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-- Canadian recording industry appeals court decision on uploading songs
Canadian recording industry appeals court decision on uploading songs
i love the part where mp3 sharing is compared to a photocopier in a library 
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/the...45-f888268923e5
-----------------------------
ANGELA PACIENZA
Canadian Press
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
TORONTO (CP) - The Canadian music industry is fighting a decision that endorsed music swapping on popular sharing services such as Kazaa.
In a five-page notice of appeal filed Tuesday in Federal Court, the Canadian Recording Industry Association argued current copyright legislation unequivocally prevents people from freely copying or downloading songs from the Internet.
The association wants the court to force five Internet service providers to make known the identities of 29 so-called song uploaders currently only known by their online aliases.
"In our view Canadian copyright law doesn't allow people to make copies of hundreds or thousands of songs that belong to other people and to put them out on the Internet for copying and distribution globally," said lawyer Richard Pfohl, representing most of the country's music labels including BMG, home of Avril Lavigne, and Universal, home of Nelly Furtado.
"It's a critical issue for our industry because those sorts of activities are having a devastating effect on our industry."
But in Justice Konrad von Finckenstein's March 31 ruling against CRIA, he said the group had no legal entitlement to the identities.
He compared the action of keeping songs in a shared directory on a home computer to a photocopy machine in a library.
"I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service," he wrote.
The ruling was hailed as a triumph for the privacy rights of Internet users and a major setback for the music industry's battle to fight music file sharing. The industry says retail sales of music are down more than $425 million since 1999.
In its appeal document, CRIA argues it has grounds for appeal because the "judge made serious and reviewable errors of law, made overriding and palpable errors in his assessment of the factual record before him, and, in the end, purported to exercise his discretion on improper and irrelevant bases, and in a manner of excess of his jurisdiction."
Four of the five Internet service providers - Bell Canada, Shaw Communications, Telus Communications and Rogers Cable - had argued in court that they weren't compelled to hand over the information because privacy legislation protected the identities of their customers.
Saying it too was concerned about piracy, Videotron hadn't fought the court order but the company is obliged under privacy legislation to have a court order before handing over client information.
Since last month's ruling, government officials including the prime minister have weighed in on the topic. Paul Martin made a stop at the Juno Awards to support the music industry calling it "an incredible part of our sovereignty . . . we're not going to let that be jeopardized."
Heritage Minister Helene Scherrer has also promised to punish music file sharers. She has said that her department, in tandem with Industry Canada, plans to draft legislation to amend a loophole in the Copyright Act that permits music downloading.
She also wants the federal government to ratify two international treaties that protect the ownership of copyright materials. If signed, CRIA would have new legal backups in Federal Court.
Im surprised it took them this long to file the appeal, which they will win for sure.
well..win in some respects. Judges decision will be overturned, making sharing not legal, but IDs will not be given, leaving the CRIA in a legal limbo.
who the *uck wants to download britney spears music anyways?
oh wait this is canadian music right?
who the heck wants to download MC Mario tunes? they shouldnt make that illegal since no one buys that crap anyways
but j_spot is right. under american RIAA pressure, the CRIA will follow suit and make downloading illegal. after all, that's what our government big businesses do, we let them tell us what to do.
but I think it will make it an unenforcable law
even if you 'break the law' and allow people to DL from you (sharing is the problem, not taking) I cant see Canadian courts giving up personal info on customers.
so then you cant be sued or anything. Which makes it an illegal, yet unenforcable act.
which doesnt change anything from the way it is now
true but it causes so much controversy. its like pot. its illegal but many of the ppl i know smoke it. and we all know how much social issue crap surrounds and has surrounded that issue.
its also stupid because a lot of the music im sure many TAs download off hubs and kazaa is unsigned and promo work anyways.
Unfortunately the Canadian Recording Industry Association lies just as badly as the RIAA in the US. Either that or they're so blind as to the reasons why cd sales are going downhill. A couple interesting points.
1. The fact that CD sales have gone downhill as music sharing has peaked is merely coincidence. Nothing has surfaced to prove that filesharing is directly linked to falling cd sales. The only reasons given by the RIAA and CRIA are essentially "It happened at the same time so they must be related." A study was done by two economists at a university in the states that tracked the sales and downloads of several popular songs/cd's and downloads of songs for already popular albums (over 600,000 copies sold) it actually INCREASED the sales.
Here's a tiny quote from a news article on this study.
| quote: |
| "Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates," authors Felix Oberholtzer of the Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill wrote. |
there have been previous studies showing that filesharing is a minimal reason for the drop in sales, but they have had methodology issues, and were discounted because of it
this recent study was done @ Harvard, and is nearly perfect when it comes to cross sections and methods.
I wish I could find a link to the article or the actual study (which I barely understood when I looked at it, its all science, numbers n stuff)
their conclusion was 'you are making crappy music that nobody wants to buy, and its too expensive'
hahaha
j you crack me up 
werd j_spot
| quote: |
| Originally posted by j_spot there have been previous studies showing that filesharing is a minimal reason for the drop in sales, but they have had methodology issues, and were discounted because of it this recent study was done @ Harvard, and is nearly perfect when it comes to cross sections and methods. I wish I could find a link to the article or the actual study (which I barely understood when I looked at it, its all science, numbers n stuff) their conclusion was 'you are making crappy music that nobody wants to buy, and its too expensive' |
| quote: |
| In the past year, Reagan has had to rethink her inventory, ordering more DVDs and cutting back on CDs. But downloaders can't be blamed entirely for the slide in CD sales. One recent study by Harvard and North Carolina researchers shows there's only a small relationship between downloading and the loss of sales. "The major reason has to do with the quality of music being put out. There have been very few blockbuster performers in the past couple of years that would attract people and lead to spillover sales," said Rosenberg. Punk and hard-core connoisseur Mike O'Brien began turning more to musical downloads after he got tired of shelling out $15 for a CD with only a couple of good songs. |
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