This month marks the tenth anniversary of the debut of Napster, the file sharing service that had a transformative effect on the music and Internet services industries. While many commentators have marked the anniversary by reassessing Napster’s impact and speculating on what lies ahead, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) argues that now is also a suitable time to put to rest two myths about file sharing in Canada.
There are far more than just two myths (see textbox below), but the ones that have dominated debate is that all file sharing is legal in Canada and, perhaps as a consequence of this, that Canada leads the world in illegal file sharing activity. Neither claim is true.
