Canadians are thieves: CRIA
p2p news / p2pnet:- Canadians illegally download 14 music CDs or other files for every file they take from the web legally, states the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America) unequivocally.
“The illegal downloading has cost retail music stores more than half a billion dollars in lost sales since 1999, a study commissioned by the recording industry estimates,” says the Canadian Press.
And guess what? “While some observers believe Internet piracy is a widespread phenomenon, most illegal file swapping is done by younger Canadians,” says the ‘study’.
“Canadians between 12 and 24 years of age are responsible for 78 per cent of illegal music downloading, even though they make up just 21 per cent of the population,” CP reports as though the findings are credible and originate with a reliable source.
“Canadians between the ages of 18 and 29 are much more willing than other age groups to make illegal copies of software programs, cheat on exams or even shoplift,” according to different poll. And, “Nearly 27 per cent of younger people surveyed said they would consider cheating on a test or exam, compared with 10 per cent of the general population” and “Of those asked, six per cent of younger Canadians said they would leave a store without paying for a piece of clothing, compared with two per cent of the population at large”
Ergo, people who don’t buy their music from the CRIA’s owners, EMI, Universal, Warner and Sony BMG, none of whom have a significant presence in Canada, are shop-lifters who cheat on exams and steal clothing, the blackguards.
“Not only does music file-swapping harm artists, but it also points to an erosion of respect for intellectual property that threatens Canada’s economy and values at the core of our society,” CP has CRIA mouthperson Graham Henderson saying, going on.
“The ‘if it’s there, it’s free’ thinking extends far beyond entertainment products and software to ideas themselves,” Henderson added, “noting a rise in plagiarism in schools and universities”.
CP says the cartel today launched a national campaign “to protect and promote so-called products of the mind” in advance of public hearings this fall on the new federal copyright legislation Bill C-60, which the cartel’s CRIA is desperately trying to have re-configured to better suit its owners.
A similar bullshit study recently said half of Canada’s university and college students are hard-core thieves who “steal” music, movies and computer programs and once again, a major Canadian news source quoted unabashedly, in the process suggesting it had something to do with reality.
What was worse, “the study by the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft [read Business Software Alliance] found that almost two-thirds of computer science students, who are preparing for careers in programming and software development, pirate software, compared with 46 per cent of students in other fields of study,” it said.
(Thanks, rhep)
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi
See:-
Canadian Press – Theft from Internet staggering, poll suggests, September 29, 2005
bullshit study – Thieving Canadian students, August 9, 2005
September 29th, 2005 at 8:40 pm
When will they stop saying its costing them millions…
surely no one beleives them anymore…
September 29th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
It is really difficult for a student (or even a hobbyist for that matter) to buy an expensive ($350) software package when he or she make only $5.35 an hour. At $5.35 an hour, it would take a person over 65 hours of work to buy the package (at $350). At $9.00 an hour, it would take a person over 38 hours of work to buy the package (at $350).This is assuming that he or she pays no taxes and has no other expenses for the week such as food, housing, medical, or utilities.
Of course we know that the working class pays the highest percentage of their income in taxes, and hardly anybody can live expense free.
If the cartels want to blame someone for their problems, they ought to blame the high prices they charge for software. Finally there is competition. It is called open source and downloading. Now, it is the cartels that are complaining instead of accepting that we are in a capitalist society. I first became involved with open source in the early ’90’s simply because I could not afford the cartels expensive software. AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGG, “piracy” was an option too. matey.
September 29th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
Just the politicians, who are counting the taxes they will collect off the billions and billions of dollars the criaa (of america) is pretending to lose.
September 29th, 2005 at 10:19 pm
Capatalism leads to greed, greed leads to being ripped off, being ripped off leads to piracy. Arrrg matey! Turn about is fair play as they say.
PS: Yes, I know it’s technically infringmenet, but dang nabit, pirates are just so damn cool! Speaking of which, I can’t wait to download (er, I mean preview) Pirates of the Carribean 2! Sheesh, I’m in a weird mood today… :-p
September 29th, 2005 at 11:22 pm
The politicians believe them, as they are not hearing anything different. If you want to correct this problem, then go to http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/house/PostalCode.asp?lang=E to find your MPs address and write them a letter.
Please write a letter, hit ‘print’ on your printer and send it to their parliamentary office. There is no postage fee, just the cost of the paper and envelope, and it will have a huge impact.
If you want help writing a letter, then just ask in the forums and we can help. Writing it in your own words is best so that it won’t be seen as a letter from a lobby group. All it takes is a few letters from constituents (so make sure you are writing to your own MP) and the issue will become important to them!
September 29th, 2005 at 11:23 pm
Avast….I agree, go open source matey!!!
I bought Photoshop 5 several years ago (for work) and was able to afford the upgrade package until v7, now it’s just way too expensive….please GIMP get a little better and I can cast off the shackles of Adobe….
as for that muppet Henderson, way to alienate all of Canada, I know, I know you’re just following orders from south of the 49th, but arrrrrrg, you should walk the plank matey for using such a broad brush stroke to paint all Canadians as international thieves….for that, I sentence you to swab the crack of my ass for all eternity with that same brush….mmmmmm
TT
September 30th, 2005 at 4:00 am
So, i take it there’s no laws in Canada protecting ppl from untrue claims that if believed would be detrimental to their reputations?
Maybe someone needs to inform the Canadian govt that this CRIA has just accused every minister and bureaucrat in Canada of being music, movie, and software thieves. Or at least all their kids are being branded as such anyway.
What we need is someone with dual Canadian/Australian citizenship, born in Canada, currently residing in Australia, to complain to the Australian police about being defamed by CRIA. As they still hold Canadian citizenship, they’re still a Canadian, so these accusations are obviously aimed at them, but holding Australian citizenship and being currently in Australia would let them take advantage of Australia’s defamation laws.
If you know anyone who fits this description pass the story onto them and urge them to file charges. Defamation in Oz law is not a civil thing, it’s a criminal matter, they need to complain to the Oz police, and wouldn’t need to pay legal fees ;o)
September 30th, 2005 at 6:58 am
Gee the CRIA calls us(Canadians) thieves and criminals? I thought that judge said file sharing was legal in Canada. This is pure propaganda. I thought I should point that out since no one else mentioned this fact.
September 30th, 2005 at 11:56 am
Sony has produced 16 CDs with unlicensed songs that we own and without paying us any royalties. The records have sold about five million copies (produced by Sony and partner Sonolux) …. our lawsuit is festering in court since 2001, where Sony is depositing the royalties of the records. Surely money in the court does us no good. Sony continues to produce and sell the infringing CDs without our authorization. Not one cent received by we the copyright owners of the songs.
It is absurd that Canadian kids be labeled in the press as thiefs by the real thiefs…. and the press has nothing to say about the real thiefs.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
September 30th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
This points to only two alternatives -
1 – Lock up half the people in Canada.
2 – Abandon copyright law or at least water it down big time.
If all the citizens are doing it, well, isn’t the Government supposed to reflect the will of the people?
September 30th, 2005 at 5:34 pm
OMG NEWSFLASH ****kids are more daring and will take more risks and push the envelope*****
The cria is f*cking brilliant they have discovered something that has been known for thousands of years.
September 30th, 2005 at 6:07 pm
“If all the citizens are doing it, well, isn’t the Government supposed to reflect the will of the people?”
If governments follwed the will of the people, there would be no wards, no billionaire$, no dumb and croocked politicians and no price fixing and pro monopoly organizations.
Democrarcy is DEAD.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.venegas.com
September 30th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
14 CDs for every file they take legally? That’s 14 CDs for each clear .gif, banner ad for Viagra or credit cards, every forward, back, next, up, down widget .gif on a page, every .jpg, thumbnail or .html file they browse, etc.
Holy poo-poo!! That’s probably a Bazillion CDs! Everyone in Canada must have a couple of T3s wired into their home then!
Well, that 14 to 1 ratio sounds like a whole big pile of poo-poo to me. More fuzzy math.
–TG
October 2nd, 2005 at 3:05 pm
Have a laugh, and then send a letter to your MP:
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1083
“Geist also shares this storys: “Perhaps the most telling response, however, came at the Bill C-60 Open Forum yesterday. The CRIA release was mentioned by one of the speakers. The entire audience from all sides of the copyright debate just laughed.”"
October 2nd, 2005 at 3:07 pm
While we can largely agree that unauthorized music sharing is not harmful, file sharing of music is not legal in Canada. The judge did not say that it was legal, they just said that CRIA was incompetant and did not provide adequate evidence that any infringement had occured.
October 2nd, 2005 at 3:13 pm
The government can only reflect the will of the people who write/talk to them. Anyone who reads this should take the few moments it takes to look up their MP and send a letter (email, but paper letter is better).
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/ectools
Each time I meet a politician to talk to them about copyright they inform me that they have received less that 5 correspondances on the issue from constituents, and that all they hear from are the groups like CRIA who claim to represent “starving artists”.
We all agree that there are starving artists, but if the extremely few Canadian artists signed by CRIA are starving then this has far more to do with problems caused by CRIA than with anything Canadians are doing.
March 19th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
It’s trure. I have yet to meet a canadian who does not steal things.
Hahahahaaa.