Canadian copyright court updates - the battle continues

April 15, 2004

chthomson used our news submit to tell us "I think the Canadian Courts will have more to say on these matters. Other recent court cases reflect a shift on how the Courts see some copyright issues, such as this story at The Star. With the new Privacy Act - the levy on recordable media - recent Copyright Board decisions, the Music Industry may find the battle much more difficult in Canada than in Europe or the USA."

CBC News - The Canadian Recording Industry Association filed an appeal Tuesday of the March 31 court ruling that effectively legalized file sharing in Canada."Canadian copyright law doesn"t allow people to make copies of hundreds or thousands of musical recordings for global copying," said Richard Pfohl, a lawyer who represents Canadian music labels.

Also - Heritage Minister Hélé¨ne Scherrer is promising to fight to make online music swapping in Canada a crime.In an interview with the Globe and Mail, Scherrer said she intends to draft legislation in the coming days to make the use of file-sharing sites like Kazaa against the law."We are going to make sure that downloading stays illegal. We will make it a priority so it is done as quickly as possible," Scherrer told the paper.

Thanks for the newschthomson, for those that would like to read these articles in their entirety, please visit these two links. The first link is the appeal, the second is more on the file swapper crackdown.

Source: Various