Post Tagged with: "copyright"

CRIA Breaks From Creator Groups and Indy Labels On iPod Levy

Today is music day at the Bill C-32 committee as there will be two panels focused on music copyright issues. The first panel is the Balanced Copyright For Canada panel, comprised of CRIA (which backs the site as part of its strategy to “radicalize and activate” its base through social media as Graham Henderson described it earlier this month) and four of the site’s board members. The second panel includes SOCAN, ADISQ, GMMQ, and the SAC.

The BCFC panel should raise some interesting questions about what CRIA says publicly at committee or does in the courts and what it says behind closed doors. I recently obtained a document under the Access to Information Act summarizing comments made by Henderson to Industry Canada officials in a September 2010 meeting, several months after Bill C-32 was introduced. The meeting was a Chamber of Commerce event, so CRIA did not report it in its lobbying disclosures. The summary includes two notable positions that seem to contradict public action or words and suggest a split between CRIA and other creator groups, including the Canadian Independent Music Association.

March 1, 2011 — 6 comments — News

Pandora: High Costs Keeping Us Out of Canada

The National Post posts a letter from Pandora’s Tim Westergren, in which he notes that: “I think it’s very important that Canadian listeners understand that Pandora is eager to launch in Canada, but the rates that have been proposed by the Canadian music rights societies are simply uneconomic.”

March 1, 2011 — 3 comments — News

CRIA Continues Fight Against Industry Canada Sponsored P2P Study

Ever since Industry Canada released an independent study it sponsored on the impact of peer-to-peer file sharing in late 2007, the Canadian Recording Industry Association has worked overtime to try to discredit it. The independent study, completed by two European economists, reached the following two key conclusions:

When assessing the P2P downloading population, there was “a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases.” The study estimated that 12 additional P2P downloads per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.
When viewed in the aggregate (ie. the entire Canadian population), there is no direct relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchases in Canada. According to the study authors, “the analysis of the entire Canadian population does not uncover either a positive or negative relationship between the number of files downloaded from P2P networks and CDs purchased. That is, we find no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative for Canada as a whole.”

February 28, 2011 — 22 comments — News

Warner Music Mutes MP Angus’ Radio Documentary On Youtube

In recent years, Warner Music has become infamous for “muting” the sound on hundreds of YouTube videos that include music over which they hold copyright. While takedowns of full copies of songs is their prerogative, the effect of muting user-generated content that may have a snippet of a song as […]

February 28, 2011 — 19 comments — News

Japan Wanted Canada Out of Initial ACTA Group

Wikileaks posted several new ACTA cables earlier this month (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). Much of the commentary has focused on how the U.S. envisioned using ACTA to pressure developing countries. For example, one cable – which suggests that ACTA could be concluded in 2006 (a year before negotiations were even announced) – states:

Arai stressed that we should move as fast as possible and keep in mind that the intent of the agreement is to address the IPR problems of third-nations such as China, Russia, and Brazil, not to negotiate the different interests of like-minded countries. The new agreement could serve as a yardstick for measuring the market economy status of countries such as China and Russia.

Another cable includes commentary on specifically excluding other international organizations, with the USTR stressing that the G8 or OECD “might make it more difficult to construct a high-standards agreement.”

From a Canadian perspective it is worth noting that the Japanese proposed keeping Canada out of the initial negotiating group.

February 25, 2011 — 7 comments — News