©
Basics,
Background and Bill C-60
Why Gnutella is Still
Running
Pros and Cons of P2P Music
Sharing
Treats
Copyright Issues
Basics, Background and Bill C-60
Okay, now here's where it gets messy....
In the US Copyright Act is the clause of "fair use",
o
utlined in Section
107. This allows the right to reproduce or to authorize others to
reproduce a work in the form of copies
[8].
The
challenge with digital media is that, essentially, all copies are originals.
When a non-compressed copy of electronic data is made, there is no loss of
quality [5].
And it falls out of the fair use purview. And companies
like Napster can get hammered. For more on US Copyright, go to
www.copyright.gov.
In Canada, we have the concept of "fair dealing",
where using works for purposes of private study, research, or criticism,
review or news reporting is allowed. So far, this concept
has served with regard to prosecuting users under the Copyright Act who have
uploaded copyright music.
In February
2004, some major foreign music labels filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court of
Canada against twenty-nine unnamed and unidentified individuals.
The
labels claimed the users, referred to as John and Jane Does, had uploaded
numerous songs over the Internet using P2P technologies, and in so doing
infringed the labels’ copyrights in those recordings. Along with the statement
of claim, they filed an application requesting non-party Internet Service
Providers
(ISPs) to disclose the identities of customers
corresponding to the 29 Does
[4].
In the end,
the court found that downloading a song for personal use is not an infringement,
and
placing
a personal copy of a sound recording in a shared directory does not amount to
authorization to infringe on copyrights. In addition, the courts refused
to order the ISPs to turn over the names of the Does involved
[4].
And the Appeals Court
basically left it at that. Sort of.
What is happening now is
the proposed Bill C-60. This bill, according to The Department of Canadian
Heritage,
[P]rovides
creators and other rights holders with additional tools to seek legal recourse
against individuals engaged in P2P file-sharing or unauthorized posting of
copyrighted material. Specifically, rights holders will have the right to
control the making available of their copyrighted material on the Internet. It
will also clarify that private copies of sound recordings cannot be uploaded
or further distributed. Individuals may therefore be subject to legal action
for their unauthorized file-sharing activities, but it will be up to rights
holders to exercise their new rights
[3].
This bill is currently under review and is tabled for
discussion in Parliamentary committee hearings.
As a side note: This bill serves as a revision to
the Canadian Copyright Act, and will impact more than just file sharing on P2P
networks. It will impact the rights of Educational institutions, including
libraries, using copyrighted material. For more information about the
bill, go to the
Copyright Reform webpage on the Canadian
Heritage website. For some rather one-sided discourse on the bill, check
out
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/static/billc60/.
For some great reading on the subject, check out
the book
In The Public Interest edited by Michael Geist
- this link will take you to a downloadable version of the book.
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