RCMP Won't Go After Personal Filesharers 405
mlauzon writes "The RCMP announced that it will stop targeting people who download copyrighted material for personal use (Google translation). Their priority will be to focus on organized crime and copyright theft that affects the health and safety of consumers, such as copyright violations related to medicine and electrical appliances, instead of the cash flow of large corporations. Around the same time that the CRIA successfully took Demonoid offline, the RCMP made clear that Demonoid's users don't have to worry about getting prosecuted, at least not in Canada. 'Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted,' Noël St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the RCMP, said in an interview. 'It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it.'"
News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north... (Score:5, Insightful)
In a sudden outbreak of reason and common sense, a government has decided that its own people are not "the enemy". The US quickly responded that such subversive hippie-dippy communist ideas will not be tolerated on their doorstep.
Ambivalent feelings (Score:1, Insightful)
Not possible. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because there is no way to stop it. If I can look at a string of numbers, I can write them down somewhere else. If my computer looks at a string of numbers, *it* can write them down really, really fast somewhere else. And so it isn't possible to stop anyone from making a copy of a digital "work."
You can shut down places where transfers occur, you can *try* to scare people into not copying... but you can't *stop* me from writing down all the 1's and 0's that make up your program or data except to stop me from reading it in the first place. And if you don't let anyone read it, it might as well not exist.
Good common sense practical move (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that this doesn't mean filesharers now get a free pass; the recording industry is still free to prosecute what it views are attacks on its business, but it never should have been allowed to the use the RCMP to do it for them. And its good to see the RCMP come around.
Now, next on the list. (Score:2, Insightful)
Both will piss the United States off to the same extent.
This would be the right way (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north (Score:5, Insightful)
* that means "you're a fucking idiot"
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh, no I must disagree here. In all seriousness, any law which makes the majority of citizens into criminals by its design is a law which is perverse and illegitimate on its face. After all, laws are codifications of the boundaries of expected social behaviors; if they do not serve that function, they become broken and do damage to the society in which they operate. Laws also operate to describe to individuals in a society that society's priorities; if those priorities do not serve the person whose asked to obey them at least in some bare capacity, then they cannot be expected to obey or respect them. Laws which seem to demonstrate to a public that they are not the priority to be served will only breed disregard for the authority emanating from all laws, even those which are legitimate. This is a corrosive pattern.
This is not a "lame civil disobedience" argument, just a sober view of the facts on the ground: no law can require respect of principles which are not respected, and by and large by their actions many people, especially of the younger generations, demonstrate they simply do not respect the concept of enshrining exclusive distribution rights for digital content. In such a situation, a government may continue to attempt to instill through the use of force such a respect (e.g. also drugs, prostitution), or realize that resources can be better spent elsewhere and instead decide to try to address the issue in another way, such as Canada seems to be doing.
Re:Ambivalent feelings (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that the RCMP has looked at the media levy, which, as you mention, exists precisely as a concession to the industry because copying of music for personal use is permitted in Canada. And it has looked at a number of serious copyright issues that do require enforcement, and it has looked at its own finite enforcement resources.
And the RCMP has decided that it makes no sense to target personal music downloads for enforcement. I recall a few years ago that a similar decision was made by the provincial courts here in BC regarding minor drug posession. Not deemed a big risk to society, not enough resources, better things to do with them.
It makes sense to me too. Canada, you'll notice, is not exactly falling apart in comparison to the United States. We actually have a lower rate of recreational drug use than the States, according to a report aired on CBC Radio yesterday, despite a much lower rate of enforcement and sentencing. And our dollar isn't doing too bad lately, either.
Re:totalitarianism? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north (Score:0, Insightful)
the majority of people do not download music. the majority of canadians aren't even on the fucking internet, you twit. and by your logic the drinking age should be lower as more people drink under the age of 18/19, speeding should be legal and marijuana should be legal since more people have smoked it.
the only reason you talk up canada in this debate is because you're a thief. it's that simple. it has nothing to do with intellectual rights. it has nothing to do with artists rights. it has nothing to do with an outdated business model. it's about theft. pure and simple.
Forgot one (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This would be the right way (Score:4, Insightful)
If it turns out that a handful of mega-stars supported by large multinational companies is not the most efficient way to deliver entertainment, I see little loss to society as a whole, and it would surely be to the benefit of a much larger set of artists.
Re:Unfortunately (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, the social contract is between the people in a body politic. In a republic, the people make the law and if a law causes all people to break the law, then the law itself is broken.
My opinion... (Score:2, Insightful)
Make fun of the horses all you want, their obviously smart enough.
-hps
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north (Score:3, Insightful)
Burn Karma Burn (Score:3, Insightful)
Different viewpoints than your own != Flamebait.
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north (Score:4, Insightful)
Patent and copyright laws are no different than the segregation laws that finally got knocked down. It is an anachronism, belongs in another time and place, where the monarchy could control the presses and thus control the dissemination of subversive (to them) ideas.
Everyone who ever wrote a sentence, or came up with an idea, was educated in the school system, and by the society that they live in. And since the actual nature of thought being what it actually is, it needs foundational material on which to build. Ideas are not actually unique they are just recycled and applied in different context. The working concept of a computer existed many years before there was an actual computer. Ever hear of Charles Babbage? Shakespeare or Newton or Angelo are always somewhere in the background. So then where do these special RIGHTS come from????
Re:Good common sense practical move (Score:3, Insightful)
gang related issues, grow ops & drug related crime
It is the criminalization of normal human behaviour (mood altering plant consumption) that funds the gangs. Prosecuting drug buyers and sellers is much more insidious than prosecuting music copiers, because it delivers gangs a ready-made business model.
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north (Score:3, Insightful)
The usual fallacious argument. I'm not a fan of the RIAA's *tactics*, but the fact that a whole lot of people break the law doesn't make it OK, [...]
Uh, yes, yes it does. In fact, if "a whole lot of people" break a law, that's prima facie evidence that the law is, in some way, flawed and should either be struck from the books or reimplemented.
[...] and that seems to be the crux of your argument.
The crux of your argument seems to be the law is unchanging, infallible and objective. Given that it is none of these things, I'd say your argument is baseless.
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north (Score:4, Insightful)
and by your logic the drinking age should be lower as more people drink under the age of 18/19, speeding should be legal and marijuana should be legal since more people have smoked it.
Exactly. Did you have a point ?
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north (Score:3, Insightful)
"Ask you mother if she's ok with you copying one of her CDs. If she says no, that would be against the law and she thought she raised you better than that then the law is just. Otherwise, if, say, she says "sure, whatever you like son", then the law is neither wanted nor needed by society."
I don't think it was intentional, but you're slippery-sloping here. "it's okay to copy a CD owned by a family member" does not equal "it's okay to offer a copy to 1,000,000 of your closest friends on P2P."
"The music industry makes less money than the self storage industry.. I don't see why we need special laws to protect their broken business practices."
Well, to answer your question literally, the constitution puts it thusly: "to promote the progress and science of useful arts." But beyond the touchy-feely stuff, IP is a huge money-maker for the US; we probably put out more of it than any other country. If you're perplexed by the relative size of the music industry (viz. vs. the storage industry, as you mentioned), keep in mind that IP laws also protect books, films, software, and so on. And as other countries continue to get better at doing the things that have traditionally been money-makers for the US, our collective creative output is going to become an even more vital part of our economy. Remember what Neal Stephenson wrote in Snow Crash: the US excels only in music, movies, software, and high-speed pizza delivery.
And, that's why the US has strong copyright laws: to protect our economic interests. It's an ugly, unfortunate situation, but our government sees the US as being in an economic cold war with pretty much the rest of the world.
Copyright law isn't "special" -- it's been around in some form or another for hundreds of years -- and I'm concerned that you chose that word deliberately, like Red State politicians stating that gays don't "special" laws giving them the same rights as others. Pick any industry and it's susceptible to loss; the retail industry deals with shrinkage and nobody here would claim that laws against shoplifting are "special" and in place to prop up the retail industry.
Re:Ambivalent feelings (Score:4, Insightful)
Um no. This is fantastic precedent. It is actual democracy. If society overwhelmingly commits an action in defiance of 'the law' then society accepts and approves of that action. What else *should* government do but respect the wishes of the majority of its citizens?
Illegal file-sharing is not proper theft but it is without a doubt a fraud, as you are getting a service (entertainment) without paying for it.
Really? I have MTV, Much Music, Commercial Free Digital Music via my Cable Service, Commercial Free XM Satellite Radio... if its a current Top 40 track I can hear it dozens of times a day, and I *do*. So, if I decide to download that track instead of record it off the radio or TV, what is the real difference? And 90% of the infringing p2p music traffic is top40 crud and fits into the category.
I already have the right to record it myself any number of the dozens of times I hear it per week, but suddenly I'm committing a fraud if I download the track over the internet instead? And storing it on media I paid a music levy on? (And I pay that levy even if I store my own digital photos on the discs instead??)
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north (Score:3, Insightful)
What is the most widely-broken law you can think of which is (in your opinion) a good law? None come to my mind.
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north (Score:5, Insightful)
A personal belief that piracy is okay (and thus not paying for something someone else has created) is the crux of your argument. I disagree with that, I think it is wrong. Given that, every other argument you make is pretty much immaterial.
Re:This would be the right way (Score:3, Insightful)
Correction: the entertainment industry could have fought a rearguard action to delay the inevitable, or embrace reality...
The fact is the industry made that decision in 1998 and 1999, when the Napster thing happened. It is now too late for that industry, they have caused themselves irreparable harm, and will never recover the way they might have if they had been able to see the way the world was going. It is way too late for them now, especially considering they haven't even quickened to reality yet, let alone gone about providing services consistent with that truth.
Think about it. Television heaven would be a system where you turn on your TV and have push-button access to the entire catalog of television programs ever made from the beginning of time, easily available for an inexpensive price on demand. Something like that would have been possible for the bigwigs to build in, oh, say 1996 or 1997. So why the hell are we going into 2008 and the industry is pushing crap like this NBC Direct service? Why? The obvious answer is because they don't get it. They don't get it! Since they refused to take their heads out of their kiesters and make compelling services, the consumers built it themselves, not because they wanted to, but because they had to, because the content providers refused to do it.
Why did we have to invent torrents? Why did we have to invent Myth TV? Why did a tiny upstart company have to invent TiVo? Why didn't the RIAA come out with something like iTunes in 2001? Why can't I watch The Sopranos commercial-free for a dime? Why does all radio suck, driving me to downloads? WHY WHY WHY? Obvious answer: because they just don't get it, and they won't get it any time soon.
Re:C'mon up to Canada Y'all (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:News Flash from our cute neighbors to the north (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it actually is wrong, not just illegal, to download music and movies without paying for them. Making those things costs money, and without people paying for content, nobody gets paid and nothing gets made. I suppose a lot of people have some kind of faith in the notion that generous, creative people will somehow fill the void, but I'm not so sure. I admit, I like those ridiculous, high-budget movies that Hollywood makes. If the industry plays by the rules, makes the movies, pays everyone for their services to do so, distributes the work so they can be reimbursed at a profit, and offers options for us to be able to watch their movies over and over again at home, it seems that circumventing the system just to avoid paying is a bogus thing to do.
On the other hand, I don't think downloading a movie is exactly the same as running a dvd cloning factory. At worst, I'd think it's fair to be fined along the same lines as a seatbelt violation. The many thousands of dollars in penalties that people get hit with is out of control, which makes it impossible for me to even hear the industry's side of the story. I don't buy the whole, "It's costing us TRILLIONS!", for all the reasons everyone here is already familiar with. I also don't like the idea that I can't make copies of the movies I've bought. But I just don't think it's ok to take a copy and put it online for everyone to view without paying, unless the movie's maker said it's ok.
I guess I think of it like I think of software. I try to respect all software licenses. If it's closed source, I don't download without purchasing and I never redistribute. If it's OSS, I respect the author's choice of licenses, try to contribute when I'm capable enough to do so, and while irrelevant to all this, I often donate. Now if I don't like the conditions under which a piece of software is provided, I simply choose something else. I don't circumvent the whole process. Now, if someone started offering movies for download, at a lower cost, in a timely way and in a format that works equally well on all of my equipment (dvd player, windows pc, linux lappy), I'd gladly take my money elsewhere and buy that instead. I suppose that pipe-dream would require a method by which you could consistently enforce the seatbelt-ticket-type fine... which may never happen.
So anyway, maybe it makes me the chump, but I guess it is a case of right and wrong for me.
To paraphrase Abbie Hoffman, (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget that the media market has not been a level playing field for a very long time. Britney Spears didn't become popular because the marketplace heard her and said "hey, we like that, give us more." Britney became popular because a large corporation who with a few other large corporations completely control the non-internet marketplace, decided to hype Britney into popularity. This was done at the expense of many other talented artists who were never heard at all by the public. These corporations have essentially decided what music is "good for us."
Piracy is a means far more effective than boycott of undermining the control of the media corporations that are harming large numbers of independent artists by pushing them off of the shelves via their market tactics, some of which are specifically illegal (payola) but they get away with it because they have money and media access with which to attract government corruption. Under such a system, the musical talent "cream" does not rise to the top, only the marketing and market control talent "cream". Piracy is more effective than boycott as it doesn't require that one deprive themselves in the process, and makes the material more generally available, useful for those who don't otherwise know how to pirate it (or fear getting caught).
In quite a few areas (patents and copyrights is actually the most benign of them), it's clear that government is no longer working for the people, largely due to an ignorant or oblivious populace who have been convinced that their choice is between two corrupt pro-corporate parties, neither of which seem to be working for them. Piracy is one of the few powers that individuals have over the big corporations, and frankly, I can't blame people for seizing the opportunity and using it to the hilt.
But, personally, piracy is not my cup of tea. If it is yours, more power to you. For a variety of reasons though, I chose to go another route to fight the system. I do in fact, enjoy quite a bit of media, but I do it all legally (to the best of my knowledge anyway, IANAL). I buy things used, I sell things used, I check them out at libraries, I trade them with friends. I also refuse to buy any sort of digital download because there can be no legal second-hand market for it. I also download a lot of free music on the internet as there is a lot of it out there though it can take a little digging to find stuff you may actually want to listen to.
I also make some of my own musical compositions available, completely free-- I'm on several of the music sites out there but never utilize any access restrictions on content (fortunately I have a day job). Even given a level playing field it's doubtful that I'd rise up far enough to stay afloat, but the idea that the majors are somehow doing us a favor by screening out crappy music that we wouldn't want to listen to anyway is totally laughable-- most of what I've found most interesting to listen to in the last several decades has been unsigned bands and other independents, and I'm not adverse to paying list price for that sort of thing when I can get it directly from the band itself.
And as I am attempting to do here, I counter the bogus moralistic anti-piracy arguments cited by shills and the ignorant or brainwashed. My methodology may not be quite as effective a weapon as piracy, but I feel it is better than just rolling over and suckling at the corporate teat.
And to those of you who have made their living in music and are now complaining that you can't make that living anymore-- I have only one thing to say-- GET A JOB LIKE THE REST OF US, BUM!