Canadian record labels appeal P2P ruling

TalkBack 16 of 20:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

no intent - no crime - no infringement

The onus is on intent. If there was no intent to download illegally there is no intent and no crime here. If the person thinks he is downloading legally then no crime has occured.

like - If there is no intent to murder then it's only manslaughter.
like - if you intended to pay but got knocked through the window of the store by accident(you left without paying).
like - killing someone with a car - how do you prove it was an accident or it was done on purpose?


you have to prove the person knowingly intented to commit a crime/infringement.

How does a child know?
How does a person downloading from a commercial website which looks legal?

The Copyright Board of Canada and the Courts have both said this, that's why downloading is deemed legal here. You have to prove he/she knew they were commiting a crime or knew the file they were downloading was an illegal copy. Since there is know way to know if someone on p2p or a website is a legal distributer (because these is no way to know for sure) he can assume it's legal - thus there is no intent.

Uploading is a little different. That's what is at issue here.

But the issue here is who determines if a crime/infringement has taken place. The CRIA/RIAA/MPAA or the Law enforement agencies.

Placement of a file on a shared directory is not enough. A file can be there and never get downloaded. So placement is not a crime (at least for know until legislators ever get to it).

That means the file must get downloaded. For infringement to take place the person receiving the file must not be a lawful(licensed holder or owner/distributer - which includes people who already purchase media in a different form) person to have it. An agent of the CRIA or RIAA is a legal reciever, to be otherwise one could argue that one cannot commit a crime(Downloading - infringement by there own words) to catch a criminal. Then for the CRIA to download is not enough to establish a crime/infringemnt has taken place.

The judge ruled there was no way for a person to know if the said person was a legal reciever or not, and there was no way to know. Although not tested in court the judge stated that could also be used in defense.

Why the judge ruled the way it did is because the ISP info here in Canada is not reliable enough to establish a chain of identity. After 30 days the IP info does not correlate with the end user. In effect you would get the wrong person for the crime/infringement. Legislation has not caught up to the internet here and record keeping is very poor and not required in as muched detail as the USA. ISP are not regulated to keep imacculate records that you would need.
He also made it because of the privacy act in Canada. You have to have solid evidence of infringement not hearsay.

Fair Use is well protected here. One could argue any copy protection is illegal in Canada. One has the right to back up media here. To deny us the right to do so, by copy protection, could be argued is also illegal. Once we purchased the media, we have every right under fair use to back it up.

Also under copyright law here we have the right to distribute for non-commercial purposes, to friends, family, even strangers. (P2P would fall under this)

One could argue they are educating people with culture/art and under that part of the act would be exempt (as long as it's not done for profit)

We also have the right to display or play to an audiance for free, otherwise turning up your stereo in your car would be illegal, or bringing over friends to watch movies would be illegal. (again the thing to note - not for profit makes you exempt)

Posted by: twinkler@...   Posted on: 07/13/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• VMware Infrastructure: A Guide to Bottom-Line Benefits VMware Frustrated by the costs of maintain ever larger data centers?or building ... Download Now
• Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now
• Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Iinfrastructure VMware VMware virtualization software has been adopted by over 120,000 enterprise ... Download Now