Here's an interesting twist to the controversial peer to peer file sharing dilemma. The above is not a very recent story, but it's something the music industry is trying to fight right now. For our neighbor's to the north, it is legal to download music from internet service providers, such as Kazaa. In June, 2004, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that these service providers do not have to pay royalties for downloaded music files. They found that these ISPs are not responsible for how individuals use the technology they provide. Also, individuals placing songs on a file sharing directory, like Kazaa, is not considered to be distribution. However, I read in another article that while downloading songs is legal, uploading is not.http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5121479.html Is not placing a song in a directory and uploading a song the same thing? Even so, I guess as long as the uploading of a song occurs in a different country,
Well, anyway, to deal with matter of royalties, the Canadian government has placed a tariff on the sale of hardware or software that deals with digital recordings. The money collected from this tariff is meant to be distributed to the artists, publishers, and record labels. In a two year period, 28 million dollars was collected. However, the tax no longer applies to MP3 players. Apparently, the current Canadian Copyright Act does not have language dealing with Mp3 players specifically.
The point is, American artists and American labels may be able to cope with the downloading behaviors of American consumers, but how should they deal with every country with their own set of copyright laws?
1 comment:
I'm not very knowledgeable about security issues with making CDs, but it would seem to me that shipments going to Canada could have some bypass not allowing people to download songs. Not much of a solution, I know. Or, maybe artists will opt out selling to Canadians. Another - not-so-good-solution. It does surprise me, however, that the Court there was contradictory to here. There reasoning seemed well established in that downloading one song doesn't make it distribution or infringement. It made sense, but what about when it's in the thousands? Does that constitute infringement and distribution? I would think yes.
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