CRIA Faces $60 Billion Lawsuit 280
jvillain writes "The Canadian Recording Industry Association faces a lawsuit for 60 billion dollars over willful infringement. These numbers may sound outrageous, yet they are based on the same rules that led the recording industry to claim a single file sharer is liable for millions in damages. Since these exact same companies are currently in the middle of trying to force the Canadian government to bring in a DMCA for Canada, it will be interesting to see how they try to spin this."
Meet The Old Boss... Same As The New Boss... (Score:5, Informative)
All this is going to do is to convince CRIA to up the amount of money and the number of hookers it sends to Ottawa to "persuade" Parliament to pass unbalanced draconian laws that
a. Further criminalize consumers
b. Abrogate all the sins of Big Media
Look at the history of the North American recording industry. They've been ripping off artists for years. Bo Diddley was scammed out of millions in royalties by faulty userous contracts.
As a Canadian, ... (Score:5, Informative)
... and as someone who doesn't really trust companies that much, let me just say that, if the CRIA gets fined for willful infringement, I hope that this is the precedent that ends up being applied to the United States, not the reverse.
Now the recording industry's argument is going to be less and less well-received by the general population, and this can only be a good thing.
Re:Will be resolved quickly...in CRIA favour (Score:2, Informative)
This will be settled ASAP by CRIA. They simply can't risk this case coming anywhere close to a decision. If they 'win' they set a precedent that borrwing files is OK. If they lose, well, they lose big!
Actually, it's even worse, since this infringement is commercial infringement, which means your business is infringing copyright to make money. Which is very different from non-commercial infringement for personal use only.
Worldwide practice (Score:5, Informative)
The big labels have been pulling this stunt world wide during years. Recently in Mexico, Police raided the major offices of Sony [torrentfreak.com] after it decided to tell Alejandro Fernandez (a Mexican folk country singer) they were going to publish some of his tunes with or without his permission. After the smoke had settled, the Police seiged over 6K pirated CDs from the same offices of those who can't keep their mouth shut when it comes to bashing pirates.
Re:Irony (Score:3, Informative)
I think you misunderstand the meaning of the word 'bribe'. Indeed, the very first definition on Google for Bribe [google.com.au] is:
Re:Irony (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Will be resolved quickly...in CRIA favour (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Will be resolved quickly...in CRIA favour (Score:5, Informative)
In Canada, it's still not a violation of copyright law to copy something for personal use. The last two attempts to change the law (Bills C-60 and C-61) were put aside during the last few elections.
It is, and always has been, a violation to provide the copies. This provides the interesting point where if someone downloads an album via Azureus, that's legal up until the point when you start seeding. (Which is, of course, before you're done downloading, but that's a matter for the philosophers.) In short, up here, it's legal to download but unlawful to upload.* That's because we pay a CIRA levy on all blank media; a "pirate tax", if you will. CIRA has already decided that I'm going to use that spindle of DVD-Rs for pirating, so I should pay a little extra at the counter to compensate them for the loss of revenue. I am not making that up.
Now, the proposed penalties for uploading under C-61 were $20k per offence. It was $500 for downloading, or $20k if you broke any encoding whatsoever. These values were going to be put into Canadian law but were fortunately stopped by government instability. (That's a much longer story than /. has time for.)
Canadian law does not require our judges to use previous cases as a stepping point for punitive damages; you won't see a billion-dollar fine put up simply because you have to have a rationale for the punishment.
Our courts are also loser-pay, which is why you can't just drop a lawsuit or you admit you've lost and will have to pay the costs. If they were to sue, say, me, I would refer them to my lawyer. They know that I've got one, and that that first call is likely to cost them the $200 once the dust settles. (I would call her in the meantime and tell her to have No Mercy.) You won't get scare-tactic suits up here like you have in the states.
* I know that not all copyright infringement is music-sharing online. In fact, the most dangerous type (from my EE perspective) is false labelling on electronics, especially circuit breakers and other protective devices. This is an endemic problem and it's scary as fuck when a 200A breaker keeps going and melts into fucking slag at 400A.
Re:We need to get rid of the industry middle men (Score:5, Informative)
To make it worse though, they also fail to pay the royalties owed by contract on the money they get for copyright infringement. They just pocket it.
Re:wouldn't it be nice.. (Score:5, Informative)
Trust me, we don't take offense to this. The DMCA was one of the most backward laws the US government has been bribed... er... incentivized to pass.
Almost as backwards as the Copyright Act of 1976 and moreso than the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.
Re:Like GM? (Score:3, Informative)
These "welders"... (Score:1, Informative)
...were the equivalent of fry cooks at McDonalds. Sure they could do that one weld all day like a champ, but ask them to do any type of welding beyond the assigned task, and they were lost. If a robot can be programmed to do the task, it really doesn't take much "skill".
Re:Irony (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_estoppel [wikipedia.org]
Seeing as how it was based on common law it may trace its ancestry back to Britain and might well be relevent in Canada, seeing as it's part of the empire.
Commonwealth. We are not part of any empire save our own.
Re:Will be resolved quickly...in CRIA favour (Score:4, Informative)
It is, and always has been, a violation to provide the copies.
No. There is no law against "making available", which is why when the CRIA filed a court order to obtain the personal information of alleged filesharing users in 2003, the judge basically said "you haven't shown that any law has been broken." Bills C60 and C61 both had provisions to add "making available" to Canadian law, but as you mentioned, both of them died on the floor of Parliament.
This provides the interesting point where if someone downloads an album via Azureus, that's legal up until the point when you start seeding.
Again wrong. If you're using Azureus then you are (by definition) making a copy for your own personal use. Once you're seeding, it's *other people* who are making the copies.
In short, up here, it's legal to download but unlawful to upload.*
True, but irrelevant in this context, as when using P2P, nobody is actively "uploading" - people download from you (which is not the same thing), but you're not actively making any copies. The copy you made went into your "downloads" directory, which you (ostensibly) made so you could listen to it. The additional copies made when other people download from you are legal, as they are (also ostensibly) being made for those people's personal use. "Making available" isn't illegal, so no laws are being broken.
That's because we pay a CIRA levy on all blank media; a "pirate tax", if you will. CIRA has already decided that I'm going to use that spindle of DVD-Rs for pirating, so I should pay a little extra at the counter to compensate them for the loss of revenue. I am not making that up.
You may be surprised that the US has a similar levy [neil.eton.ca], but it applies to blank "audio" CDs only. As mentioned in the link, many other countries have a copyright levy too.
Re:They deserve what they get (Score:3, Informative)
It's Capitol records. They were eaten by EMI a while ago.
Re:Irony (Score:1, Informative)
You appear to be confused and/or uptight. If both cases, perhaps you should stay off a site where everyone thinks they are a comedian. If the former then this should help:
joke
n.
1. Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line.
2. A mischievous trick; a prank.
3. An amusing or ludicrous incident or situation.
4. Informal
a. Something not to be taken seriously; a triviality: The accident was no joke.
b. An object of amusement or laughter; a laughingstock: His loud tie was the joke of the office.
v. joked, joking, jokes
1. To tell or play jokes; jest.
2. To speak in fun; be facetious.
Re:justification (Score:2, Informative)
The article claims there were 300,000 songs infringed and the cost per infringement is $20,000. That only comes out to $6 billion. So something somewhere is incorrect. Either the math or the source numbers.
Good catch. Michael Geist sent a tweet about that recently.
Thanks to @niespika for pointing out embarrassing math error - record label liability could exceed $6 billion, not $60B.
He's updated the article on his main site with the correct figure of $6 billion:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4596/135/ [michaelgeist.ca]
Re:We need to get rid of the industry middle men (Score:5, Informative)
Buying laws through "campaign contributions" is significantly more difficult for them to do in Canada... up here, it is illegal for a corporation (either privately owned, publicly owned, or foreign owned) to give *any* campaign contributions, or other contributions, to a political party, candidate, or electoral district association. There is also a maximum on an individual's personal contributions: they cannot exceed about $1100/year (it gets adjusted every year for inflation/deflation, and is currently just over $1100). Additionally, any contributions exceeding $20 are a matter of public record. They can't get around it by donating goods/services in liew of cash, either, as the equivalent cash value of the goods/services donated are counted against that $1100.
Breaking those rules is Election Fraud, and the bare minimum penalty for a politician being found guilty of Election Fraud would be that they lose their position in parliament and are barred from ever voting or running for office again. They could, potentially, go to jail. And if it were a party that's guilty of it, they could be de-listed as an official party and lose their access to public funding for their campaigns.
References:
Relevant section of the Canada Elections Act [elections.ca]
Online financial reports for contributions, searchable by the general public. As a matter of public record, you can also request older records by calling the phone number provided on that page. [elections.ca]
Obligatory disclaimer:
I no longer work for that department, but I used to work for Elections Canada, and it was my job to know the Elections Act inside and out in order to be able to answer questions like this.
Re:Irony (Score:5, Informative)
You need to brush up on your civics. The Queen is the Queen of Canada. She is the same physical person as the Queen of England, but legally she is two completely separate entities. She can only be advised by Canadians on Canadian matters, and legally has no ties to the UK.
The GG, especially of late, is appointed out of the people who have contributed to Canadian society. While some disagree with the value of the appointees contributions, they are largely done outside of partisan lines. This gives our head of state an important role in the system of checks and balances, and means that his or her appointment isn't subject to the same dirty tricks that typically comes with elections. The theory is that even if a party can manage to push a bad law through Parliament (especially in a majority Gov't situation), and through the Senate (a longer-term and more "sober" house, but political nonetheless), it can be stopped by the head of state if it isn't seen to benefit Canadian society. This avoids the situation we're seeing now in the US where a whole country can swing one way or another depending on which party has the president in the White House. Canada's is fundamentally a more stable setup.
The well-functioning of Canadian society depends on all three parts of government acting together, which they do most of the time with little issue. Yes, it is true that the GG can stomp on a bill, but if it's passed both the House and the Senate and hasn't raised any serious questions, then it's mostly a formality. Likewise, she can't "abolish" a law without the approval of the other parts of government either.
Re:Irony (Score:3, Informative)
Didn't the GG step in last year to put that coalition on hold? I don't pay TOO much attention to politics, but last year when everyone was fighting like dirty school kids I seem to remember the GG had to step in. With the Liberals and NDP pretending that because there's a minority gov't, the people clearly wish to have a coalition rather then the clowns we elected. The way I remember it, they were trying to push a non-confidence vote through before the Christmas break. The GG was out of the country at the time, and had to rush back to put an end to the nonsense. Because the elected fools are really only concerned about themselves, and Dion knew this was pretty much his last chance at PM, they couldn't be trusted to make a decision based on the good of the country. Michaëlle Jean stepped in and sent everyone home early for christmas break during which time the politicians had to listen to their constituents who were very unhappy with the whole thing. By the time they got back to work, the coalition had dissolved and we were back to normal.
Regardless of your political standing, the whole thing was done without voter support. Michaëlle Jean had the power to either endorse the coalition (allowing the losers to form the gov't), or to call an election. We just HAD a stinken election. Because the GG office is not elected, she was able to make the decision based on the good of the country, not the twisted/manipulated view of our elected representatives.
But yeah, that was a good time going into a recession.
Re:Irony (Score:3, Informative)
The Liberals, Bloc and NDP were doing exactly what is called for in a minority situation: cooperating. If Harper and Flaherty hadn't jumped at the chance to "destroy the competition" they wouldn't have had to run and hide in Michaelle Jean's skirt.
Your memory could use refreshing. Flaherty delivered an economic update, which included plans to eliminate the subsidy political parties receive, as well as civil servants' right to strike and other measures that the opposition parties could never support. All "money bills" are confidence motions, so the government created your pre-Christmas confidence crisis itself.
Flaherty painted the opposition in to a corner by presenting an update they could not support, then called them "undemocratic" ("separatists and socialists," our PM describing the MPs *we the citizens elected*) for threatening to do as they are elected to do.
Which Harper broke his own fixed election date legislation to call. The coalition was an attempt to head off another one.
Re:Irony (Score:3, Informative)
Contrary to what the Conservatives tried to claim, what the Liberals and NDP did was completely legitimate.
The Conservatives proposed some really nasty legislation--bad enough to trigger the coalition talks even though they were eventually withdrawn
As the Conservatives were about to lose a confidence vote (and thus be forced to step down as the governing party) the Prime Minister asked the GG to step in and prorogue parliament. There was serious discussion at the time as to whether she would do it or let the coalition take a run at governing.
As to whether or not it had voter support, that's impossible to gauge since it wasn't an election issue. However, given that the majority of individuals voted for someone other than the Conservatives, a Liberal/NDP coalition would arguably be more representative of voting results.
Re:Will be resolved quickly...in CRIA favour (Score:3, Informative)
you are basically contending that it's impossible to illegally pirate content using P2P networks in Canada
No. It's not piracy, it only applies to music, and it depends on how the specific P2P network operates.
I would be very surprised if what you say is actually true.
It doesn't really matter what you believe, it's true whether you believe it or not. [cnet.com]