s when everyone was replacing their vinyl record collections with CDs, often buying 2nd copies of the same albums on CD (like i did). also, i believe that the actual number of CDs sold has increased, more people are buying more CDs, and naturally that leads to competition and lower per-CD prices. so the drop in revenue has more to do with Walmart's pricing structure than with p2p networks, which i believe have actually made music more popular and stimulated sales.
equating legal home copying with shoplifting is simply a bad analogy.
the "license" for home copying of music comes from the law. which means it is not "pirating". the levy is charged on behalf of, and paid out to, musicians, for this legal use of their work.
every single sheet [of blank paper] is a pirated copy of that 4 minute blank soundtrack some doofus made.
hm, that "doofus" would be John Cage, widely hailed as one of the most innovative American musicians of the 20th century...
but the Dutch *are* entitled to "pirate" music! only it's not "pirating" because that word implies illegal activity. there is no "sin" - HOME COPYING IS LEGAL!
i wish Americans would stop assuming that just because something is illegal in *their* country, it's illegal everywhere. in the Netherlands, France, Canada, and many other countries, private home copying (including downloading) IS PERFECTLY LEGAL and therefore is not "pirating".
the money charged on blank media goes to pay the musicians for this use of their work. there is no concept in the law that says it is to compensate musicians for being "victims of theft", it is to pay them for LEGAL use of their works.
you might think it's just "semantic whining", but it becomes a real problem when this kind of language and thinking makes it into federal laws that punish things like home taping with criminal penalties and jail terms similar to grand theft.
like it or not, the word "pirate" has inherent associations with criminal activities.
at various times, it's been common and accepted to refer to women as "dames", "broads", and "bitches" - all of which have degrading implications. regardless of the historical roots for this, there comes a time when it's a good thing for people to decide, "hey, you know what? this is inappropriate. we want to change our attitudes about this. let's not use this language anymore".
it's good to hear about the origins of the term. the reference to "pirate radio" is interesting, with people actually running stations on ships on the high seas, and "pirating" the airwaves - more about the aspects of piracy such as breaking in and commandeering, rather than the idea of theft. but certainly these people were interested in being cool, in announcing that they were operating outside the law.
with the early use of the pirate imagery by people who cracked games, i think there were similar ideas about the act of breaking in, as well as theft, and being cool delinquents. this still goes on, you'll often see "cracked by the XXX crew!" or some such, on warez. so in that sense, it's still apt. the word "piracy" implies a criminal venture, and these people are not only aware of that, but proud of it. people who sneak a video camera into a movie theatre, and then distribute it on the internet - well ok, i think it's not so unreasonable to put them in a similar category, with similar motives. i mean, come on, get a life.
however, i think there's a largely different history when it comes to home taping. i mean, now we're just talking about the average joe who bought a cassette deck or a VCR at the mall, and does what everyone else does with it. and there's a big battle continuing to be fought over that. up until now, the laws and courts have mainly sided with joe, eg. in the betamax case. but i get the sense that the tide is turning, and ordinary people are being turned into criminals, eg. with the DMCA. if you think the music industry's "Home Taping is Killing Music!" sticker and ad campaign in the 80's wasn't propaganda, well maybe you have a different meaning for that word too.
now the slogan is "don't steal music!" and "home taping" is now "music piracy" and "theft". it's getting nastier. now they can get subpoenas to search ISP logs for private information, just by asking a court clerk. they're busting 12-year old girls and making them cry on tv. the industry has a lot of resources to get its message and language out into the media, into common usage, and into legislation. and the more people hear words like "stealing", "theft", "piracy", and "crime" associated with sharing music, the more they'll think it's normal, and deserving of drastic punishments, unreasonable search-and-seizures, and jail terms. maybe it's just semantics, but semantics matters.
if home taping was killing music in the 80's, it would surely be dead by now. but *per-capita* purchases of albums have actually doubled since then, despite - and i would argue partly because of - p2p networks. in the six months following a federal court ruling in Canada making p2p music trading legal, unit sales of CDs increased 12% over the previous year. why should we go on parroting (sorry) propaganda phrases like "music pirates", and accepting draconian and unjust laws against ordinary harmless activities?
when my sister gives me a copy of one of her CDs for christmas, you might call her a cheapskate, but a pirate? when even president bush has a few mp3s on his ipod that he got from a friend... i think that the language strongly associating this with criminal activity, wilful pirates, crackers and thieves, just isn't appropriate and never has been. it's a construction of the music/movie industry, and we shouldn't propagate its use.
in the U.S., copyright infringement is a crime, if the value of the shared copies is more than $1000, even if it's not done for profit. it's a federal felony offence, investigated by the FBI, with prison terms between 1-5 years (note the average time served for a rape conviction is 5 years).
a modest CD collection can be worth more than $1000, and if these students put their collections eg. in their shared kazaa folder (as many people do) it could very well have constituted a criminal offence.
in this particular case, i suppose the FBI figures it has better things to do with taxpayers' money than go tracking down college students for trading mp3s. like maybe tracking down terrorists instead.
so it's left to the RIAA to prance through the civil court system in its attempts to protect Americans from the heinous activity, formerly known as "home taping", but in the new lingo "criminal piracy and theft" of music.
in Canada it's not a "pirate levy". it's a levy in respect of private copying, a perfectly legal activity. there's no idea that it's to compensate for any kind of so-called "theft".
in the U.S., it is a "pirate levy" in the sense that the copying it is supposed to compensate for is illegal. so yes, i think it's pretty strange that law-abiding people have to pay this fee in the U.S. in order to compensate a third party for the illegal activities of another third party.
of course it's also pretty strange that in order to back up your e-mail folder onto a CD in Canada, you have to pay a fee to Celine Dion. strange but true.
in Canada (and i think in France), you have the legal right to copy any CD whether you buy it or not - you can copy your friends' CDs. the money from the blank media tax (levy) goes to the musicians in respect of this copying. this is not true in the U.S.
if you can only legally copy CDs that you bought, then why do you have to pay a tax (royalty payment) on the blank media, if you've already paid for the CD?
also, in the U.S. you are not legally allowed to copy a CD that you bought and paid for, if it has copy protection on it. the act of defeating the copy protection is illegal, regardless of whether making the copy would be legal or not. furthermore, any technology or tools that enable you to defeat copy protection are also illegal.
since the common method for defeating the copy protection on audio CDs is to put some tape or black magic marker over a certain portion of the CD, that means that tape and magic markers are illegal in the U.S.
strange but true - welcome to the DMCA.
sure. but copying is not stealing. in order for theft to occur, the owner must be deprived of the original item.
and how does one "consume" information? you can consume a physical DVD, but until the last remaining copy in the world is destroyed, the information is not "consumed".
i don't mean to be critical, it's just that this whole thing of equating copying with stealing, to me is just parroting the hysterical propaganda of the RIAA/MPAA. do you know that in former soviet countries, the RIAA has anti-copying campaigns, but there they don't talk about stealing, they talk about it being "communism". they spread whatever FUD and misinformation is necessary to protect their bottom-line profits.
the bible says "thou shalt not steal". but it doesn't say "though shalt not infringe copyright". it just isn't in the same category.
don't think there's much of a market for such deCSS software in the supermarket, since you can just download it for free. but i don't think there would be any legal problem with it (except in the U.S.).
"copy-protection-free DVD players" - i don't understand what you mean. dvd players don't create CSS copy protection, they decode it.
oh wait, i guess we are talking about macrovision here, if the guy's problem was that he couldn't record it to vhs. so a dvd player with a macrovision scrubber in it. i think the problem with that would be more to do with the manufacturer who needs to licence the dvd technology, and part of those licencing terms say that they have to make sure the macrovision works. so in that case it's not so much about the law disallowing it, but patent owners.
then shouldn't the government really stay out of the way, and not pass pro-DRM legislation either?
why should they protect the corporations any more than the individuals?
i strongly believe in free speech, and i believe that information is not the same thing as physical property. no-one should be compelled to divulge information. but once they do, if i get information from you, you are not deprived of that information. you still have it. i have it too, and i should be able to do whatever the hell i want with it. i believe the government should not step in to protect corporations' right to make a profit, by limiting what people can do with information, under threat of incarceration.
correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't the difference that in the U.S., even though you pay these royalties, you still don't have the legal right to make copies?
i'm always surprised when people say that producers "have every right" to put on whatever kind of conditions they want when they sell something.
there is simply no "god given" right to absolute unlimited copyright. whatever rights you have are defined by the laws of the country you live in. if the law (and the courts' interpretation of the law) says you don't have a certain right, then you just don't have it.
there are certain "inalienable" human rights that seem to be widely accepted - freedom of thought, freedom of religion, security of the person, due process, etc., that i think you could make a reasonable argument that those rights apply to say, people in china, even if their laws say the don't. but copyright just isn't in that category.
NDAs, EULAs, etc., conditions that try to say "this product comes with no warranty", and so on, always have some clause that says "except where prohibited by law" or some such. there are consumer-protection laws that say all products must have some sort of basic warranty. producers don't have the right to negate those warranties, whatever they might say in their EULAs.
programs such as DeCSS are legal everywhere in the world, except the U.S., which outlaws the technology even if it would be used for otherwise-legal purposes.
how can you say that videotron "did not refuse" the initial request, that they were "complying with what the CRIA has requested", and that "Videotron giving up personal client info voluntarily is old news" - but then agree that no information was ever given out?
either they complied and released the information, or they refused and did not.
they may make a show of being "willing to comply", to scare people, to generate FUD like this article, to make people think they will be easily caught for p2p use, because they are allied with the CRIA. but that is just posturing, they knew very well it would be illegal and never had any intention of *actually* complying.
people should know that ISPs can't and don't just voluntarily give out information without a court order. reports to the contrary are misinformation.
the musician gets money from the levy in respect of legal private copying. that's what i said. that's what the law says.
you seem to be hung up on cause and effect. do i take CD from a record store as a result of paying for it? or do i pay for it as a result of taking possession of it? that was my point. it's a transaction. i get music. musician gets money. which one is a result of the other is just a chicken-and-egg argument.
The money paid into the collective goes only to Canadian songwriters and performers.
citation please.
Videotron did not "fold under the weight of the CRIA". First, they are totally in bed with CRIA, because their parent company owns a lot of the music industry.
Second, in the news story you cite, they "agreed to comply" with a court order *if one was given*. Which it wasn't. And so they never gave out any information. All they really said was they supported the granting of such a court order, unlike Shaw, Bell, and the rest. The court refused to grant the order. CRIA appealed.
The "news" is that the appeal was just heard the other day, and now the judges will think about it some more. Not very interesting news.
They turn over data all the time when given a court order to do so. CRIA has to petition the court for an order. They can't go directly to the ISP. It is illegal for the ISP to give out data without a court order, even if they want to.
Videotron is just saying they won't object to a court order being given. They are down-playing the privacy issues, and saying they think it is perfectly justifiable, even with little real evidence. That's because their parent company owns a lot of the music industry.
Not correct. The law doesn't say anything about downloading.
It says that we have the right to copy music for private use. The source of that music is irrelevant.
It says that musicians are to be paid for their work in respect of this legal private copying, through the levy.
So, we get free music copying because we pay the levy. Or, we pay the levy because we get free music copying. I mean, you can just as well say we pay taxes *because* we get free health care. Either way it's not "free", it's paid for in one way or another.
It's true though that we don't have a "socialized" music industry; health care is paid for by income tax, a progressive socialist system, whereas the music is paid for by user fees, a non-socialist system.
It doesn't just take an implied threat of a lawsuit, it takes a *court order*. Videotron is not giving out any information - it would be illegal for them to do so - without a court order. CRIA applied for a court order last year, and lost. They're appealing the decision.
Videotron is just saying they would be "delighted" to receive such an order, that it would be "justifiable". Since their parent company owns a lot of the music industry, they're spinning it like "of course we should give out the names of these immoral pirates! and nevermind about privacy, it's not a big deal". They are basically in bed with CRIA, but still legally can't turn over the info without a court order.
You can't say "class-action lawsuit", because Videotron hasn't released any info. The title of the article is misleading. Videotron is only saying they will be "delighted" to give out the info *if a court order is granted*.
Videotron is *not* releasing any names. They are merely saying they will be "delighted" to if the court orders them (which is hasn't), whereas the other ISPs are arguing the order should not be granted.
Putting your music up on kazaa was ruled to be *legal* by a judge in this *very same case* last year, which is why he wouldn't grant the order then. The CRIA is now appealing the case, still trying to get the same order granted to identify the same 29 people as last year.
Videotron have not, and will not, give out the information until they get a court order. All they are saying is that they won't oppose the granting of such an order, and will be "delighted" to comply with it - unlike Shaw, Bell, and the rest, who are fighting it in court.