:: In what might be considered a landmark ruling in Canada, Justice Konrad von Finckenstein, a Federal Court judge, today "ruled against a motion which would have allowed the music industry to begin suing individuals who make music available online." Of interest to me is his comparison of placing music files into a shared directory with the placement of a photocopier in a library surrounded by copyrighted material:
"No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings," he wrote in his 28-page ruling. "They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer users via a P2P service."
He compared the action to a photocopy machine in a library. "I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service," he said.
Meanwhile, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, based in Europe, is filing lawsuits against 247 file-sharing individuals in Italy, Germany, Denmark and Canada.
The full, 34-page text of Finckenstein's ruling is available here, in .pdf format. In essence, what is being said is this: downloading a song from the Internet for personal use does not constitute copyright infringment. If Big Music wants to solve the downloading issue, they may need to go about it a different way. And if you think all successful artists are fighting this, read Janis Ian's two essays on the subject: The Internet Debacle - An Alternative View, and Fallout - A Followup to the Internet Debacle.
Posted by Randy at March 31, 2004 02:40 PM | TrackBackYARTLIC!!
(Yet another reason to live in Canada)
Posted by: cindi at April 1, 2004 11:59 AM"YARTLIC" - Cindi, you've just coined a very cool acronym! Like in Pattern Recognition, where Gibson uses LOMBARD to mean, Lots Of Money But A Real Dickhead... ;-)
Posted by: randy at April 1, 2004 08:18 PM