Canadian Recording Industry Hunts Ps2 User`s

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By Jay Lyman
TechNewsWorld
December 17, 2003

Quote:

Canadian Recording Industry Hunts P2P Users


The CRIA has said it has been technically seeking out file traders, similar to the way the RIAA has tracked alleged copyright infringers on P2P networks. In the United States, network information has been used by the RIAA to subpoena user information from ISPs.



The Canadian equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of Americahttp://www.riaa.org/ (RIAA) has signaled that it might follow the U.S. model of launching lawsuits against individuals accused of illegal music trading, which the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) blames for CAN$425 million in lost sales annually.
Although the Canadian Copyright Board last week confirmed the legality of downloading music tracks from peer-to-peer networks for personal use, the board also pointed out that uploading music files is still illegal.

In announcing support for its U.S. counterpart, the CRIA hinted that its own legal onslaught against file sharers might begin soon -- as early as January.
"The action by the RIAA is against individuals who are illegally distributing potentially thousands of copyrighted music files," said CRIA president Brian Robertson in a statement. "In Canada, we know of users of file-sharing services who are individually uploading and distributing four and five thousand copyrighted songs to potentially tens of millions of people. This is indisputably an illegal practice."

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CRIA spokesperson Julie Wright would not confirm whether the Canadian recording industry group is poised to take legal action, but she did indicate it is a possibility.

When asked whether the industry group is working with Canadian ISPs, some of which recently announced they would provide user information on alleged uploaders if requested by a court, Wright declined to answer.
"I don't think CRIA is ready to comment on that because there are a lot of things in the works," Wright said.

Still, the CRIA has said it has been technically seeking out file traders, similar to the way the RIAA has tracked alleged copyright infringers on P2P networks. In the United States, network information has been used by the RIAA to subpoena user information from ISPs, a tactic that has been met with resistance and even countersuits from several of the ISPs.

Loss and Liability

Blaming illegal file trading for "a dramatic reduction in career opportunities for Canadian artists and the availability of new Canadian music," CRIA's Robertson said the industry likely will go beyond its previous efforts toward education and awareness.
"The music industry in Canada has been too devastated by the widespread theft of its music to continue to be the good guys in this process," Robertson said. "CRIA has invested in excess of $1 million to date in an effort to educate young people on the issues of Internet piracy, and we will continue to do so.

"For the hardcore group, however, it appears that education has and will not make any impression," Robertson added. "They are killing the music they profess to love. They should be aware that they may face legal consequences for their actions."

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Yankee http://www.yankeegroup.com/ Group senior analyst Mike Goodman said the CRIA most certainly is looking at the RIAA's success, which, although somewhat debatable, has helped turn at least some people away from sharing unlicensed music files online.
However, Goodman added that one thing has been transformed by the RIAA's success in attacking P2P users: Now, more music is being shared through means other than P2P networks. These alternative channels include e-mail and instant messaging .

"To a certain extent, [the RIAA's tactics] have cut down the reach of shared music, but bottom line, it doesn't stop it," Goodman said.

Testbed for Tact

In concert with its validation of downloading music tracks from P2P sites, the Canadian Copyright Board imposed a fee on the hardware that plays the digital files to offset losses and pay artists and others in the industry.
Goodman said the approach had been discussed in the United States but has been met with stiff opposition from those who would have to pay such fees, such as ISPs and hardware companies, which "hate it with a capital H."

Nevertheless, Goodman said, the size of the Canadian market makes it an ideal test bed, and "everybody in the ecosystem" will be watching to see how the model works.
"If after six months it is successful in Canada, you might see the U.S. industry push to have the same kind of thing," he said. 

more info here:http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/32426.html

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Music group aims to charge Internet users

David Akin, CTV Business and Technology Correspondent

A group representing Canada's songwriters will ask the Supreme Court of Canada to force Internet service providers to pay them royalties for the millions of digital music files downloaded each year by Canadians.

The case has broad ramifications for the Internet industry in Canada, legal experts say.

"This is the big case for the Internet. This will set the position on how we are going to treat Internet service providers, whether they are going to be seen as people who are responsible in some way for content that goes through their services," said Mark Perry, a professor of law and a professor of computer science at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont.

If successful, the legal pleadings of the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) could open the door to other rights holders -- groups as diverse as software publishers or Hollywood movie distributors -- who could use SOCAN's precedent to force Internet service providers (ISPs) to collect royalties for their members.

Although those groups are prompted to seek new sources of revenue because of what they say are illegal downloads of copyrighted content, SOCAN is asking ISPs to pay a blanket annual royalty regardless of whether the ISP is transmitting legal or illegally downloaded music.

"This is a huge case for Canada and the Internet and whether we're part of the global Internet community or on the outside looking in," said Jay Thomson, president of the Ottawa-based Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP). "Consumers could very well see an increase in their Internet costs and they could see a slowdown in the transmission speed of their Internet communications."

CAIP is one of the parties to the case. Its main opponent, SOCAN, and many other parties to the case declined to comment before the court hears the matter.

Legal experts say the Supreme Court has been looking for a case like the one involving SOCAN and the ISPs because they will be able to clarify several key issues involving Internet use in Canada by ruling on a narrow technical question involving some technology ISPs use to speed up performance of their networks.

For example, legal experts say the justices of the Supreme Court will be aware that what they say on the technical issue at hand will apply to the broader issue of the responsibility ISPs have for any content that passes through their systems. That could affect the liability ISPs have for some kinds of objectionable content such as pornography, hate propaganda or computer viruses.

"We've always taken the position that we are the conduits of other people's content. We simply provide the network over which other people communicate with each other," Mr. Thomson said. "It's the people who are doing the communicating who should be responsible for that content."

The questions for the court

The Supreme Court will also be asked to adjudicate on a jurisdictional issue, specifically whether Canadian law ought to apply to organizations which operate Web servers physically located outside the country but which deliver content to Canadians.

There is some case law already in Canada that supports the idea that business activities aimed at or used by significant numbers of Canadians ought to be subject to Canadian law even if the organization behind those activities is located outside the country.

"This case is terrifically significant," said Richard Owens, executive director of the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the University of Toronto. "From an Internet law point-of-view, it'll have effects around the world. Legal academics have been waiting for [this] for a long time. The Supreme Court is finally stepping in and giving us some guidance for the digital age."

So far, SOCAN has had partial success in convincing a Canadian court of the justice of its cause. SOCAN had originally asked the Copyright Board of Canada to impose a royalty on Canadian ISPs but the Copyright Board ruled that ISPs ought to be granted an exemption from paying royalties because they were, like telephone companies, simply a carrier or transmitter of the music files. SOCAN appealed that decision to the Federal Court of Canada and, there, found some success.

The Federal Court agreed with the Copyright Board that ISPs were indeed carriers or transmitters of content except when ISPs engaged in caching content to speed up the performance of their systems. Caching (pronounced cash-ing) is a common procedure used by ISPs in which copies of popular Web pages are stored on a computer close to a group of end users. When an end user in Toronto, for example, requests the home page of search site Google, the Google search page is retrieved from a computer in Toronto rather than from Google's main computers in California.

The Federal Court held that the act of creating a cache of content means that ISPs are moving from their role as carrier to a role in which they actively decide what kind of content will exist on their systems. And that means, under Canadian copyright law, they should be responsible for that content.

The ISPs disagreed with that interpretation of the Federal Court and were granted leave to appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court. Lawyers for SOCAN, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, and a host of interested parties, such as the Canadian Cable Television Association, the Canadian Recording Industry Association, and several ISPs will argue their case Wednesday. A ruling on the matter is typically made months after oral arguments are presented.

SOCAN is proposing that ISPs pay a royalty of 25 cents per subscriber per year as well as 10 per cent of any gross profit ISPs make through the sale of advertising.

"The tariffs are actually quite large," Mr. Perry said.

If adopted at that rate, SOCAN could receive several million dollars a year.

In 2002, SOCAN received a total of $32 million in royalties paid by Canadian radio stations which play music written by SOCAN's members.

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Apparently impressed by the success that the RIAA has had suing preteens and grandmothers for file-sharing, the Canadian Recording Industry Association is threatening to bust out the lawyer stick north of the border. Despite the recent ruling by the Copyright Board of Canada that P2P downloading is legal, the CRIA believes that the copyright laws in Canada are irrelevant because they were created prior to the advent of P2P sharing and may choose to challenge the ruling in court. Now, they are looking closely at going after the uploaders; those who share a substantial number of songs:
http://www.globetechnology.com/servl.../TPTechnology/
http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1071297605.html

"It's totally clear that it's illegal. It's distribution, it's absolutely illegal. When you've got individuals who have 4,000 and 5,000 songs on their hard drives and are making them available to tens of millions of people, those individuals have no concern about the artists or the songwriters or the music or anything connected with the creative or business process of making music." It's an example, too, of the gradually stronger language the CRIA has adopted as the lawsuits have continued in the U.S.

Any litigation would be a course of action "we are really being forced into. It's a process that's a last resort, to try and address the huge problems, because the industry's lost 30 per cent of its retail base since 1999. The losses [in Canada] are in excess of $425-million. Each of the major record companies have had staff layoffs on the average of 20 per cent. This is a major issue not only affecting the careers of new artists and new music. It's affecting the livelihood of Canadians and their families. It has been a devastating process."

Similar to the RIAA, the CRIA seems overly willing to pin the blame for revenue losses solely on file sharing, choosing to overlook other causes such as high prices, an economic downturn, and rampant piracy in many parts of Asia. Hopefully, the CRIA will learn from the missteps of the RIAA and choose the road less travelled. Don't count on it.