Slaying Canadian file sharing myths
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- This month would have marked Napster’s 10th anniversary — had it survived the likes of former RIAA boss Hilary Rosen.
Napster was the file sharing service, “that had a transformative effect on the music and Internet services industries,” blogs Ottawa law professor and Internet expert Michael Geist.
“While many commentators have marked the anniversary by reassessing Napster`s impact and speculating on what lies ahead, now is also a suitable time to put to rest two myths about file sharing in Canada,” he says, going on »»»
There are far more than just two myths (see textbox below), but the ones that have dominated debate is that all file sharing is legal in Canada and, perhaps as a consequence of this, that Canada leads the world in illegal file sharing activity. Neither claim is true.
The belief that Canada is a veritable Wild West where it is legal to upload and download to your heart`s content has its genesis in the recording industry`s failed file sharing lawsuits in 2004. Following the U.S. example, the Canadian Recording Industry Association filed lawsuits against 29 alleged file sharers at five Canadian Internet Service Providers.
The case was a failure as then-Federal Court judge Konrad von Finckenstein (now chair of the CRTC) denied a request to order the ISPs to disclose the identity of their customers. Von Finckenstein ruled that the recording industry`s case suffered from evidentiary shortcomings along with questions about privacy and copyright law. The decision garnered international attention and many mistakenly took it to mean that all file sharing was legal in Canada.
The reality is that Canadian law features a private copying exemption that includes a levy on blank media. The Federal Court and the Copyright Board of Canada have intimated that the levy, which has generated hundreds of millions of dollars, could apply to personal, non-commercial downloading of sound recordings onto certain blank media. The law therefore opens the door to some legalized music downloading, but it does not cover other content (ie. movies or software) or the uploading of any content.
The second myth, which is endlessly promoted by advocates of legal reforms, is that Canada has the largest file sharing population on a per capita basis in the world. For example, the Conference Board of Canada recently used this argument as its lead finding in a series of reports that were recalled due to plagiarism.
The myth originates from a 2004 study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that examined 2003 file sharing activity data in its 30 member countries. The nearly six-year old study did not consider whether the activities were legal or illegal, but rather focused exclusively on the number of peer-to-peer users.
Canada stood first in that study, yet there is ample reason to doubt its validity today. In addition to the fact that the OECD made no claims about illegal activity nor about file sharing in the more than 150 non-OECD countries, newer studies indicate that Canada is declining as a hub of file sharing activity relative to the rest of the world.
BayTSP, a U.S. firm that identifies and tracks copyright content for movie and music interests, recently issued a report that assessed the number of infringement notices arising out of peer-to-peer and Internet use. According to the report, Canada declined to 10th worldwide (it was seventh last year). The top three countries were Spain, Italy, and France, with each having at least five times the number of infringement claims as Canada.
The decline runs contrary to Canadian file sharing mythology, but it should not surprise since it mirrors Canada`s decline in the global high-speed Internet access rankings. This suggests that Canadians may have been early file sharing adopters due to better access, but other countries have now passed us on both fronts.
“Much has changed since Napster took the world by storm 10 years ago,” Geist says, adding:
“As we look ahead to the next decade, it is time to ground the debate in fact rather than fiction.”
| The Other File Sharing Myths
Canadian Artists are Opposed to File Sharing. While some certainly are, both the Songwriters Association of Canada and the Canadian Music Creators Coalition have expressed their support for the full legalization of file sharing through a new levy scheme. Moreover, a growing number of artists have reported great commercial success by using peer-to-peer networks to distribute their work. File Sharers Don`t Buy Music. A growing number of studies indicate that the opposite is actually true. A 2007 study commissioned by Industry Canada concluded that there is positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing, while last week Vuze, a peer-to-peer video distribution company, released a survey that found that peer-to-peer users attend more movies and purchase more DVDs than general Internet users. Peer-to-Peer Networks Contain Nothing But Infringing Content. Music and movies constitute a big part of file sharing, but they share space with open source software, independent films, and even public broadcasters such as the CBC, who have all employed file sharing technologies as an efficient distribution system |
Hilary Rosen – Napster: 10 today, had it survived, June 1, 2009
Michael Geist – Time To Slay File Sharing Myths, June 8, 2009
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It`s really easy! Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
June 9th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Michael forgot the one big myth about file sharing that doesn’t seem to die in the minds of Big Business and Government alike… That file sharing can somehow “be controlled”.
This may be the most important myth to debunk, as corporate interests and governments are currently “sucking the life out” of everyone’s Internet experience in their clueless attempts to contain file sharing, only to see file sharing continue, increase, and thrive.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Maybe the best plan is to force every single judge, politician, and anyone who complains about filesharing, to learn a) how the internet actually works (yes OSI layers and all) b) how filesharing actually works (IP address changes etc…) c) true analysis of demographics of sales of CDs VS tapes VS vinyl from 1978 – 2008, to illustrate how, like cassettes, CD’s had an artificial spike in sales as people replaced older formats with new ones. Finally ending it with graphs showing exposure of artists/movies/media and how that benefits sales VS controlled and how it actually hurts innovation (include patents with a controlled experiment demonstrating how the more patents issued and the more copyrights issued the less you can actually do without being sued or pay through the nose).
So one week out of their life would straighten this mess out. This week includes lessons in saying “No” to lobbyists and 2 solid days in learning to teach yourself and learning how to listen to people (you know, the people politicians are supposed to represent and judges are supposed to protect).
June 9th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
you hold them down, and I will beat them with a 2×4 that says ‘copyright’ on it., then waterboard them until they confess that file sharing is good.
just an idea…
June 9th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
What about holding them down and making them listen to the “creative” material they release?
“Is this Pearl Jam?” – no this is days of the new
“Is THIS Pearl Jam?” – no this is creed
“Is this Pearl Jam?” – yes! 1/3, see what crap you generate?
“No, it all sounds good!” – fine, next up Nickelback
“Is this the same song over and over?” – Yes! The entire album is like that.
“Wow, what a genius idea, we save on time in the studio and pay the artists even less per album.” – sigh.
June 9th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
“…- fine, next up Nickelback
âIs this the same song over and over?â – Yes! The entire album is like that.”
EXACTLY!
The only thing that stopped me from completely laughing my ass off over that one was the knowledge that it was completely true!