Canadian ISP to Name Music Swappers

Daemon writes "The Globe and Mail reports that Videotron, a Canadian ISP, will not be fighting the request to turn over the names of music swappers to the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). According to a lawyer for Videotron, producing the identities of Internet users alleged of wrongdoing happens so regularly that they believe that it is justifiable to hand over the names of people who share large volumes of songs on-line. The five Internet service providers named in the case -- Shaw Communications, Rogers Cable Communications, Bell Canada, Telus Communications and Videotron -- can't divulge the information without a court order because privacy legislation requires them to keep customer information sealed."

Pot meet kettle

[Intron (870560)]

Shaw Cable is the source of a lot of the spam that I see. I think people should just vote with their feet on this one.

Shaw fights hardest for user privacy

[Dav3K (618318)]

I did vote with my feet - and became a Shaw subscriber. You see, Shaw is the one ISP in Canada that is fighting the hardest against the requests being made by the CRIA. Of the five big players in the ISP market, Videotron sides closest with the CRIA, and Shaw is the farthest. The others (Telus, Bell) are playing a wait-and-see game.

Fight back

[itistoday (602304)]

Though admittedly this is a shameless plug (please forgive), I've created a website for just this purpose. BlackListedISP.com [blacklistedisp.com] is where you can go to see which ISPs are compromising your privacy without a fight. Currently you can just submit ISPs, but soon I'll have a page up with a full list.

Under canadian law they're shielded

[by Anonymous Coward]

Canada is the one place in the world that you're actually shielded from being sued because you use file sharing software. So this is a scare tactic.

Re:Under canadian law they're shielded

[digidave (259925)]

Only downloaders are protected. Uploading is at best a grey area, but it's likely that someone could be successfully sued for uploading vast amounts of copyrighted material.

Re:Under canadian law they're shielded

[CrosbieFitch (694308)]

No-one uploads.

File sharers simply advertise their willingness to participate with anyone in manufacturing a new copy of a file on the requestor's machine.

This act has never been tested in court as a copyright infringement.

But, hey, who can afford to take things that far?

Re:Under canadian law they're shielded

[srmalloy (263556)]

No-one uploads.
File sharers simply advertise their willingness to participate with anyone in manufacturing a new copy of a file on the requestor's machine.
This act has never been tested in court as a copyright infringement.
But, hey, who can afford to take things that far?

As I understand it, Canadians pay a surcharge on recordable media (DVD-R, CD-R, etc., and tapes, both audio and video), with this surcharge purportedly to be paid out to copyright holders. If this is correct, would it not be the case that the people making the copy would be protected against suit only if the copy was being made to media for which the surcharge was paid? So if you transferred the music file from someone else's computer to a CD-RW in your machine, it would be protected, but not if you transferred the file to the hard drive on your machine?

Of course, you could burn the file to CD-RW, being protected through having paid the surcharge, and then copy the file back to your hard drive, which would be protected under fair use. But you'd have to be able to produce a copy of the file on CD/DVD/tape if you were charged...

Re:Under canadian law they're shielded

[Secret Agent 99 (855215)]

From a Copyright Board ruling [cb-cda.gc.ca]:

"The exemption in section 80 applies only when a copy is made for the private use of the person making it. This expressly excludes selling, renting out, exposing for trade or rental, distributing, communicating to the public by telecommunication, or performing in public the copy made. This means that making a copy of a CD of the latest release by the hottest star to give to one's friend is still an infringing action, as it is not a copy for personal use. In the same vein, distributing this same copy to friends online is prohibited." (page 23)

The same ruling mentions that permitted private copies don't actually need to be made onto levied media. (DVD-R, BTW, is not a levied medium.)

"Section 80" is section 80 of the Copyright Act, which says:

80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of

(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,

(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or

(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied

onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.

Limitation

(2) Subsection (1) does not apply if the act described in that subsection is done for the purpose of doing any of the following in relation to any of the things referred to in paragraphs (1)(a) to (c):

[...]

(b) distributing, whether or not for the purpose of trade;

[...]

(Link to Copyright Act, Section 80 [justice.gc.ca])

Another tidbit that may or may not be relevant: Private Copying under Canada's Copyright Act specifically applies to sound recordings. Nothing is said about video. (We just assume that time-shifting and the like is OK, so we do it.)

Also, there's no such thing as "Fair Use" in Canada. We have "Fair Dealing", which is similar, only different. Most of what's spelled out regarding fair dealing pertains to educational institutions, libraries, and researchers, not individuals. Though "private study" may be mentioned.

IANAL.

The silver lining...

[Simonetta (207550)]

Although no one would seriously want to be exposed as a 'criminal' by the five corporations that control the world's music recordings, the only good aspect of being on this list is that you will be one of the few people that the music industry will hire to restructure their industry when they (finally) realize that their current business model simply doesn't work anymore.

One thing that the music industry doesn't seem to understand is that the MP3-P2P revolution has changed the way that people think about buying music recordings. In other words, the market is not going to go back to the way that it was ten years ago. If they do manage to stop all the file-sharing, it no longer follows that the file traders are going to restart buying recordings in the way that their older siblings and parents did previously. They will find other areas such as video games to spend their entertainment budgets.

It doesn't matter to the global entertainment corporations where people spend their entertainment budgets, because they own the entire global entertainment industry . They're going to get the money anyway; whether it comes from recordings, movies, concerts, games, whatever. It's just a matter of time before this concept sinks in on the upper management levels of the entertainment corporations and they tell the recording division executives to finally stop harrassing their customers to the point where those customers will make a focused effort to avoid buying any product produced by the company. This is the only real scenario that they have to worry about.

Eventually the copyright situation will change from micropayments from individual recordings (sorry, superstars) to a more cloud-like revenue stream shared by all the musicians of a particular genre. Recordings will be sold in giga-byte chunks with less emphasis placed on individual musician's product and more on 'bulk' collections of recordings of the same type of music. In a manner not unlike today's swapping of hard disks full of MP3 files among music collectors.

Note to self...

[Stick_Fig (740331)]

Don't subscribe to Videotron, because they don't give a shit about my rights.

Re:Note to self...

[Grey Ninja (739021)]

Indeed. But what I can't figure out is how they are getting away with this at all. I thought that PIPEDA [privcom.gc.ca] protected us from this sort of nonsense. A business can't divulge personal information about employees or customers without REALLY GOOD reason, or they risk rather steep fines.

Re:Note to self...

[Sepper (524857)]

I doesn't suprise me at all. Videotron is owned by Quebecor Media Inc. [wikipedia.org] which also own (Suprise!) Archambault stores that sells CD and books... AND 'Le SuperClub Vidéotron' (DVD and VHS movie rental stores)

Summary: Nothing to see here, move along...

So...

[Brain_Recall (868040)]

I guess that "pirate tax" on all recordable media is redundant and can be removed now? It was there to "protect the artists," but now the lawyers on the hunt trying to "protect the artists."

a proposal to protect the artists.

[ShaniaTwain (197446)]

well, clearly neither the tax on blank media nor lawsuits galore are doing a sufficient job of protecting the artists.. I think its time to pull out all the stops:

Encase the artists in a solid block of lucite and store them in a secure warehouse.
Think about it. Lucite offers a good level of protection to recording artists like Bryan Adams, Celine Dion and Avril Levine, shielding them from pirates, pigeons and the corrosive effects of oxygen. Also Lucite is clear which means they can still be viewed and photographed, which I believe is their strongest skillset.

Now there are those that say "how will they record music when they are encased in a solid block of lucite?" Thats the beauty of this plan: They've already recorded their music. More of the same is simply redundant, and the world is spared the 'come-back' album where they croon the greatest hits of Frank Sinatra, but with a moog synth and a drum machine backing track.

I do believe this is the only plan that will really be a 100% effective way to protect the artists.

Protect culture?

[Dimentox (678813)]

[..]"Piracy of music, piracy of TV, piracy of film -- it's all the same. It's piracy of intellectual property and cultural products," Mr. Sasseville said Thursday from his office in Montreal. "Nobody gets paid. Not only the big companies but also the creators. It's really important that we protect our culture."

IMHO that file shareing does not harm ones culture. The only thing it realy harms is big business. I am a musician myself and am under the camp that music should be free and people get paied for doing SHOWS.. The music itself should be promotional for the shows. And having almost signed a contract untill i read what i would get the musicians do not much per copy at all. They do make money on merchandizeing and doing shows.

Its a shame how deeply rooted the music industry is and what it can pull off. I just cant see how they are pulling the "culture" flag out of their pocket in this one. How does free music ruin culture? It only enhances culture due to the fact that more people are able to share in this cultural music. Atleast its just one ISP for now that is not protecting your privacy rights. But how long is it till others follow suit?

Re:Protect culture?

[HangingChad (677530)]

I just cant see how they are pulling the "culture" flag out of their pocket in this one.

Because it doesn't sound as good to stand up and say, "We're a bunch of greedy, pud yanking wankers trying to protect our racket and we want to sue these people because it beats working for a living."

So when you don't want to say that, then you say something about protecting culture. If you're MSFT stuffing product activation down the consumer's throat, you say you're doing it to protect honest users. Just like when you're giving your buddies in the banking and credit card business a giant wet kiss on the lips you say you're doing it to make credit more affordable. And when you're sticking your nose into the private business of millions of Americans, you just have to say you're doing it to protect them. Just like we're protecting democracy in Iraq, which sounds better than saying we used bad intelligence as an excuse to invade another country. Instant nobility.

And if you really get desperate, then drag children into it. You can justify almost any horror by claiming you're doing it to protect the little children.

Got the picture?

Sure Videotron will do this

[SILIZIUMM (241333)]

Videotron is owned by Quebecor [quebecor.com]. Quebecor owns several music producers and distributors, like Select, Musicor and Trans-Canada. Also, Quebecor owns Archambault [archambault.ca], which is one of the largest (if not the largest) CD retailer in Quebec.

It's clear to me that using FUD, Quebecor (using Videotron) wants to raise up the profits in its music division.

My 0.02$.

Why the ****

[totoanihilation (782326)]

okay? let me get this straight:

I paid a 25$ levy on my iPod because it was assumed that I pirate music. This money was supposedly sent to the artists, to compensate them. My iPod is full of CDs I own and ripped myself.

We have to pay double or even triple the price on our CD/DVD media because it is assumed that we pirate music. Again, this music is sent to the artists. Most of the stuff I burn is my own personal data.

So. The artists get paid, and the music swappers get sued. Where does the money go? With all these 'taxes' you would think it would be legal to download music. If it is not, then can I get my 25$ levy and the difference in recordable media prices back?

MIT published its complaint IP numbers

[peter303 (12292)]

The MIT student newspaper publish the RIAA complaint today [mit.edu]. They listed the IP numbers, dorm address, song titles, but not students names.

An alternative music culture

[sellin'papes (875203)]

Lets assume that musicians are musicians because they want to support themselves doing what they love (making music) and not because they want to be millionaires.

Now lets assume that the sharing and downloading of music files is free and legal.

Then lets assume that people continue to go to concerts and bars where musicians play as they have been doing.

What happens to the music industry?

The large record industries go under. What are the impllications of this? The Britanny Spears, Jessica Simpsons, and Clay whatshisnames fall off the music radar, and smaller bands gain more attention.

By making music sharing and download illegal, whose interests are we serving (big record business, or small local bands)? Can small local bands survive without selling cd at HMV?

Old story

[Exp315 (851386)]

Why report this as a new story? It's an old story - Videotron took this position 2 years ago when the case was filed. It was decided against the CRIA last year. The CRIA have recently appealed, but they appear to have few grounds, given the judgement that they had no case on multiple grounds.

Re:I'm sure the $20 hookers say the same

[tomhudson (43916)]

Looks to me that they've already admitted to breaching PIPEDA (the Personal Information Privacy and Electronic Documents Act) linky to federal government site here [privcom.gc.ca]

Class action suit, anyone?

Re:Wait a minute...

[Ubergrendle (531719)]

It wasn't necessarily proven as legal. First, possessing a personal copy I believe is what was considered acceptable -- but not widespread distribution. Second, CRIA (our RIAA equivalent) hasn't given up the fight...they're collecting evidence and will take another run at this in court. These subpoeanas are merely an element of their next strategy... in the end they only need one ISP (looks like Videotron) to roll over, then they can proceed with their casework. I'm sure they're hoping to set new precedents. Damn this english common law tradition :/

However, we're protected quite a bit through the levy on media that exists here, considered financial compensation for our 'fair use' rights.

Re:What is the big deal?

[Fizzl (209397)]

Ah, yes. Terrorism and pedophilia.
Two boogeymans to allow any kind of invasion of privacy.

Re:What the article doesn't specify...

[Red Alastor (742410)]

... is that Videotron is owned by Québécor Media, who also owns a healty chunk of the local music industry. In other words, they are highly motivated to fight file-sharing of copyrighted material.

I guess that you mean is that Videotron is own by Québécor Media who also own a healty chunk of the local music industry, the two biggest french TV channel (we are talking about Québec here, people won't watch english TV) hence control the news and also happen to produce reality shows and own 98% of all the magazines of Québec so even the rumors that we see in magazines are produced by them ?

Yes, it is.