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A goodly number of the membership of this Forum are under the age of 25; likely a majority of you would be considered tech-savvy.
Where do you stand on the topic of file-sharing?
Do you use services such as iTunes to pay for, and subsequently download media to your computers, iPod's, PDA's, Game Consoles, or whatever?
Are you concerned about friends, or associates, that don't?
I ask this as, whilst my household as often as not, will, and does, buy an audio or vidéo CD/DvD, and just as often as not, will, and do, transcribe these same purchased media digitally for storage and retrieval on our home computer network, I personally have, over the past 15-years, amassed some 15,000 (and growing) mp3's and a further 1500, or so, avi's and mpeg's, the majority of which were culled from one form or another of the Broadcast Media, the Internet, or through copies given to me by friends and associates.
The whole topic of file-sharing has become a rather contentious issue in my own home; neither of my two sons (both of whom are in their mid-to-late thirties) and my ward (aged 19) seem to be at all troubled by the controversy surrounding recent court challenges and decisions surrounding this topic; nor, does it seem to trouble them their paying per-item download fees from iTunes and others for media that is freely available to them via the radio, or television, or even the local library; nor, it transpires, do many of the youth I've spoken with over the past few weeks.
I have watched with interest the American suit against Limewire and the Swedish court case against The Pirate Bay, and am following a similar challenge before the court in British Columbia; the latter having very significant implications for Canadians as a whole, and perhaps all of us world-wide.
File-sharing is legal in Canada; this having been formalized when Canadian Copyright Laws were last revised in the early 70's and revisited as recently as the RIAA's last unsuccessful Supreme Court of Canada challenge to our Law in December, 2005. The basis for it's being legal here was, and is, a convoluted formulae of hidden surtaxes imposed upon manufacturers and distributors of blank recording media, in part designed to defray loss revenues from Canadians copying (generally) audio and vidéo culled from radio and television (and now the internet) and their penchant for sharing this amongst their friends. This practice has been quite legal, and apparently Canada is the only jurisdiction where this appears to be the case. This whole house of cards rests on the provision under Canadian Copyright Law that appears to dictate that Copyright is lost against the dissemination of copyrighted materials if this material can be freely distributed and accessed through the media of the atmosphere, which in Canada is deemed to be "Public Domain", although the Copyright Holder does continue retain copyright for the purposes of revenue derived from the sale of copyrighted materials, including performance rights. In a nutshell, once a recording or movie studio licenses, in Canada, for broadcast their copyrighted media, and that media is subsequently aired, again in Canada, they lose their copyright against Canadians making vidéo-tapes, audio-tapes, CD's, or whatever, of that same media, and in turn those making the copies are free to share these copies with whomever they choose, provided no money changes hands, and no fees are levied for the creation of those copies, all because the surtaxes have themselves been paid at the time of blank media manufacture or distribution prior to time of purchase at retail.
This is somewhat of a "Catch 22" situation for the media developers, as they rely heavily upon the broadcast of their media to generate sales of their CD/DvDs, and I do understand this, and do appreciate their dilema.
Numerous attempts by vested interests have been made to have the Law changed; but, to no avail. The Broadcast Media, Telco's and Cable companies, which currently comply with the Law as it presently stands, and continue to allow the free dissemination of these copyrighted materials, support changing the Law; but only because they foresee significant financial windfalls for their sale of these same materials on a downloaded per-item scale of fees.
What are your thoughts on this thorny subject?
Warren C. E. Austin
Toronto, Canada
[Updated on: Fri, 24 April 2009 15:36]
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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