Big Music gets Canadian bootlegger
p2pnet.net News:- Following a DIY investigation by the Big Five record labels’ Canadian enforcement unit, a 43-year-old man in Ontario, Canada, has been charged with five counts of copyright infringement.
The Mounties found bootleg videotapes, DVDs, CDs, audiocassettes and CD-Rs made at live concerts “recorded in numerous venues in North America,” says a statement.
“Information provided by … the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) to the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] led to the seizure and the subsequent charges,” it says.
The bootlegs were at a music memorabilia sale in Hamilton, Ontario, and included works by Canadians Nickelback and Jann Arden.
Arden was recently quoted in another CRIA production featuring hardships experienced by the Tragically Hip, a big name Canadian band which the CRIA had complaining about file sharing.
Arden “reacted to the news” with, “Unless these downloads are monitored and artists are compensated for their work, there will be NO work to download. None of us, as writers and performers, can afford to keep making the music that has always, and will always, make the world a little easier to swallow in troubled times.
“We cannot play if we are not paid.”
No pay, no play. Business is business.
Another CRIA-inspired item lauding the association of Big Music with Big Mac has Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, “Wearing a really cool-looking tan leather jacket,” giving his thoughts on file sharing.
“If trends continue the way they are, there isn’t going to be any new music for people to download,” he says.
Of the Hamilton incident, “To discover that someone is selling bootleg DVDs and CDs of my live shows without my consent is heartbreaking,” the CRIA has Arden saying.
“Bootlegging is theft, and individuals that try and make money by stealing intellectual property should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” says Kroeger.
Most of the seized bootlegs were “poor recordings taped with hand-held cameras from the stands,” says a Toronto Star story here. “Some are labelled ‘all rights reversed, unauthorized copying of this recording is strictly authorized’.”
Bootlegs have been around since there was a music industry.
