Canada Leading World In Illegal Downloading

[Tidyman]

...according to this guy:


Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) president Graham Henderson.

I wonder how many CDs Grammy-boy bought last year?

Here's an article from http://www.chartattack.com:

Canada Leading World In Illegal Downloading
Tuesday January 03, 2006 @ 06:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Canada will continue to have the highest per capita rate of illegally downloading music if it doesn't change its relatively lax copyright laws, according to the head of the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA).

An October 2004 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development noted that, per capita, Canada has the largest file-sharing population on the planet. CRIA — a non-profit trade organization representing the country's record companies and more than 95 per cent of all the records produced and sold in Canada — places much of the blame for the rampant downloading on politicians who've failed to enact legislation to reduce it. "Canada has fallen behind every single country in the European union," said CRIA president Graham Henderson in The Calgary Herald.

"We're behind Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the United States… The rest of the world has said [illegal downloading] is wrong and it should be curtailed."

A POLLARA study published in the fall estimated that at least 14 illegal files are downloaded for every legal one. It claimed that while those between the ages of 12 and 24 comprise 21 per cent of Canada's population, they're responsible for 78 per cent of illegal music downloading. The study also asserted that just six per cent of downloaders use legal sites.

CRIA says that the increase in online file-sharing has coincided with a 41-per cent drop — valued at $541 million — in the retail sale of music in Canada between 1999 and 2005. "Not only does music file-swapping harm artists, but it also points to an erosion of respect for intellectual property that threatens Canada's economy and values at the core of our society," Henderson said at the time, when he was launching a campaign to promote copyright reform.

[bighairygrinch]

Graham Henderson can kiss my big white ass!

I wanna know when the retarded CPCC is going to start paying out all the money they've collected via "levy" on blank recording media to the artists! as far as i know, not a single artist has received a penny from it.


Now about those bullshit statistics on how filesharing is destroying the music industry....have any of these assholes ever heard of these phrases such as "Home Theatre" or "Video Game Consoles" or "DVD Movies"? That's where the money is going from consumers' disposable income - they found something else to spend it on in the entertainment industry. People are going to more movies at the theatre than they used to also.

These guys have their heads so far up their own asses they can't see the shift in consumer tastes to different things besides an audio CD, which seems quite boring in comparison to the replay value of a DVD movie or an XBOX game....and I'll tell you that they indeed know all about the changing trends in consumer spending, because why else would HMV and all the other music retailers be selling so many DVD movies and accessories?

CRIA is only using the average joe P2P as a scapegoat, crying "poor me!" meanwhile they are making just as high if not higher profit margins, but want more money from us. The greedy bastards!

When is the music industry going to become more consumer-friendly like the movie industry is? you can get movies that are years and years old in a bargain bin for 5 bucks or less, but the music industry sells all their CDs at 22 bucks each, no matter how old they are. WTF?!?!
and all those online legal music sites? they all sell their songs at the same price!

We're getting ripped off, and we both know it! Grow some fucking balls, Henderson, and adapt, because change is constant, and inevitable. Just because something worked in the past doesn't guarantee it will work in the future, especially in the entertainment business. They are dinosaurs, and refuse to adapt, and are fighting the evolutionary changes taking place in society, instead of embracing it and creating new angles on how to prosper with new business models. Dinosaurs all became extinct, remember?

[bighairygrinch]

And another thing: that fucking article is trying to villainize P2P users because last time i checked, DOWNLOADING MUSIC OFF THE INTERNET WAS PERFECTLY LEGAL according to our Canadian laws.

neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml

"Can I legally share music over the internet?

The simple answer is NO.

If you post a song on the internet, or make it available to others via a peer-to-peer network, or if you send it to someone as an email attachment or via FTP, you are considered to be making a public transmission of the work. It is also clearly not for your own private use. You would be infringing copyright unless you had explicit permission from the rights holders.

However, unless the legislation is changed or the courts interpret matters differently, it appears that making a private copy for your own use of a musical work downloaded in any manner from the internet is not an infringement of copyright. In their decision, the Copyright Board states:

The regime does not address the source of the material copied. There is no requirement in Part VIII that the source copy be a non-infringing copy. Hence, it is not relevant whether the source of the track is a pre-owned recording, a borrowed CD, or a track downloaded from the Internet.

The more complex answer to the question posed above is you cannot post a song on the internet in any manner, but you can make a private copy of any songs you find on the net."

[Tidyman]

Which is why the CRIA usually tries to go after the biggest uploaders. I have to admit, I have quite a few files available for download when I have a P2P program running...