p2pnet.net News Feature:- We haven’t heard anything from the CRIA, lately.

It’s presently waiting to learn what’s going to happen about its attempt to have a Canadian federal court decision overturned. Embarrassingly, the ruling denied its bid to compel four of five Canadian ISPs to disclose the identities of 29 people its owners, the Big Five record labels, say were sharing music online.

We say ‘embarrassingly’ because normally, when the labels say Jump, one sees large numbers of people heading towards the stratosphere.

In the US, what the Big Five say, goes. And they say no one can handle music online unless it’s their music, and unless they’ve given their permission by allowing people to pay around 99 cents for the privilege.

They’re suing anyone they can identify whom they claim is sharing copyrighted music files without their permission. They even have the FBI working for them.

Acting for its owners, the Big Five record labels, only one of which is based in North America, the RIAA (Recording (Recording Industry Association of America) has sued close to – or is it more than? – 2,000 people.

No case has yet been won because the victims always settle out of court rather than risk going up against highly-paid, expert music industry legal teams, risking potentially huge financial penalties if they lose.

So Big Music wins by default and millions of people around the world are under the false impression that Big Music is taking people to court and that their cases are being proven.

Things are going really well.

Both there and in Canada, to sue people, the labels must first find out who they are, and that can only be done if they can unscramble alleged copyright breakers’ IP addresses, which they can’t do by themselves. So somehow, they have to identify the ISP customers behind the IP addies.

In the US the, record companies go before a judge to demand a subpoena to order an Internet service provider to hand over the name of the until then ‘John’ or ‘Jane Doe’ file sharers.

Having gotten the names, they terrorize the victims with threats of court, the victims cave in and Presto! – the RIAA carves another notch.

This doesn’t happen in Canada, though, the fact that, like its US counterpart, the Canadian Recording Industry Association of America (oops, sorry, Canada), has powerful political supporters, not to speak of recording ’stars,’ in its corner, notwithstanding.

Canadian prime minister Paul Martin and federal heritage minister Helene Scherrer are perfect examples of the former, and now jacksoul, a Canadian band, is front and centre, right up there alongside the CRIA, as an example of the latter. In fact, it’s currently the first entry you see when you hit ‘news’ on the CRIA web page.

In Canada, people can safely share music online which is, of course, a bete noire to the Big Five record labels.

So, the CRIA must somehow bring things around and while it waits to see if Justice von Finckenstein’s ruling will be dumped, it’s active on other fronts.

Enter jacksoul.
Vik is a BMG company and Germany’s BMG is, of course, one of the Big Five labels, the others being EMI (England), Sony (Japan), Warner (US) and UMG (France).

Jacksoul is a Vik band with a web page on the Vik/BMG site and jacksoul’s Haydain Neale decided it was time to speak up for the music industry – and, from the look of it, to keep on doing so.

In his post on the CRIA and band (or Vik, rather) sites, he says, among other things, “while it has been demonstrated that the music industry’s case needs to be refined, and certain laws re-defined, I and all my musical brethren take exception to all notions that music should be free to everyone. I believe music should be universally accessible, yes, but hardly free. Like most parents, I go to work to get paid at the end of my work day. (Can I get a hallelujah?)

“People need to stop pretending that music is the burnt, crusty end of pizza that you simple throw away. In truth, it’s the pepperoni and the cheese of life. We don’t cook, clean, drive, work or play without tunes. But while you wouldn’t think of ordering food without the cash to pay the bill, we’re nurturing a whole generation of kids that couldn’t care less about supporting an industry that created all of their favourite artists and music.

“The same industry that brought us Eminem and 50 Cent brought us Marvin Gaye and Al Green; and Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and all the rest. And now, with millions of kids growing up thinking they can in effect bypass the industry, it’s not a stretch for me and the rest of jacksoul to feel they’re bypassing us in the process by undermining our ability to find companies that will invest in our music and help us to make a living.

“I’ll speak on this more with time, but I just want you cats to know that the struggle is not about soaking twelve year old defendants to harmless downloads. It’s about getting folks from the Government all the way down to your laptop, to admit that we should be supporting our own here, and not pretending that anything in this life worth having comes for free.”

Right on. And since you mentioned Joni Mitchell, didn’t the RIAA, too, use a line from her Big Yellow Taxi in one of its puff pieces, attributing the pull to Nashville songwriter Stephony Smith?

“As the Joni Mitchell song says ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.’ Downloading is a parasite that will eventually kill the abundance of great music we have now.”

But Neale – didn’t Joni Mitchell say of the music industry, “I hope it all goes down the crapper. It’s top-heavy, it’s wasteful. It’s an insane business. Now, this is all calculated music. It’s calculated for sales, it’s sonically calculated, it’s rudely calculated. I’m ashamed to be a part of the music business. You know, I just think it’s a cesspool.”

Watch this space, you cats …

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2004 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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