02/13/2004 Archived Entry: "Canada's Recording Industry Copies the RIAA"
Well the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CIRA) has announced that it's going after a bunch of ISPs to get the names behind the IPs of music swappers. There are a few problems with this - other than the obvious - like THE MUSIC INDUSTRY SUCKS.
They've been sweating cash out of people, demanding ridiculous prices for CDs, concerts and other merchandise while promoting mediocre and completely vanilla-slot-into-a-specific-radio-format-and-market-to-death-type artists (can I even really call them artists?) for years. It's no wonder people don't care about "stealing" from them. Maybe the recording industry should take a look at it's own business model and see if there's a way they can make money without going after grandpa and little 12-year-old Brianna. Sheesh!
Okay, after that rant here are the other main problems with what CIRA is trying to accomplish:
- In Canada it's legal to make a copy of a song for personal use. We can legally copy all of our CDs onto our hard drives. This is different than in the US where it would be a copyright violation. CIRA has said they're going after uploaders. Because Canadians can legally have a folder full of music on their harddrives, it's possible that someone's computer has sharing software on it that is breaking the law behind the scenes, making them a massive uploader and a target of the CIRA - without them really knowing about it. I remember when I tried out Napster it was pretty easy to mistakenly leave on the uploading and have your computer sharing music without you knowing that it was happening. I don't know if the new generation of music swapping software is the same, but since the RIAA went after a couple of people who pretty obviously weren't intentionally sharing eminem's new single, it's probably similar.
- The new privacy law in Canada means that it's illegal for the ISPs to share any customer information with CIRA without that customer's permission. This is what Shaw (a cable ISP) is arguing so it doesn't have to give CIRA customer IP info. I think Shaw is probably right, but CIRA may get a court to force the ISPs to give up customer information.
- We pay a levy (77 cents per CD-R Audio!) on most recordable media here in Canada (MP3 players, CD-RW/Audio, CD-R/Audio, Mini-Discs and audio cassettes). It doesn't matter what the CD-R is actually used for, if I buy a blank CD, I pay money to various musicians and recording industry groups. And that sucks. I don't get an Internet usage levy paid to me just because someone might steal my words or my designs - so why should a musician get money because I back up my hard drive? I should get benefits from it... like the ability to steal music ;-P. Okay maybe that's going too far - but you can see why people are pissed at the recording industry. We pay have to pay them money and seem to get nothing in return.
- It may actually be (technically) legal to "share" music in this way. It certainly wouldn't be within the spirit of the law, but in this case it might be a case of the recording industry's greed coming back to bite it on the bum. The Copyright Act amendment (mentioned above) that added levies also made legal "the copying of pre-recorded music for the private use of the person who makes the copy". Now, if I'm not mistaken, when you "share" music the person making the copy is also the person who will use it... so maybe it's actually legal. This I'm sure is all semantics and I'm not sure how legal it would be, but I'm not the first one to point this out.
CIRA's attempt to stamp out music sharing here in Canada may not be as much of a cakewalk as it was for the RIAA in the US.
