File-sharing legal in Canada, judge rules

File-sharing legal in Canada, judge rules

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By Christian Bauer

Many have watched the long battle dread on by the Canadian music industry and users of popular file-sharing programs such as Kazaa, Emule and many others. The large industry lawyers are finding every way to attack the user downloading music. Whether it be to preview before buying or just never paying to use the copyrighted works. This phenomena is seen through the downloading of movies, music and anything else you can think of.

On March 31, a Canadian judge, Konrad von Finckenstein, ruled that the Canadian Recording Industry Association had no right to ask for personal information about 29 alleged file-sharing users. They were very much prepared to sue for large sums of money and most important of all, make an example of users caught in the battle between file-sharing under siege by the large recording industries around the world.

Five Internet service providers were taken to court, among them was Shaw Cable, the most outspoken of the five. Peter Bissonnette, president of Shaw Communications was very pleased with the outcome. Along with Rogers and Bell. Videotron of Quebec was the only company which complied with the requests of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, although the company has interest in the recording industry.

To understand the situation a little better, one must realize the recent victories by similar organizations around the world, including the Recording Industry of Association America and it's affiliates in Denmark, Germany, the UK and most notably the United States of America. Industry lawyers were able to sue approximately 1500 users in the past for sharing songs and works protected by copyrights.

In a recent times, several children were sued as an example of how far the RIAA will go. Superbowl fans were able to see the commercial by Pepsi-iTunes where children were used as a huge corporate scheme to promote the downloading of music, legally. The general theme of the commercial was "I don't" they say. "I will still continue downloading". Unfortunately for Apple, the statement backfired in a show by enthusiasts making a clear message that using children to fight this battle will not get you far at all. You may view the original Superbowl advertisement at apple.com.

On similar occasions, the Movie Picture Association of America (MPAA) has made similar attacks on users allegedly sharing copyrighted movies via popular file-sharing clients. Several users have been forced to pay hefty fines in the past as the MPAA has targeted certain films being shared, most prominently, new releases.

In recent happenings, large 'ed2k', or edonkey2000 link sites have been shut down one way or the other. The largest of them, ShareReactor, was shut down by Swiss police acting on the complaints of many large corporations. A small victory by the recording and motion picture industries, but a chance for enthusiasts to regroup and form even stronger links.

As file-sharing right now in Canada is legal, Canadians should be aware of the expected and most certain long thought-out appeal being prepared right now by high-paid lawyers for the recording and probably movie industries in Canada.

Canadians are proud of new found freedoms in contrast to our neighbour southward. Citing cases in same-sex marriage and the decriminalization of marijuana under Canadian constitution... and now freedom to share files over the Internet without the fear of embarrassment and lawsuits.

I think this is good news. There is no body that can stop people from sharing files so why bother putting so much effort to make it illegal and just cause so much tax money to go down the drain trying to stop it?
isps should not have to give private information to large corporations anyways./

Paul Martin said he would pass legislation to make file sharing illegal. So, make hay while the sun shines because the liberals (and the conservatives ) want to turn the dark on.

Oh hi Milton!

I heard about this. It is upsetting our government would go through so much trouble just to make this happen.

Look at how much the gun registry cost us.

You're all lucky in Canada..

Way to go Canada!!!

You people are amazing, great women, great people, a great place to live!!

Canada rox!!!

Filesharing should stay legal but i guess if it got out of hand they could make the file sharing programs put a limit to how many files you download or how much you can share.

Thanks for the compliments, everyone! Canada does rock

Ofcourse there's still a couple of things which we've seen happen lately like: Legalization of marijuana, Same-sex marriage... I wonder what kind of thing we'll come up with next.

lol.. Probably something..

legality to grow Marijuana, perhaps. LOL

Yes we live in a beautiful country indeed.

you know what ladies and gentlemen. This country is great. we can download music, smoke weed (i dont by the way, but it is still a freedom), we can go out and be crazy on the streets for a hockey game, we can marry if we are gay (which i'm not, but still the freedom is there!). We live in such a great country. why would we let this change by voting in some conservative government?

GO CANADA GO!

Go Canada go.

I learned three things today. CyberM does not smoke weed. He is not Gay and he is conservative. I do not think he is from the Green Party.

CyberM. you are a cool Canadian.

This is not the time to rejoice.. the powers that be are hard at work trying to turn over marijuana decriminalization as well as making downloads once again illegal. If we want to stop them DONT VOTE THEM BACK IN! Vote Green

CyberM,

Sorry about the previous note. I did not mean to say you are conservative. My apologies.

Yeah I noticed you said that as well, although reading both posts presumed it was a typo. No worries here, we're not quite that quick to anger hehe

LOL. Good guy you are. That what make Canadian different from others. We do not lose our temper easily and very friendly to each other.

hey moghrabi! i'm thankful you removed that remarked about being a conservative before I got on.. i would have been like "what??". it's all good how are things in BC? have a nice night!

My $0.02:

I think filesharing should be illegal. It gives pirates more freedoms to infringe on the rights owned by music companies. The music and movie industries are big to our economy here in North America and being able to just give and take what you want is not right. I have to admit thoough guys, that I did use kazaa when my son put it on my computer. I did not like it because of the advertising. THAT IS WRONG! Kazaa is putting advertising on and making money off of the work of artists and infringing on the copyrights of music industry.

The average Joe Blow Canadian probably is not aware of how much this takes from our economy. It is not just American companies that pay, it is the Canadian subsidiaries that also have to cut the workforce to help cope with the loss of profits because of this newwave filesharing craze.

I do not think by any means that file sharing is illegal. What should be illegal is the presumed value that stars such as Brittney Spears seems to hold. I dont know how it is the economy has assigned such a value to an economic activity so devoid of merit. I would much rather pay for some live music down here in Mexico by some random mariachi singing songs full of meaning than ever even think on indulging in listening to such empty garbage as is found performed by many many individuals. What should be illegal is to allow our future generations to place such high value on "being cool" and even worse - on somebody telling them how to "be cool."

I am sorry to say, the problem is not file sharing, it is that many people really want these files. That is the real problem. It is sad that so much of the wealth of the US is concentrated on a group so small. I dont mean to critisize the US but it seems to me that if all the money spent in the immoral salaries of these individuals was spent on solving the problems that have become so prevalent in the USA lately (education/welfare/etc...) the USA could once again become a place an educated individual would want to live in. Imagine if all the economic activity spent sueing individuals and devising ne ways to kepp the rich rich was spent in educating your young? What could the USA accomplish?

What is wrong with critisizing the US?

So T.Rex in your post a clear point you have there is you think music should be illegal because of programs like Kazaa that make money from the Ads within the programs themselves? I understand how much money the industry loses from downloaded media but its a small chunk of the big picture, they make billions.. Im not endorsing people to go wildly downloading anything they want, if its good I buy it, if its not its gone. It's that simple.

But as for the Ads, how do you think programmers who make FREE software get paid? One of two ways.

1) User donations -- yeah not something to rely on very much at all (trust me I make free software lol).
2) Banner Ads -- Although not very lucrative, if there are enough users it more than covers the cost of hosting the website so its not an out of pocket expense.

Most of use open source programmers and freeware programmers don't program because we want to 'get rich' we program to contribute to the online communities we 'live' in.

For most of us making a program ShareWare and making people register it does not appeal to us because we believe in the freedom and free-ness of the Internet and all it entails.

I personally like programs like emule. It's opensource and there's a huge community involved with the whoe project. They do not profit off of the software. I think they might receive donations, but as Shmad said, that's nothing.

Software becomes great when there's a massive community flourishing around it. People help each other out and bugs are usually fixed rapidly.

Great news. Now that the election has been called, however, the most useful thing we can do in the next four weeks is to raise people's awareness of these issues, and get the candidates to air their positions.

You thing is positive, all parties wish to bring back the youth into politics. File sharing, is an issue directly connected to youth. I'm sure their advisors made sure they are aware of this issue, and I hope they will address it.

didnt the conservatives already say that they want filesharing gone?

It is rather better to legalise file sharing rather than trying to stop pirates... It's a lot more cost effective... How do you think you'll stop file sharing? It 's not just on the net where file sharing happens... Artists still make money because of conservative people who think file sharing is wrong..

I never heard of a musician go bankrupt because of file sharing yet... I do not think that it will happen either,,, Rather than spending billions of $$$ it's rather easier for them to spend millions i would guess..