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mazoonist
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Sounds like his real name ought to be Senator Hatchet. If you axe me, anyway. :)
quicksilver
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I wish he spent as much time helping the fair use legislation forward as he does pressing forward the aims of the "theives cartel"
I personally understand where this guy is coming from, he is a patriot who knows that the dollar is in dire straits and that the US needs revenues,
however it can get them, and that peice of cake begins to look rather tasty when its been totalled up in the usual industry way
(I suspect we all own 10 million dollars worth of music according to their estimates).
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This is good news, the fight continues between "David" and the cartel "Goliath"

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=754

Read the actual complaint here

http://www.internetmovies.com/SCOTUS_RO ... e_4_05.htm

I remember reading about this before, its nice to see the plaintiff asking the court to answer a few simple,
but hard to answer questions.
We shall see if the maxim , "land of the free" still applies or just to those who have enourmous cash reserves and vested interests, justice should not be a matter of wealth prevails.
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quicksilver
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This story is more of a worry to canadians, but as part of the overall strategy to control us all, its another step towards legalised invasion of privacy.

http://www.canada.com/national/national ... 0c3f9858c2

This small snippet is the sort of thing I,m watching for
Heritage Minister Liza Frulla recently said she hopes the changes to the Copyright Act, which she called "antiquated," would help outlaw file sharing in Canada. According to the government, an altered copyright law could appear by the end of the year.
Did I miss something or is Liza in line to become another abuser of the public trust ?
The wording should have read "would help outlaw illegal file sharing in Canada", I can see who pays her bills :roll:
Last edited by quicksilver on Wed Apr 20, 2005 6:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
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The British music industry has secured access to the names of 33 people it suspects of sharing up to 72,000 music files on the internet.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) applied to the High Court for internet service providers to hand over personal details of the alleged file-sharers.

The internet services now have two weeks to hand over the identities.
quicksilver
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Hmm looks like the battle will be warming up Rat , how many of those folks will contest the action is open to debate, but as its a little harder to obtain a lawyer here unless your on benefits/welfare, I suspect they will triumph and make another financial killing.
Encryption here we come .. :roll:
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KM
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quicksilver wrote:The wording should have read "would help outlaw illegal file sharing in Canada", I can see who pays her bills :roll:
it would have been much better if it had read that... can you imagine them making a law that makes it illegal to break laws? what effect would that have :wink:
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quicksilver
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Maybe I should have used a different word , but the message I,m getting from Liz there is that she wants to earn her pay from the public purse and when
she leaves goverment service no doubt a thankful recording industry.
The correct english would be "would help outlaw copyrighted file sharing in Canada", I hope that makes it clearer to anyone who got lost the first time around :)
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KM
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quicksilver wrote:The correct english would be "would help outlaw copyrighted file sharing in Canada", I hope that makes it clearer to anyone who got lost the first time around :)
i believe canada is like most other countries, where something is automatically copyrighted as soon as its made... :-P (now you have to try and find another word for me to find fault with)
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Seems like spending big money is paying off in congress this week

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,12 ... _tophead_7
The House of Representatives passed copyright legislation on Tuesday that would dole out criminal penalties to those who make unauthorized recordings of films in movie theaters.
The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 (HR357) also would permit technologies that allow users to skip objectionable content in movies viewed at home.


The cartel didnt really like the filtering bit as there advertising revenue may now suffer, but this is worth the result below.
This legislation will permit theatre operators to combat movie theft at its main source, by intercepting and detaining thieves who brazenly attempt to copy movies from our screens," Kendrick Macdowell, general counsel and director of government affairs for the National Association of Theatre Owners, said in a statement.
As I think its only fair that they make some money out of their investment , I have to say I was suprised that this sort of problem was not covered by existing copyright law .

we shall move on ..

http://news.com.com/Prison+terms+on+tap ... g=nefd.top
File-swappers who distribute a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet can be imprisoned for up to three years, under a bill that's slated to become the most dramatic expansion of online piracy penalties in years.
The bill, approved by Congress on Tuesday, is written so broadly it could make a federal felon of anyone who has even one copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released. Stiff fines of up to $250,000 can also be levied. Penalties would apply regardless of whether any downloading took place.
You may have noticed that this is the same peice of legislation being looked at here .
I wonder how many rights the US congress has bulldozed through, to allow this sort of over the top legislation?

I hope the common people ask, who their congressinal representatives are receiving contributions from :roll:
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I found this story in the Citizen in todays newspaper.


Tariffs on tunes: Copyright collectives want a big cut of music download services' revenues

Michael Geist
Citizen Special
source:canada.com

April 21, 2005


The Canadian Recording Industry Association's (CRIA) legal campaign against music file sharing heads back to court today as a three-judge panel continues its appellate hearing of last spring's decision that denied a request for identifying information on 29 alleged file sharers due to insufficient evidence, privacy concerns, and doubts about proof of infringement under Canadian copyright law. CRIA is again arguing that peer-to-peer file sharing hurts Canadian artists and the industry, which at long last is seeking to develop fee-based alternatives such as Apple iTunes, Napster, and Puretracks.

Despite all the rhetoric, there remains much doubt about whether peer-to-peer is really responsible for declining sales. The industry's own numbers suggest otherwise since the popularity of DVDs, changes in the retail distribution of music, and reduced retail pricing on CDs have all played significant roles in the industry's self-proclaimed woes (which themselves are not so woeful with sales increasing by more than 10 per cent in the six months following the federal court decision last year).

Moreover, there is little doubt that Canadian artists' royalty losses have been offset by the private copying levy system. The Canadian Private Copying Collective has collected approximately $120 million over the past five years with much of that revenue earmarked for Canadian artists.

While CRIA has argued that the private copying levy was not intended to cover music downloading, those claims ring hollow in light of recent statements and collection practices. Last month, the industry acknowledged to the U.S. Supreme Court that users have the right to copy their CDs in order to listen to the same songs on devices such as the Apple iPod. Given that $30 million was collected from Canadians last year, it must surely have been paid for something other than activities already permitted under the law.

In fact, the real threat to fee-based alternatives in Canada does not come from the peer-to-peer systems. Rather, Canada's copyright collectives are poised to kill the nascent industry by demanding the creation of a new iTunes tariff that would require music download services to surrender at least 40 percent of their revenues to the collectives.

The Society of Music Composers, Authors, and Publishers (SOCAN) recently filed a revised Tariff 22 proposal that directly targets music download and streaming sites. SOCAN had previously focused Tariff 22 on Internet service providers. That led to a lengthy legal battle that culminated last year with the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling that ISPs should be treated like common carriers who rarely face liability for the transmission of data on their networks.

In search of a new deep pocket, SOCAN has reformulated Tariff 22 by targeting websites that communicate music to the public. The largest tariff -- an astonishing 25 percent of gross revenue -- is reserved for sites or services that permit users to select, listen to, or reproduce music for later listening (ie. music download services). By comparison, the top SOCAN tariff for commercial radio stations in Canada is currently 3.2 per cent of gross revenue.

SOCAN's proposal does not stop with music download services. The new Tariff 22 also calls for a tariff of 15 per cent of gross revenues from both audio webcast sites that feature content similar to conventional radio stations as well as from established radio stations that webcast their signal. Moreover, gaming sites that communicate musical works as part of their games face a potential tariff of ten percent of gross revenues. In fact, to ensure that no one escapes Tariff 22, SOCAN envisions a tariff of 10 percent of gross revenues for all other sites that communicate music.

If this SOCAN proposal were not damaging enough, it does not stand alone. SODRAC, a Quebec-based collective, has teamed up with the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA) to propose a pair of new tariffs to cover the reproduction rights associated with online music. The SODRAC/CMRRA proposals demand the greater of either 15 per cent of gross revenues or 10 cents per permanent download. Webcasters would also be hit with a minimum tariff of five per cent of gross revenues.

Incredibly, the 40 per cent of gross revenues envisioned by these tariffs may not cover all the rights associated with commercial music download services. It remains possible that other groups, including collectives representing music performers and producers, may come forward to demand their share of compensation by further cutting into online music services' revenues.

Although the tariff proposals are not final -- the Copyright Board of Canada will set the ultimate tariff after conducting hearings that are certain to attract fierce opposition -- the starting point for discussion is discouraging since this short-sighted cash grab fails to recognize that a smaller share of a larger pie may often be better than a large share of a small pie.

In the U.S., large collectives such as ASCAP and BMI have struck more reasonable deals for webcasting royalties. BMI expects to collect $400 U.S. in 2005 from each local radio station that webcasts its signal, while ASCAP has built the webcasting right into its existing over-the-air royalty structure.

The Canadian Independent Record Production Association (CIRPA) has pegged the value of the Canadian market for music downloads at $100 million. While the established players have negotiated agreements with the record labels, the future growth of the industry depends upon the development of an economically viable model. The true threat to that future does not come from peer-to-peer downloads that is already subject to compensation through the private copying levy, but rather from collectives that seem determined to receive a very large share of a very tiny market.

Michael Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist@uottawa.ca and is online at http://www.michaelgeist.ca.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2005
quicksilver
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My that big fat bar of gold must be twinkling in their eyes, I wish the artists would ditch these leeches and middlemen and not have to hand out their due rewards.
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Dream Theater and a couple other bands I know of release their albums on their own labels to make sure they dont have to deal with any crap :)

Honestly once I get my band going I'm gonna use a small label to make sure I don't have to deal with Sony bitching once the first file appears on the P2P networks...Unless I'll get in trouble for this? :lol:
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That's the best way DIY to go,that way you won't get ripped off by a big record label,more band's should do that.

They say they work for the artist ,i think they only care about the label's they represent, who in return rip of the band's they sign to their label. :roll:
And they complain about about p2p users geezus, who they claim are ripping them off and the artist they represent. :shock: :roll:
Look at Motorhead for example they've been around for 30 years an they been ripped so many times by the label's that signed them that it's not even funny,even tho the label's probably thought it was funny when they were laughing all the way to the bank.

Even if you DIY ,they still would get money from you say when you first start out you band & use CD-R CD's to record demo's on ,your still have to pay 'em cos they charge Tariffs on the CD-R CD's,at least they do Canada. :x
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Seen in P2Pnet.net News:
An RIAA attempt to force two universities to hand over the identities of college students bit the dust when Judge Russell A. Eliason of the US District Court in Greensboro, North Carolina, agreed with the students that the subpoenas violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The Big Music cartel's RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) wanted 'expedited' subpoenas issued by a clerk rather than a judge, "as a likely precursor to filing lawsuits accusing the students of swapping music online in violation of copyright law," says the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The subpoenas issued to Chapel Hill and North Carolina State were the same as those already ruled illegal by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia which decided ISPs couldn't be compelled to reveal the identities of subscribers accused of music piracy by the RIAA - or anyone else.

Judge Eliason didn't like the RIAA's argument that, "Congress - in drafting the digital copyright act - meant to allow the expedited subpoenas to also apply to Internet-service providers that are only thruways for peer-to-peer file sharing," says the Chronicle, continuing: "To allow such subpoenas to be served, the judge stated, 'would amount to a rewriting' of the digital copyright law. 'There are simply too many dangling threads in this cloth for a court to tailor it into a garment fit for the use' that the recording-industry group proposed, the judge added.
"Judge Eliason also endorsed a separate argument by the North Carolina State student that the subpoena sent to her institution was invalid because it was issued by a court that does not have jurisdiction over the university."

The RIAA is considering whether or not to appeal Judge Eliason's order.
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