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Canadian Record Industry Presses ISPs in Court 247

Posted by michael from the squeeze-play dept.
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.'"
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Canadian Record Industry Presses ISPs in Court More

Canadian Record Industry Presses ISPs in Court

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  • An (almost) happy Shaw customer (Score:5, Funny)

    by m0nkyman ( 7101 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @04:41PM (#8553924) Homepage Journal
    Makes me almost happy to put up with Shaw's mediocre mail servers.
    GO SHAW!

    • Re:An (almost) happy Shaw customer (Score:5, Funny)

      by Intocabile ( 532593 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @04:46PM (#8553959)
      Real pirates use shaws amazing Usenet server. Arrr.
    • Ya I'm not sure how to feel either. On one hand the support sucks and in recent months I've had outages lasting from 6 hours to 3 days. On the other hand, they seem to actually care about things.

      I'm so confused.
      • the support sucks and in recent months I've had outages lasting from 6 hours to 3 days.

        Really? Where are you?

        I'm in Edmonton, and I've never had anything but stellar service from them - as in they've provided the absolute best customer service of any provider I've dealt with (and I deal with quite a few at work.) Their staff are always helpful, they don't talk down to me, and always give me the benefit of the doubt. (Contrasted with Telus, for example, who always believe that it's the customer's prob
        • The problem with TELUS is that none of their support scripts end with "Problem is on TELUS' side, send for resolution" or even "Transfer to someone who knows what a 'DHCP' is without looking it up"

          They all end in "Annoy the customer until they hang up" or "Reintall Windows" or something equally useless.

          Many of them still insist you reboot your PC when the DSL light on the modem is out, simply because their script starts off with a reboot before it even addresses the concern.

    • Re:An (almost) happy Shaw customer (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Curtman ( 556920 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @05:51PM (#8554412)
      Makes me almost happy to put up with Shaw's mediocre mail servers

      Trust me, as a former Shaw customer, and current MTS ADSL [www.mts.ca] customer, their mail servers could be a LOT worse. LOTS worse. My guess is spam probably has a whole lot to do with the situation, but the mail server here goes down for an average of 2 hours per day, and at times its been down for several days straight.

      130 KB/s down and 20 up is terrible compared to what I used to get with Shaw too.

      Shaw! I've learned my lesson! I'll be coming back soon!
      • Interesting, my experience has been almost the opposite. I've used both over the years, started out with DSL but had major annoyances with the first generation PPPOE they used.

        Switched to Shaw years ago, and found that performance varies wildly depending on location. My current location (Armstrong's Point in Winnipeg) is good during off-peak hours, but performance drops sharply during peak times.

        At work, I'm using DSL and have found it fast and seamless. Yes, MTS revamped their mail servers and have had s
        • The only gripe I would have about Shaw would be their "lite speed" package that a few of my friends have been hoodwinked into signing up for. The cap is 13KB/s down and up. For $25 instead of $40, that hardly makes any sense. If they would make that fairer, say 50 or so your mom and pop types would never notice the difference, and the rest of us could continue on our merry way. But the way they pitch you on the package borders on dishonesty, because over the phone lite speed sounds a lot like light speed

  • Ouch (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rick Zeman ( 15628 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @04:42PM (#8553931)
    Shaw lawyer Charles Scott, of Lax O'Sullivan Scott, said the cable company has a duty to protect the privacy of its customers, not to become a "private investigator" for the music industry by being forced, at its own expense, to analyze and hand over subscriber information

    I can hear the next argument: "Hand all of your data over and we'll analyze it...."

    • Unlikely (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Hal The Computer ( 674045 )
      The plantiffs (recording industry) would probably not be able ot show the judge that there are reasonable grounds for them to be able to anyalyze records of indivduals that are not associated with the lawsuit. If you are involved in a personal injury lawsuit, you can't subpoena the hospitals entire patient file.
      Canada also has a privacy law [privcom.gc.ca].

      • Re:Unlikely (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Rick Zeman ( 15628 )
        The plantiffs (recording industry) would probably not be able ot show the judge that there are reasonable grounds for them to be able to anyalyze records of indivduals that are not associated with the lawsuit. If you are involved in a personal injury lawsuit, you can't subpoena the hospitals entire patient file.

        I didn't say it was a valid argument, just a possible counter-argument. To play devil's advocate, what if in your hypothetical personal injury the only information known is that it was Patient 014

        • Re:Unlikely (Score:4, Insightful)

          by siegloffclark ( 755299 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @06:33PM (#8554973) Homepage Journal
          that would relate to a specific patient record - or at worst, a limited class of patient records. wouldn't take a big brain, or unlimited hours, to track it down. consider, however, trying to pin down the patient who walked into the er sometime between a wednesday and friday last august in one of two hospitals in new york. and the only thing you know about them is that they wore a jacket emblazoned with he number 16 and a name. and now imagine that you were a visitor to one of those er's during that time, and you loaned some guy your jacket. you were both caught on the hospital video system wearing a jacket fiting the description ... ever been the target of an investigation?

    • Re:Ouch (Score:2, Funny)

      by Zarn ( 11601 )
      I wonder if the CRIA would accept a several Terabytes large tcpdump.

    • "I can hear the next argument: 'Hand all of your data over and we'll analyze it....' "

      Note, however, that isn't all that different from what the EFF wants to do [eff.org] in order to legitimize P2P...

    • Yo Mods, I think his comment was supposed to be a funny takeoff on the SCO situation.

      If I'm wrong, RickZ, correct me...

      SB

  • Canada - Land of the free? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zone-MR ( 631588 ) * <slashdot.zone-mr@net> on Saturday March 13, 2004 @04:42PM (#8553934) Homepage
    Seems canada's status as the new land of the free [slashdot.org] may have been short-lived.

    • Re:Canada - Land of the free? (Score:5, Informative)

      by c_oflynn ( 649487 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @04:46PM (#8553956)
      Actually they are suing uploaders ONLY - they have no legal ground to sue downloaders.

    • I thought "land of the free, home of the brave" was a US thing.

  • Not a usual pirate activity... (Score:5, Funny)

    by BlueCodeWarrior ( 638065 ) <steevk@gmail.com> on Saturday March 13, 2004 @04:43PM (#8553939) Homepage
    Well, they're obviously wrong.

    Pirates don't go fishing, they go pillaging.

    judge:NEXT!
  • ISP: "Look, it's not our job to scour our reams of data just so you can make up some dirt on our customers."
    RIAA: "You're right...guess you'd better hand it over to us."
    ISP: "No."
    Court: "Yes."
    ISP: "Fuck."

  • Maybe its just me (Score:3, Insightful)

    by An-Unnecessarily-Lon ( 761026 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @04:53PM (#8553998) Journal
    But is there not a right to privacy? If the RIAA can spy onto your shared folder is that not the same as looking into your house or mail? Are those rights not protected by the law? Lawyer Help me out
    • You have a right to privacy, of course, but not when it comes to your shared folder. Why? Because it is shared.

      This is very different from looking into one's home or mail. I am no RIAA apologist, but I certainly wouldn't fault them for looking at shared folders on P2P services and the like. When you share a folder, you've made the contents open and available to be downloaded or looked at by anybody.

      It's the equivelent of putting a big sign in front of your house saying "Come in, one and all", or opening y

  • Wierd. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BrainInAJar ( 584756 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @04:54PM (#8554005)
    My ISP is actually defending my rights?

    What's going on here?.
    I figgured that when the lawsuits start flying north of 49, Shaw would be the first to belly up and hand over my name, based on their records so far (I had a few billing issues).
    • My ISP is actually defending my rights?

      Not really, they're just showing reluctance to spend their time and money analyzing data and user records for the recording industry without being compensated. If the recording industry offered a fee I'm sure they'd fall flat on their back for them.

  • Does Canada have a RICO-like law? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ArielMT ( 757715 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @04:55PM (#8554008) Homepage Journal
    I wonder if Canadians can sue CRIA for racketeering like one or two Americans are the RIAA.
    RIAA countersued Under Racketeering Laws [slashdot.org].

  • Why are ISP logging anyway ? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    why are they logging anyway ? whats wrong with unticking
    [ ] save log to disk
    or send them to dev>null

    if the logs didnt exist there wouldnt be anything to argue

    also the ISP has not said they will refuse, from the article..
    by being forced, at its own expense, to analyze and hand over subscriber information.

    are they saying that they will hand it over if the RIAA pay them for the information ? re-imburse their expenses ?

    • no logging? are you insane? if they didnt log anything, think of the crimes people could get way with.
      • if they didnt log anything, think of the crimes people could get way with.

        And all this time I thought it was police that should investigate crimes? Really, there are good reasons to have logs (to protect ISP itself and its customers, from abuse, security faults etc); but being a vigilante surrogate police is not one of them.

        Like another poster said, though, for general purpose logs, it would make most sense to keep logs for limited amount of time; much like what is usually done with security cameras (

        • It makes you wonder why, for instance, companies keep huge backlogs of emails. WTF? Are you *looking* to provide people with evidence of wrong-doing? Keep the records for some preset period of time, *then destroy them*. You can't be ordered to hand over what you don't have.

          Max
      • For example, we could make mean and insulting remarks about CowboyNeal, with no fear of retribution.

        Oh wait, you mean I have to post as AC too? Damn cookies!

        \Dave

  • The reason is (Score:4, Funny)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @05:00PM (#8554039)
    Shaw is too busy spamming the rest of the world to care about cooperating with an investigation.

    • Shaw is too busy spamming the rest of the world to care about cooperating with an investigation.

      Do you have any evidence to back up that accusation?

      I found this [spamhaus.org](couldn't link directly to the shaw page) at spamhaus, how bad that actually is relative to other ISPs I can't really say.
      • You don't have enough time in the day to deal with all the evidence that I have of Shaw's spamming customers. I get at least five thousand spams from them a day.

  • the question is... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cynikal ( 513328 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @05:02PM (#8554055) Homepage
    will the courts uphold the previous laws passed about fair use... we pay tarrifs on media as a result of the laws that give us the right to share and copy music.. you cant charge someone a fee like that and then sure them for excercising their rights.

    • They have upheld this, AFAIK.

      You have the right to make private copies of media for your own use. You do not have to own the original to make the copy.

      The CRIA isn't bothering to try going after downloaders -- the law isn't on their side.

      They're going after uploaders -- this is not protected by law.

      So, basically how it works is that your friend can buy a new computer game and you can copy it legally, however they can't copy it for you legally. That's the difference, however minor.

      • Re:the question is... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Cynikal ( 513328 )
        thats where you get into semantics.. who is copying for who? when i share on kazaa or whatever, im not actually making a copy, you are when you download it from me, you're copying it from my computer down to yours.

        it is neither ilegal to be the copier, or the lender of the copy.. i dont know the specific wording of the law, but i cant see how borrowing a cd or whatever and copying it can be legal while lending the cd to be copied is ilegal.
        • You are right in that it gets very vague in the digital realm..

          For one to make the (legal) download, another has to make the file (illegally?) available to be downloaded.

          BTW, maybe there was a phrasing problem with my original post.. You can borrow a CD from a friend and copy it. It's legal. They can lend it to you and you can copy it. That's legal too, in fact it's the same thing just phrased differently. What they can't do is copy their own CD and give you the copy.

          • Re:the question is... (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Cynikal ( 513328 )
            well i wont talk out of my ass by saying that i know for sure, but if we want to split hairs on it, if i were stuck in court forced to defend myself, i would argue that making a file available on my pc for downloading is not the same as making a copy and giving it to someone, as until the downloader initiates a connection, there is no copy being made... the copy doesnt exist until it arrives complete at their computer.

            the file is on my computer, just as the cd would be in my house.. the person enters my co
            • There are a couple legal differences. One problem is that you cannot legally copy a copy.

              I can lend you my original Metallica CD, you can copy it to CD, convert it to MP3, do whatever you want, return the CD, and keep your copies.

              However, if I lend you my COPIED Metallica CD, you cannot do any of the above. In addition, I MAY have broken the law by lending the CD, although I don't think the CIRA would get far in court with that one.

              Unless you are serving uncompressed data from the original media format
            • Except that the law specifically mentions that creating a copy for the purposes of transmitting via a telecommunications system is prohibited, as is transmittal of an original. The "It's not really a copy" argument doesn't hold water in light of this.
        • I guess that really, it would hang on where the active initiative took place. With shared files, it makes sense that there is nobody actually actively "uploading." It's not like there's a central storage point where they're sending copyrighted material, nor are the actively initiating a transfer to another computer.

          When you "send" files on a P2P network, you aren't out there looking for somebody to send to say saying "I'll give Jimmy Q this file," but instead it is Jimmy Q, the downloader, making an activ
      • So, basically how it works is that your friend can buy a new computer game and you can copy it legally, however they can't copy it for you legally.

        This is not true. The 1998 ammendment to the Canadian Copyright act specifically covers private copying of sound recordings of musical works. As a result we pay a levy on recordable media like CR-Rs. Here's what the Copyright Board of Canada has to say about it [cb-cda.gc.ca]

        Your friend's games, dvds, software etc are NOT covered and copying those things for your personal u

  • Used CD stores the next to go? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spyrochaete ( 707033 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @05:14PM (#8554133) Homepage Journal
    I haven't bought a new album from a retail record store in years and years. Whenever I desire a peice of plastic (which is frequent enough) I'll pick it up at a used store, earning the artist and label no money anyway. How long until second hand shops are shut down by CRIA?

    Anyone who thinks Canada is freer than the States is full of crap. We are simply 1 or 2 years behind our big fat brother downstairs. We'll adopt every law they enact (file swapping) and maintain every nonsensical law they uphold (marijuana posession) until the end of time. Why? Because we don't want Dubya to drop a W-bomb on our various beaver hatcheries.

    All hail America Jr., land of the slightly freer (until 1 year later).

    In the mean time, keep doing what you do. Make a statement by defying the law. Protect yourself while you do it. Use PeerGuardian 2 [xs.tech.nu].
    • Right, because we've really toed the line on marijuana (decriminalized), same-sex marriage (legal in Ontario before Massachusetts), war in Iraq (refused to go, despite the resulting tension in US-Canada relations), and music swapping (downloading legal).

      Right, we're real worried about the US invading it's most important trading partner.
    • I haven't bought a new album from a retail record store in years and years. Whenever I desire a peice of plastic (which is frequent enough) I'll pick it up at a used store, earning the artist and label no money anyway. How long until second hand shops are shut down by CRIA?

      I'm not sure upon what basis you are suggesting they could be shut down. Even if the original owner burns a copy and sells the original (which is currently legal BTW), he has paid a levy on the blank which is supposed to compensate the

  • Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting anyone go out and do this, but wouldn't it be an interesting scenario to protest and demonstrate against the recording industries' treatment of the customer as a pre-supposed criminal, and show what devastating effects losing the customers altogether can wreak?

    For example, wouldn't it be interesting if all owners of CD's just decided after making sure they had ripped and encoded and backed up their existing CD's under the auspices of "fair use" suddenly decided

  • Feh! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 )
    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...
    • Are you equating not an ISP not running their own Total Information Awareness monitoring of customer (ie. person sitting behind the keyboard) behavior with fucked-up network infrastructure?

      Everybody who is interested in this should take some time to read the actual Notice of Motion from CRIA: Federal Court Documents [canfli.org]

      If you have decent reading comprehension, you'll notice that CRIA's "civil search warrant" efforts go far beyond asking an ISP to help identify people sharing files (check out the Schedule A [canfli.org]

  • Brand new law in Italy is gonna hunt down sharers (Score:4, Informative)

    by SilveRo_kun ( 741555 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @05:33PM (#8554275) Homepage Journal
    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....)

  • Nice to see some support from ISP's (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xot ( 663131 ) <fragiledeath@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Saturday March 13, 2004 @05:34PM (#8554283) Journal
    Whether Shaw Cable has a messed up network or they respect the users privacy, its nice to see ISP's stand up against the music industry for a change instead of whimpering in a corner.
    At least they are not going out of the way to get some poor kid sued for a million dollars!

  • damn you videotron (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WildBeast ( 189336 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @05:56PM (#8554468) Journal
    I'm no mp3 downloader and I frankly think that most music sucks but I'll be switching to Bell as a matter of principle.

  • What I dont get is.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by anethema ( 99553 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @06:46PM (#8555133) Homepage
    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 :)
    • One of my professors is aiding the legal team defending one of the people being sued.. from what I understand, the case against the poor guys looks like this:

      - A "consultant" of the CRIA sits at his computer, and puts certain queries in.
      - When he finds a file he's looking for, he downloads it.
      - He then proceeds to "View user's other files", and if there is a large collection of stuff he doesn't want to see, he records that person's IP address.
      - If that IP Address belongs to one of several targeted Canadian
      • Hmm, seems like a thin defense. If it is a tcp/ip connection, then the IP is pretty much unspoofable. And any network monitor can show you which IP something is coming from, or if it was multiple people, etc.

        But if their main proof is the guy/girl has lots of files...TOO BAD, you can posess allll the mp3s you want, you dont even have to own the original cds. The clincher for this person here is the fact that they UPLOADED this song to someone else..

        Whether the CRIA can prove that they ACTUALLY downloaded
        • Bwah? The uploading part is the easiest to prove. If someone sets up a query to find songs that are being shared, downloads them, confirms that they are in fact what they are labeled to be, then the guy's uploaded them, as he sent them to the guy that checked if they were what they said they were.

          Assuming they can prove actual identity, this part is easy.

  • Copying is perfectly legal in Canada (Score:4, Informative)

    by AchilleTalon ( 540925 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @06:49PM (#8555159) Homepage
    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...

    • 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.

      You have just identified a distinguishing point upon which a court can make a verdict in favour of the music industry: the Internet is not considered a taxable[sic; should be leviable] media.

      As the levy does not apply to the in
    • 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 s

  • Broadband Tax? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by qtp ( 461286 ) on Saturday March 13, 2004 @06:51PM (#8555177) Journal
    I thought that Canadians paid a "broadband tax" to cover the cost of "pirating".

    Has anyone else here heard of this?

    How can the record companies go after someone if they are already receiving a handout from the government to cover that loss?

    Am I completely wrong about this?

    Wouldn't this be "double jeopardy" if you've paid your share for using broadband, but they are still sueing users?

  • This is from an industry, that has enough Ottawa clout to subect Canadian radio listeners to endless drivel. To fill in content regulation requirements! So if I am in Hongcouver I still hear Edward Bear and Terry Jacks on the oldies at least 3 times an hour. I hope their collective stupidity does them in and we start to see a free market for a change. I also resent having to pay money to those jerks every time I burn a Linux ISO. The extortionists deserve what that are about to reap, namely obscurity.

  • TELUS Copyright Infringment (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    TELUS recently started to hand out notices of copyright infringment. Its mostly bittorrent ports they monitor but in the copyright notice they actually specify the name of the file and the date / time.

    It specifically said it wasnt a legal notice but just a warning that this could be seen as copyright infringment.
  • This is the same strategy used by sister organization the Recording Industry Association of America, lawyers argued.'"

    I first read this as "used by sinister organization the Recording Industry Association of America," and wondered why the lawyers were being so forthright...
  • Montreal-based Groupe Videotron Ltee. is the only service provider to say it will fully co-operate.

    As another poster said, thats logic since Videotron is owned by Quebecor Media, that owns Archambault [archambault.ca] which already have an legal online MP3 download.

    My concern about that is the quasi monopol videotron has about home internet service. Fortunately for us, you can always switch to DSL with Bell's Sympatico (they just announced faster download/upload speeds, im reaching 80k upload). Bell AFAIK dont have a

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