Fair Dealing by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dRkXwP

Fair Dealing by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dRkXwP

Copyright

CRIA’s Own Study Counters P2P Claims

While CRIA regularly trumpets commissioned studies as evidence for the problems posed by P2P, this week it released a major study without any fanfare whatsoever.  Conducted by Pollara last month, the study serves as part of CRIA's submission to the CRTC's Commercial Radio Review.  What makes this particular study interesting […]

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March 17, 2006 44 comments News

Federal Ct Issues Nearly Million Dollar Fine For Failing to Pay Levy

A federal court judge has fined Vortek Systems, a Montreal-based electronics retailer, nearly one million dollars for failing to pay the private copying levy.  The company was ordered to turn over the unpaid levy amounts ($1.65 million plus interest) along with a penalty of just over $900,000.  Vortek denied that […]

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March 17, 2006 1 comment News

More McBride

As keepmusiccoming.com falls into the hands of a Russian download site and the French Parliament moves closer toward creating download penalties akin to traffic tickets, Nettwerk founder Terry McBride continues to push for sanity in North America.  Check out his Save the Music Fan site, which includes his op-ed for […]

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March 12, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

Bill C-60 and Private Copying

While Bill C-60 is history, a specific provision involving private copying merits a brief comment.  The bill's approach to anti-circumvention provisions was generally that circumvention of a TPM was only an infringement where the purpose was to infringe copyright.  There was, however, a notable exception for private copying.  In other words, if you defeated the encryption on a copy-control CD for the purposes of making a private copy, that act would constitute infringement, even if the copying itself was lawful.

The presumed rationale behind this exception was that the private copying levy is supposedly linked to actual copying.  Supporters of the provision argue that the levy can go up or down, depending on that copying.  Assuming a world of ubiquitous copy-controls (that actually work), the levy would decrease to zero since there would be no private copying at all.

 

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March 9, 2006 5 comments News

Keepmusiccoming.com Goes From Bad To Worse

I recently blogged about CRIA's failure to renew keepmusiccoming.com, which it used as part of its "educational" campaign to convince users to stop downloading.  A blog reader has noted that the situation has gone from bad to worse as the site is now owned by a Russian download service offering […]

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March 9, 2006 6 comments News