CRIA Admits P2P Downloading Legal in Canada

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist is reporting that the Canadian Recording Industry Association — the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA — this week filed documents in Canadian court that seeks to kill the expansion of the levy on blank media to iPods since it fears that the system now legalizes peer-to-peer downloading of music in Canada. CRIA's President Graham Henderson argued in his affidavit that a recent decision from the Copyright Board of Canada 'broadens the scope of the private copying exception to avoid making illegal file sharers liable for infringement.'"

Re:You're still stealing from people

[djmurdoch]

Software and video DVDs aren't covered by the levy, so copying those does "steal" from the artists. But the artists are being paid (by the levy) for copies of music, so that's not theft any more than buying from HMV is theft from iTMS.

Headline is a little misleading.

[Anonymous Coward]

The CRIA didn't admit that P2P downloading is legal here: "While Henderson and CRIA make it clear that they disagree with this interpretation, they are obviously sufficiently concerned that it reflects Canadian law that they have burned their remaining bridges with Canadian music in order to try to persuade the Federal Court of Appeal to allow them to intervene in iPod hearings."

I'm pretty confident that if the Copyright board ruled that P2P downloading was legal that the act would be amended in short order. My own interpretation of the act is that the right to copy is circumscribed by the fact that you can't make a copy for 'distribution'. If you were downloading it via bittorrent, I think that would be caught by the distribution rule.

This is not to say that it would be impossible to write a filesharing program that was not caught by the distribution rule, but it would be a less efficient system because it would encourage leeching, unlike bittorrent which rewards sharing.

Re:Does Size Matter?

[djmurdoch]

Are they going to expand this levy to cell phones as well? Mine has 2 gigs of memory and I use it all the time as a music player. There's also my hard drive and all the other components that store music information on my computer and play it back, will there be a levy on that as well. Then there's radio receivers and internet access itself...I think it's time that major record labels realize that they are no longer needed. Aside from the sparingly relevant music that they put out there, they only exist to exploit their artists and their customers. I have no pity for any hardship that they encounter.

You have to remember that there are multiple players here, and they don't all want the same thing. The CRIA represents multinational labels, and they now hate the levy because they hardly represent any Canadian artists, so they don't get much of the payout.

Then there's the CPCC and the other collectives, who actually collect the levy. They'd love to expand it to cover everything.

And there's the Copyright Board, the government body who gets to hold hearings and make decisions. They're actually pretty good at finding a balance. The rule they seem to follow is that if a medium is mainly used to hold recorded music, then it gets the levy, with the amount depending on exactly how often it's used for music, and how big it is. So generic hard drives are probably safe, but the ones in MP3 players probably aren't. (They were nearly taxed once before, but escaped on a technicality. If the levy survives the multinational lobby, I would guess they'll get hit.)

If your phone's memory is mainly used (i.e. by most people, not just mainly used by you) for downloaded recorded music, it might end up being levied.

Re:Get Your Money's Worth

[digitrev]

Actually, in Canada, making available isn't illegal. You can see the full text of the most recent case here: http://reports.fja.gc.ca/en/2004/2004fc488/2004fc488.html?tag=nl [fja.gc.ca]

So as of the last 3 years, it has been fully legal to make your music available as well as download music. Seems that Canada does support a certain amount of privacy.

The CRIA is not Canadian

[Rix]

It's just a rebranded wing of the RIAA.

The association representing Canadian artists is the Canadian Music Creators Coalition [musiccreators.ca].

Re:Yup, but.

[watchingeyes]

The only time this question has ever come before a Judge in Canada, he ruled that it WAS NOT illegal to download music in Canada.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040407114727/http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=canada_home&articleID=1563030 [archive.org]

Quote: "Justice Konrad von Finckenstein ruled Wednesday that the Canadian Recording Industry Association did not prove there was copyright infringement by 29 so-called music uploaders. He said that downloading a song or making files available in shared directories, like those on Kazaa, does not constitute copyright infringement under the current Canadian law."

Re:The CRIA is not Canadian

[aoni782]

This isn't true, the CMCC represents only 179 artists [musiccreators.ca].

Also, the CRIA was formed in 1963 [thecanadia...opedia.com] as the Canadian Record Manufacturer's Association, and aren't a 'wing' of the RIAA. They are the RIAA's counterpart in Canada.

Re:Get Your Money's Worth

[schon]

Actually, in Canada, making available isn't illegal.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it was.

What I meant is that it is completely legal now, but that the CRIA is attempting to make it illegal. Whether they'll succeed or not depends on how corruptible our legislators are.