Canadian Police Tolerates Piracy For Personal Use
Written by Ernesto on November 11, 2007The Canadian police announced that it will stop targeting people who download copyrighted material for personal use. Their priority will be to focus on organized crime and copyright theft that affects the health and safety of consumers instead of the cash flow of large corporations.
Around the same time that the CRIA successfully took Demonoid offline, the Canadian police made clear that Demonoid’s users don’t have to worry about getting caught, at least not in Canada.
According to the Canadian police it is impossible to track down everyone who downloads music or movies off the Internet. The police simply does not have the time nor the resources to go after filesharers.
“Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted,” Noël St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the Canadian police, said in an interview with Le Devoir. “It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it,” he added.
St-Hilaire explained that they rather focus on crimes that actually hurt consumers such as copyright violations related to medicine and electrical appliances.
A wise decision, especially since we now know that filesharing has absolutely no impact on music sales. On the contrary, a recent study found that the more music people download on P2P-networks, the more CDs they buy.
Previously: Demonoid Shuts Down Again
Next: OiNK Launches Legal Defense Fund
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This article, while nice, doesn’t say anything new. It’s reads as if it were written by a fellow P2Pr.
Unbelievable. This sounds too good to be true. Cops actually going after real criminals and not hired thugs for corporations?
I have to let this one sink in.
One thing that the media, CRIA, and interest groups seem to miss repeatedly….
Downloading and copying music in Canada is currently *legal*. It’s called Private Copying, and has been upheld repeatedly in the Canadian courts.
The last major court case regarding private copying (CRIA trying to extract downloaders’ information from Telus, Rogers, et al) in fact upheld that for all intensive purposes an “upload” by one person is a “download” by somebody else and would probably still be legal.
Short story - there’s no such thing as an “illegal” music download in Canada. Period. CRIA is trying to change this, but at the moment it’s just a lie on CRIA’s part.
I fail to see how this is newsworthy. How many recorded cases are there of people getting prosecuted for personal piracy?
http://askaslacker.blogspot.com
The “Canada police”?
Makes it sound like Canada is a single town.
Pretty sure it’s RCMP.
IS THIS R.I.P 4 Demonoid????
n1 nothing to add
I doubt it’s the end of demonoid, well at least I hope it’s. I hope/think they’ll just move.
typo, of course I hope it’s NOT :F
Good on ‘em I say.
It seems like they are caching up with the times now.
Hopefully this will be one of the first step of many more to come.
score 1
for canada eh?
great news boys!
There is now also an article on http://www.TheRegister.co.uk about torrenting.
Today I have gone completely over to encrypted connections only. This limits somewhat my downloads but on the other hand gives me more privacy. It also supports those who can only do torrenting when encryption is enabled (and otherwise would get throttled) and makes more slots available to them.
After reading the article I believe it is time to force the use of encryption.
That’s all fine and well. Too bad that the f’ing CIRA doesn’t report to the RCMP. Regardless, unless a Canadian album is amazing, I will never buy another CD from a major label again.
The recording industry should realize it’s a dinosaur living on borrowed time. With the ability to inexpensively produce music of professional quality from a home studio, and then distribute it without the need to sign their soul away to a parasite in exchange for exposure, the centralized industry model is no longer required.
Besides, with names like Nelly Furtado, Avril Lavigne and the like being promoted like they’re the cream of the crop for pop, it’s no wonder the recording industry is confused why their sales are low.
lets all move to canada. Where they have healthcare and rules that sometimes make sense.. expect for the you can smoke pot just cant buy it… um okay how do u do that?
Everyone read post 52. Downloading music is LEGAL. Filesharing is LEGAL. They can’t target us because there’s no law that we can be arrested under.
The REAL fight is trying to stop parliament from passing a useless law that’ll make our current situation illegal and perhaps force the RCMP to try to come after people again.
So, where is your source????????? Or is this just hearsay?
That’s why our dollar is so strong. We Canadians, are smart.
While it may be cheaper to purchase infringed copyright medicinal supplies, these drugs never passed legal laws of certification.
Cheap, but what if it has poison on it?
[quote comment="209886"]Who are the Canadian Police?[/quote]
I guess he means RCMP, but who knows what these friggin Americans think.
I guess they are relating it to their “American police”.
Hey, Terance. It’s cool to be Canadian, isn’t?
dont get too happy, other countries can still sue you.
I was excited to hear this until I realized something:
The police, who make criminal charges, are not and have never been a threat to personal-use file sharers ANYWHERE.
The people who make waves are not the cops, but companies who file civil lawsuits against individuals.
So, regretfully, this really isn’t all that exciting, since the police have never been interested in personal file sharing, or really file sharing in general.
When the RIAA/MPAA makes a similar statement, then I’ll celebrate… by having a snowball fight in hell.
There is something seriously wrong with the reported Demonoid situation. Read the posts about legal music sharing (39, 52, …) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing_in_Canada
Demonoid could NOT be shut down by the CRIA. The CRIA only has authority over musical works, and they have been legal to both download and upload for quite some time, and the CRIA knows that. Demonoid could be taken down for other copyrighted works like movies, but the CRIA has no rights over those.
So, somebody explain to me what actually happened to Demonoid.
Finally, someone realizes this. It’s about time. Now, only if American police realize this too… :(
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