In response to Justice Konrad von Finckenstein ruling that
file sharing was legal in Canada (previously discussed
here), Federal Heritage Minister Helene Scherrer has stated that
"As minister of Canadian Heritage, I will, as quickly as possible, make changes to our copyright law".
The problem is that Canadian copyright law has been going through a slow and thoughtful reformation process. Since the unveiling of
A Framework for Copyright Reform in 2001, a lot of progress has been made in updating the laws to reflect the needs and concerns of content producers, and the public domain.
Now, however, it seems that all of this work may be bulldozed by Helene Scherrer, who
declared her intentions at the Juno Awards last night.
posted by Jairus
on Apr 3, 2004 -
11 comments
Vans Stevenson, senior lobbyist for MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America), was the last to revise a letter California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer is to distribute to other attorney generals. Lockyer is the president of the National Association of Attorneys General. - is your government owned? Lockyer receives thousands in campaign contributions from MPAA, RIAA, and '
[via: The Register]..corporate and private donations from the major studios, including The Paramount Pictures Group, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Warner Bros PAC, AOL Time Warner. Senior executives, such as Alan Horn and Howard Welinsky, respectively CEO and senior VP at Warner Brothers..." Adam Eisgrau of P2P United said that "the draft attributed to the attorney general's office contains many significant factual errors, eyebrow-raising metadata, and articulates a very broad expansion in several important respects of product liability and consumer protection law that would have enormous effects..' It's in
The NY Times.
Slyck has
the original document.
posted by giantkicks
on Mar 15, 2004 -
3 comments
"Movies: They're worth it!" In a move to educate those darn thieving kids and their evil P2P file-sharing networks which are used to trade ripped movies, the MPAA has launched a
public service campaign to explain, in layman's terms, why violating their copyrights is wrong. …Yes, these are the same people who have just brought us an entire summer of bloated sequels, shameless celebrity vehicles and uninspired hack-work. Respect!
posted by Down10
on Aug 3, 2003 -
81 comments
Finally, a Fair Fight with Big Music From a Business Week Online column...
"Telecom giant Verizon is battling the industry's bid to make it name a file-sharing subscriber. It's also defending your right to privacy. On July 24, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) made an unprecedented request of Verizon Communications (VZ). The music industry's trade association served the telecom with a subpoena, seeking the identity of a Verizon subscriber who had allegedly illegally traded digital songs by artists including Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and "boy band" N'Sync. The RIAA didn't specify why it wanted to know who the user was or what it would do with the information."
posted by fpatrick
on Sep 12, 2002 -
22 comments
Hosting Provider Bans RIAA - According to this press release, Information Wave Technologies will actively block all RIAA IP space because RIAA is intentionally seeking to invade customer networks / hosts to check for copyright violations. Additionally, they are going to deploy a "honeypot" system (simulates a GNUtella client sharing copyrighted material) in order to log requests for the files and correlate them with attempts to invade the host -- RIAA's stated plan to combate music piracy.
posted by Irontom
on Aug 19, 2002 -
24 comments
Open source music? Give away the songs without copyright, sell the audio source files dirt cheap and waive the copyright. That's the idea behind
Brad Sucks. Are any bands you know of doing something like this?
posted by Leonard
on Jul 30, 2002 -
5 comments
RIAA sues Audiogalaxy. "After targeting decentralized popular file-sharing services such as Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster, and Madster, the Recording Industry Association of America took aim at Audiogalaxy in court last Friday..." [via
pfm]
posted by dobbs
on May 28, 2002 -
46 comments
Did you hear Michael Greene's speech at the Grammys? At first it seemed like it was going to be just yet another recording industry weasel with an obligatory goatee congratulating himself on stage. But it quickly turned into a lesson on the harms of the illegal Internet downloads. "This illegal file-sharing and ripping of music files is pervasive, out of control and oh so criminal. Many of the nominees here tonight, especially the new, less-established artists, are in immediate danger of being marginalized out of our business. Ripping is stealing their livelihood one digital file at a time, leaving their musical dreams haplessly snared in this World Wide Web of theft and indifference," says Greene. Was this appeal-cum-address effective or appropriate? Were you more sympathetic to the RIAA or artists afterwards?
posted by emptyage
on Feb 27, 2002 -
78 comments
The War Against MP3? Hilary Rosen, everyone's favourite defender of record company hegemony, outlines her new strategy ("Help me help you.") in an email leaked to
FuckedCompany. Interestingly, it's aimed at beating the dastardly hackers at their own game, with tactics such as "Spoofing and/or interdiction methods for existing peer to peers". Signs of desparation on the part of the RIAA, or should people be making the most of the second-generation Napster clones while they have a chance?
posted by holgate
on Oct 3, 2001 -
34 comments
Napster is dead but the dream lives on. After two years of hard fighting, RIAA managed to kill Napster -- and now at least four comparable systems have appeared, all of which will be much harder to either control or to kill off. An RIAA rep acknowledges the problem. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Sep 4, 2001 -
44 comments
Sorry, but where do you live? The RIAA/CRIA, seem to be a little overzealous in stopping the spread of "napster like services" by quoting laws/court desicions in C&D letters to ISP's in other countries.
I'm not saying that thet're wrong to protect their copyright, but surely
IRMA could have directed member countries to contact the ISP's?
posted by X-00
on Jul 9, 2001 -
0 comments
Songbird is billed as a Napster anti-piracy tool. It's job is supposedly for an artist to see the many title variations of their material as documentation for copyright violations. I don't know if this is truly a thinly-veiled claim of legitimacy or whether the author is just being earnest - but because it shows what users have what variations, I'm finding it a great tool to track down songs that I couldn't find before because of Napster's filtering and not necessarily being able to think of every possible variation...Neato.
posted by DiplomaticImmunity
on May 10, 2001 -
7 comments
Disney's Michael Eisner on what to do about all those kids who use Napster:
Arrest and prosecute the little SOBs. I know I'd sleep better at night knowing that those devious conspiratorial 11-year-olds were behind bars. [second item]
posted by aaron
on Mar 16, 2001 -
15 comments
DivX +
filenavigator = headaches for
MPAA. Of course the
SPA and
RIAA can't be too pleased about filenavigator either. I've checked and the DivX of Castaway is on the net already.
posted by john
on Jan 17, 2001 -
3 comments
Is it still "file sharing" if you don't share? According to a Xerox Parc study, 70% of Gnutella users are downloading music, but they aren't sharing with others. Some Gnutella developers say this is a self-correcting problem and that new users will step up to fill the gap. Others think this is the start of a growing trend and the whole copyright infringement issue might go away if the greed of users in a peer-to-peer network prevents it from succeeding in the first place.
posted by honkzilla
on Aug 24, 2000 -
8 comments
If you haven't already read "The Heavenly Jukebox", you should really check it out. The Atlantic Monthly recently posted this great article subtitled "Rampant music piracy may hurt musicians less than they fear. The real threat -- to listeners and, conceivably, democracy itself -- is the music industry's reaction to it". While somewhat long, it's a very interesting read, going into the original copyright lawsuits in England over a hundred years ago to today's ordeal pitting the RIAA against the millions of people downloading Metallica mp3s off of Napster. Well worth reading.
posted by ookamaka
on Aug 18, 2000 -
1 comment
Napster's screwed: Internal NapsterCo email and documents show that they intended to be a copyright-infringing pirate haven from the very beginning. Should have used PGP, kids!
posted by aaron
on Jun 13, 2000 -
5 comments
RIAA backs new copyright law: "Instead of the rights to recordings reverting to the artists after 35 years, as current law states, recordings would be reclassified as "works for hire," with the record labels keeping the rights to them forever. " Let the flame-fest begin...
posted by novarese
on May 10, 2000 -
9 comments
