Canadian Record Industry Presses ISPs in Court

An anonymous reader writes "'Internet service providers have neither an obligation nor, in some cases, the technical means to help the recording industry identify 29 alleged music pirates, a federal judge heard yesterday.' The article continues, 'Shaw Cable, the most defiant company among the pack, poked holes in CRIA's case and accused the music industry of planning an extended fishing expedition for the purpose of forcing individuals into costly settlements before cases ever get to trial. This is the same strategy used by sister organization the Recording Industry Association of America, lawyers argued.'"

Canada - Land of the free?

[Zone-MR]

Seems canada's status as the new land of the free [slashdot.org] may have been short-lived.

Re:Canada - Land of the free?

[c_oflynn]

Actually they are suing uploaders ONLY - they have no legal ground to sue downloaders.

wrong

[dsanfte]

From the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, passed in 1982:

Fundamental freedoms

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.

So yes, we do indeed have freedom of speech, and it is protected.

Re:US legislation == world legislation, thank WTO

[AndroidCat]

Canada and Europe already have their draconian DMCA copies. Am right?

No.

Re:wrong

[dsanfte]

It's part of the Constitution Act. So yeah, it's in our constitution.

Feh!

[Pig Hogger]

Shaw's true reason is not that they CARE about their customer's privacy, but rather that their network infrastructure is so fucked-up that they are simply unable to keep logs properly...

Brand new law in Italy is gonna hunt down sharers

[SilveRo_kun]

Yesterday an anti-piracy "decreto di legge" (for the moment only for movies, but it will be extended) was passed (the final step before it becomes a law). It is somewhat like the new european law, but it is stricter with sharers. The ISPs are by law forced to hand over to the "Guardia di Finanza" (cops) the info on the sharers whenever a copyright owner complains (the law says that if they don't comply, they can be fined for up to 250.000 euros). The sharers will then be fined "simbolically": (1500 euros), and the information of the fined sharer will be published (!!!) on a national newspaper!! Yup, no kiddin', Italy sucks, and if you know italian you can check for your self here: http://www.beniculturali.it/download/DL_Cinema_PCM 12032004.pdf
More info can be found here: http://punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=47374 , but unfortunately it's all in Italian (I am waiting to find an article in english to submit the story....)

Re:-99 (flame troll)

[Anonymous Coward]

As funny as that is, the real reason is that Videotron is owned by Quebecor, who sells music. So the CRIA going after filesharers is in their best interest. Whereas a company like Shaw, with no ties to the music industry, is telling the CRIA & co to fuck off and stop badgering their precious customers (after all, Shaw would much rather swindle us out of our money first!)

Re:Canada - Land of the free?

[Zone-MR]

Actually they are suing uploaders ONLY - they have no legal ground to sue downloaders.

Isn't that the case in the US too?

What I dont get is..

[anethema]

Are the CRIA making sure to go only after the P2P users who have uploaded?

I ask since...possesing copies of music you dont own, including P2P downloading is TOTALLY [cb-cda.gc.ca] LEGAL [com.com] here in canada. (first link is to the govt site explaining fair use, explaining you can copy any music, even music you dont own, as long as YOU are the one making the copy)

Fair use covers the fact that I can 100% legally borrow my friends cd's and copy them. He, on the other hand, CAN NOT make a copy for me.

So I guess Canada is not totally regressing into the USA :)

Copying is perfectly legal in Canada

[AchilleTalon]

Accordingly to this document [cb-cda.gc.ca] we can conclude private copy is perfectly legal in Canada. We are paying extra money on copying media (selected media, listed in the document). The Copyright Board of Canada has recognized in 1998 it is not possible to effectively control private copy and has then decided to impose a fee on a selected list of media. The fees were just revised.

However, the Internet and disks are still not considered taxable medias. Sueing peoples make no sense. What they should do, it is to trying to convince the Board to include Internet and disks in the list. And the money should go to the artists rather than to the recording industry.

Personnally, I would be willing to pay some amount for the artists, but not for the industry which seems to me always harder to justify. Dinosaurs became extincted because they were simply obsolete given the new living conditions on earth. The recording industry is simply becoming obsolete, not the artists, and I don't see any reason to perpetuate the mascarade...

Re:Why are ISP logging anyway ?

[Secrity]

US ISPs are not required to maintain connection records. I do not know about Canadian ISPs, it sounds like they are not required to do so.

Re:wrong

[Dashing Leech]

Basically, you can say whatever you want until someone considers it "hate speech"

That's not true. There are many examples of limitations of free speech, in both Canada and the U.S. Hate speech is only one of them. For example, it's illegal to joke about bombs in an airport, and you'd be charged for yelling "fire!" in a crowded theatre. Limitations on free speech must be shown to be reasonable and be an absolute necessity to protect individuals or groups from harm.

"Hate speech" only refers to speech that is intended to incite violence against individuals or groups. You can certainly claim that the Holocaust didn't happen (even if you'd be wrong). What you can't do is follow up with statements that Jews should be harmed for creating this "lie".

Re:Rogers? Anyone?

[Spaztiq]

Shaw and Rogers have worked closely together since around 2000 when Shaw swapped it's southern Ontario assets for Rogers' BC assets [angustel.ca] (angustel.ca). They've done much to develop a national internet backbone across Canada together. I believe that Rogers will follow Shaw closely in denying access to their data.

Re:Copying is perfectly legal in Canada

[TC (WC)]

Canadian copyright law makes no distinction to private copies made to media that are covered by the levy and those that are not. The two sections of the Copyright Act are not directly connected. Private copies may be made to any recording media that is not specifically prohibited for copying (nothing, as far as I know, is currently prohibited, it's just standard language that gets thrown into acts so they don't need to rewrite the things if they want to change something small), while the levy is paid on specifically identified media types that are most likely to be used for music recording.

So, to summarize, it doesn't matter if a medium is levied or not, you can still copy to it.

The issue is that distribution of copies is prohibited under the act, as is transmission via telecommunications. This is why downloading is legal, as there are no sections of the act that prohibit how you go about copying, while uploading is not, as there are sections that specifically prohibit the action.

Re:An (almost) happy Shaw customer

[Canadian_Daemon]

I have to agree. I live in B.C, and am on shaw cable internet. I get (max) 700 KB/s down and around 60 up. I dont have any bandwidth or download restictions. ( a few month's ago, i downloaded 100 GB, and got a phone call to slow down). As for their mail service, I wouldn't know, until recently, I was hosting sendmail/apache/ftp/etcetera servers from my computer. Shaw didn't mind.