The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Monkey see, monkey do, is the only way to describe what is currently happening in the Canadian music industry. Last week, the Canadian Recording Industry Association, CIRA, followed the lead of the Recording Industry Association of America, the RIAA, and began working with an American data mining firm to identify and charge people who share music online over peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa. In the United States, over 1,000 lawsuits have been launched by the RIAA over the last few months against people who share their music files online; and after all of the initial outrage and bluster, it actually seems to be working at slowing the online sharing of music, with the total number of files swapped in any given month down over 30% since the lawsuits began. Now CIRA is trying to get in on the act, which is very interesting because when the lawsuits were first launched in the U.S., CIRA announced that while they did not approve of the online sharing of music, they would not be following this same tactic. Now I wonder about the pressure that was placed on them. Canadian copyright laws are different from those in the U.S. Our laws allow us to make a single copy of purchased music for personal use on our computers, MP3 players, etc. While the law states that you cannot make a copy of a piece of music and give it to a friend, the law does not say that someone cannot take a copy from you, and this is basically what file sharing networks are. You have music on your computer that other people take and copy to their own machines. Under our copyright laws, this situation is not covered, and therefore technically not illegal. CIRA also has other troubles. On, January 1, 2004, new privacy laws came into effect in our nation. One of the sections of these new laws protects information about us online. Our internet service providers, ISPs, are required to protect information about our identities, payment histories, and web-surfing habits. To this point, CIRA has a list of approximately 30 Canadians they want to target for persecution, but they don't know who they are. They have information about their ISPs and their online or screen names, but they have no idea of their real identities. CIRA has said that each of these people has over 2,500 songs available on their computers to share, and they are hoping the ISPs will cooperate and turn over their identities, but if not, they are ready to file subpoenas and take a run at the new privacy laws in court. Several of the targeted ISPs have already stated they will not cooperate with requests from CIRA, but at least one, Videotron, has stated they will comply if asked. It will be an interesting case to watch as it develops to see where Canadian laws fall as compared to those of our neighbours to the South. ([email protected])
