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the tyee
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Apr
14
Canadian, eh
April 14, 2006 |
The Canadian Recording Industry Association’s submission to the CRTC’s Commercial Radio Review may go down as one of its biggest blunders. Earlier coverage of its submission focused on the Pollara report (here and here) that contradicts many of CRIA’s claims regarding file sharing and consumer music purchasing habits. Earlier today, there was even more dramatic fallout. Six major Canadian independent music labels - Anthem, Acquarius, The Children’s Group, Linus Entertainment, Nettwerk, and True North Records - all pulled out of CRIA, citing differences with the CRTC submission.
micheal geist
now the fat is in the proverbial fire. On the one hand we have the rump of CIRA which is no longer actually Canadian, on the other we have the legitimate Canadian independent music industry which says,
“it has become increasingly clear over the past few months that CRIA’s position on several important music industry issues are not aligned with our best interests as independent recording companies” and “we do not feel that we can remain members [of CRIA] given CRIA’s decision to advocate solely on behalf of the four major foreign multi-national labels.”
geist
The question is whether or not the new Tory government will listen to the break away Canadian record companies who are not terrifically concerned with file sharing and are opposed to the RIAA strategy of prosecuting the people who buy their products. A smart government would.
There is an opportunity for Canada to evolve its own, forward looking, copyright regime which actually recognizes that the old fashioned approach to copyright enforcement is pretty much negated by the advent of perfect copies easily shared on the net. Canadian record companies have apparently made the shift - can our government?
Comments
3 Comments so far
“…and are opposed to the RIAA strategy of prosecuting the people who buy their products.”
Silly me, I thought they were prosecuting the people who were STEALING their products. The fact that I’ve purchased two or three Great Big Sea CDs doesn’t excuse me when I decide to shoplift the next one.
I think you need to ban McClelland from your blog — his presence has obviously had a deletirious effect on your thought processes (you’ll be rationalizing Liberal theft next).
The stats seem to be indicating that P2P is more like radio giving people a taste of Great Big Sea so that they can go and buy the CD.
This is a view which the flailing RIAA can’t quite get its head around.
Giving a taste need not include a full quality version of the song. A 56Kb mono file gives a taste without hosing the artist. I think that allowing trading of LO-FI versions of the songs would be acceptable, but NOT perfect copies.