[d@DCC] FW: RIAA finally acts: Sues individual P2P users

[Richard Pitt]

On Fri, 2003-09-12 at 16:15, tOM Trottier wrote:
> The law makes all private copying legal. The media doesn't matter.
> 
Yup - media doesn't matter

> The CPCC could have asked for a levy on anything on which music can be 
> recorded, including piano rolls, xerox paper, RAM, or whatever, but they 
> currently collect more than any other private copying régime in the 
> world, so are happy to to stick to CDRs, cassette tapes, and request 
> levies on MP3 memory. Levying hard disks would have made too many big 
> players mad, resulting in mucho opposition. 
> 
And in fact the CPCC has stated that they are considering hard disks in
the future.

> Media for which no application has been approved is not leviable at all.
> See the law at http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/info/act-e.html#rid-33760
> 
> One argument on what medium is leviable is on the meaning of "ordinarily" 
> in the Act. Does it mean "frequently" or "primarily, more than other 
> uses"? The Board take on this is at
>     http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/aboutus/annreps/copy-e.html
> 
And this is one of the things we're waiting for in the current ruling
cycle - What exactly is the meaning of ordinary (in this round)?

> The Copyright Board has attempted to render the question moot by 
> estimating the proportion of the media used for music. 
> 
I'm not sure that they tried - but the CPCC tried to get them to rule
that way.

> Another argument is that '"blank audio recording medium" means (a) an 
> audio recording medium onto which no sounds have ever been fixed, and (b) 
> any other prescribed audio recording medium.' [Copyright Act s79] If a 
> rerecordable medium (like a hard disk) comes with sounds on it already, 
> it is not blank, and would have to be explicitly "prescribed" by 
> regulations.
> 
So my 64Meg Flash stick might be "blank audio recording media" but the
hard disk that comes with your new DELL PC may not be because it comes
with the Windows "Boing" startup music recorded on it - so if you record
more MP3s on it they can't levy it - but they might levy the 250Gig
secondary drive you purchase from Future Shop because it didn't have
anything recorded on it when you bought it (or when it was imported from
Taiwan) but in my humble opinion, the fact that it has sectors recorded
(formatted) on it "is music to my ears" so...

the question is "interesting" and we live in "interesting" times ;)

richard

> tOM
> 
> On Friday, September 12, 2003 at 17:55
> mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca <discuss at digital-copyright.ca> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, Chris Brand wrote:
> > > So I think that the levy is payable on all blank audio recording media
> > > and it's only legal to record to audio recording media. Given that the
> > > levy is not (yet) payable on the hard drive, a hard drive is not an
> > > "audio recording medium" and therefore recording copyrighted material
> > > onto it is not covered by section 80.
> > 
> > Is it really that the hard drive is not an "audio recording medium" (ARM),
> > or is it an ARM that just happens to have a levy of zero?  The current
> > proposed tariff makes levies payable on a lot of kinds of media for which
> > they are not currently payable, and my understanding is that that isn't
> > because these things have suddenly become ARMs, but that they were ARMs
> > all along and the levy is proposed to increase from zero. -- Matthew Skala
> > mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                    Embrace and defend.
> > http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/
> > 
> > --
> > For (un)subscription information, posting guidelines and
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> > 
> 
> 
> ---- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur ----
>    ,__@	tOM Trottier +1 613 860-6633 fax:+1-775-307-4133
>  _-\_<,	758 Albert St.,Ottawa ON Canada K1R 7V8
> (*)/'(*)		ICQ:57647974 N45.412 W75.714
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> little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor 
> safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
> I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too 
> much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
> -Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826)
> 
> 
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-- 
Richard C. Pitt			C.E.O. Belcarra Technologies
richard at belcarra.com		direct: 604-644-9265	www.belcarra.com
Software Systems - design and implementation: Internet, Linux, Communications
USB, RNDIS, ATM, E-mail, SQL, Encryption, Security, Web, Embedded Systems
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