Canadian Record Industry Appeals Pro-File-Sharing Court Ruling

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on April 15, 2004 - 5:08am.

Toronto -- The Canadian Record Industry Association (CRIA) has filed to appeal a recent Canadian federal court ruling that denied its motion to have five Internet service providers turn over the identities of suspected music file-swappers. The landmark ruling also declared it legal in Canada to upload and download music on file-sharing services for personal use. The ruling came in stark contrast to current U.S. law, which has enabled the recording industry here to successfully prosecute thousands of individual file-swappers. "In our view, Canadian copyright law does not allow people to make copies of hundreds or thousands of musical recordings for global copying, transmission and distribution to millions of strangers on the Internet," said CRIA general counsel Richard Pfohl. "This appeal is important for virtually all Canadian intellectual property owners," added CRIA president Brian Robertson. "Any owner of intellectual property that can be digitally transmitted has a stake in this appeal process." In its appeal, CRIA said the judge "made serious and reviewable errors of law, made overriding and palpable errors in his assessment of the factual record before him, and, in the end, purported to exercise his discretion on improper and irrelevant bases, and in a manner of excess of his jurisdiction."
http://www.cria.ca/news/cria_13apr04.htm
http://makeashorterlink.com/?P2C321908