My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) opens by noting that Canadians focused on hockey success and economic doom-and-gloom over the past month may have missed a series of events that suggest a dramatic shift for the recording industry. For much of the past decade, the industry has relied on three pillars to combat peer-to-peer file sharing – lawsuits, locks, and legislation.
The lawsuits, which began in 2003, resulted in suits against more than 35,000 alleged file sharers in the United States. The locks, which refers to digital locks that seek to impose copy-controls on music files, was a requirement for online services such as iTunes before it was given the green light, while the lobbying for legislative reforms to support the use of copy-controls led Canada to introduce the failed Bill C-61.
In a matter of weeks, the foundation of each of these pillars has either crumbled or shown serious signs of cracking.
