Canadians have little to fear from downloading music

Despite the major crack down of music file swappers by the RIAA in theUS, it is having very little impact on Canadian file sharers.  It certainly does make most Canadian users think twice about sharing, but the chances of being sued are very close to nil.  The main problem the Canadian recording industry faces is how to go about suing individual copyright music sharers.  In the US, the RIAA is making good use of the DMCA to issue subpoena's to force ISP's to reveal the offending subscriber's details without a judge's approval.  Canada has very strong privacy laws and currently does not have any controversial DMCA-like legislation (laws) that would allow this type of activity. 

Originally when the RIAA began issuing subpoena's, Verizon challenged the DMCA with regards to consumer privacy, but lost their case even under appeal and thus allowed the RIAA to send out thousands of subpoenas to various ISPs.  As a result, the RIAA have sued several hundred individual music file-swappers, including a 12-year-old girl and even a few who never used any file sharing software. 

Despite the lack of legislation to target online piracy, Canada does have one other method in compensating the artist's work.  A federal Copyright Act was amended in 1997 to put a levy on all blank recordable media.  This aims to compensate artists for users who download music to record to CD or simply copy CDs.  Apparently, it is even legal for a consumer to lend a CD to another and then for that other person to make a personal copy of it.  As this has not been tested in court, it essentially makes it legal to download music for private use, although distributing copyright music would still be against the law.  Thanks to Kranberry for submitting the following article via our news submit:

Canadians who download music for free from the Internet should be cautious but not overly worried about the U.S. recording industry's recent legal crackdown on individual file traders, legal experts say. Lawyers and academic observers argue that legislative differences between Canada and the United States and a host of practical issues will likely dissuade the Canadian recording industry, which has far fewer resources than its U.S. counterpart, from taking individual music sharers to court. "The odds of being sued are infinitesimally small, but it certainly will make people think twice, and that alone may stop a lot of people from the activity," said Michael Geist, a professor of Internet law at the University of Ottawa and technology counsel for Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. Cross-border deterrence may be the best our recording industry hopes to achieve. Geist said one of the biggest barriers to launching a successful lawsuit in Canada is trying to figure out who should be sued. South of the border, a fast-track provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, makes it possible for copyright holders to subpoena subscriber information from Internet service providers, or ISPs, without obtaining a judge's approval. This means the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA, can get the personal information of a file-sharer simply on the suspicion of piracy, creating a more efficient process for hunting down alleged music pirates. "To do so in Canada would be much more difficult," said Geist, explaining that strong privacy laws and the lack of DMCA-like legislation in this country creates a much higher hurdle. "It's not a slam-dunk that an Internet service provider (here) would supply that information." Read the full article here.

It looks like the Canadian music industry may face problems if it is legal there to download music for private use.  Then again with the levy on blank media, artists would still get compensated should the user then burn their downloaded tracks to CD.  While blank media levies may help the artists when users purchase blank media, it also means that consumers who purchase media for other purposes such as data backup also get penalised.  Then again, a blank media levy is still a much better solution compared to what the RIAA and MPAA have been up to! 

Europe is currently in the process of being attacked with new legislation to fight against piracy.  The new EUCD legislation has already been implemented across several countries including Germany and the UK.  The EUCD is the European equivalent to the DMCA legislation in the US and is primarily aimed at making it a crime to circumvent copy protection systems and to tackle online and physical media piracy. 

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Source: Toronto Star