- The Big Four music cartel has shifted its no-holds-barred attack on p2p users from the US to Canada where it's not illegal to share files online - not that it's illegal in the US, although the cartel members are spending millions on an international PR campaign to make people believe otherwise.
This latest onslaught, aimed at Canadian parliamentarians, represents the first move by the CRIA's (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America) new president Graham Henderson to prove to his new bosses that he has what it takes.
An ex-"high-profile entertainment lawyer" (CRIA words), he's married to Cowboy Junkies singer Margo Timmins, giving him the kind of connections outgoing CRIA president Brian Robertson never had, not that it stopped Robertson from using well-known Canadian bands and individual musicians to speak up for the cartel.
Henderson is leading an attack on Canada’s copyright laws which, as they stand, don’t offer Big Music any opportunities to sue Canadians.
In the US, Big Music has turned almost 7,000 men, women and children into ipso facto criminals, although none of its victims has been found guilty of anything because not one of them has ever appeared before a court.
The cartel knows these very ordinary Americans don't stand a hope in hell of going up against its lawyers and bottomless pockets and suggests they settle out of court. Which they always do, implying that they've done something wrong, and making a mockery of the principle, Innocent Until Proven Guilty.
Consequently, there’s never been a ruling to back up music cartel ‘file sharers are criminals" claims, or that file sharing is indeed illegal.
Now they want to be able to operate in the same way in Canada.
“The musicians say the industry has hit a low note because of Internet piracy and bootleg CDs,” a CTV report says, speaking of a Big Music lobbying effort on Parliament Hill and going on, ”The musicians, who included Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy and rocker Tom Cochrane, say the Copyright Act, which was drafted in 1908, is ill-equipped to address the issues of the 21st century.”
The Big Four record labels – EMI (Britain), UMG (France), Warner (USA) and Sony-BMG (Japan and Germany) – are trying to claim they and the artists under their thrall are going through hard times.
And as they make these claims, they're reporting eye-popping earning and sales. Nor do the artists paraded before the Canadian politicians have problems. Not even nearly. In fact, they’re rich, as are the music industry claims.
Dazzled by all the glitter Big Music is no doubt hoping Canadian law makers will be dazzled by all the glitter and will consequently be persuaded to pass laws giving the cartel members, none of whom is Canadian, the same kind of awesome power that they have in the States where they do pretty much what they want.
However, notwithstanding, they've been completely unable to bring the millions of p2p users under their heels, reports to the contrary notwithstanding.
As Dr Markus Giesler, assistant professor of marketing at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto reveals in his study Rethinking Consumer Risk: Cultural Risk, Collective Risk and the Social Construction of Risk Reduction, “the music recording industry's best efforts to stop those who use peer-to-peer networks to download music files have failed to deter people with the threat of lawsuits or criminal prosecution."
The Big Four cartel’s efforts to browbeat Canada's Justice Konrad von Finckenstein into ordering five Canadian ISPs to turn the identifies of customers over to the CRIA didn’t go anywhere.
“Downloading, file-swapping, peer-to-peer networks - these are all euphemisms for piracy, pure and simple,” CTV quotes Henderson as saying. “It is devastating to the Canadian music industry.”
Robertson used those exact words when he was trying to claim file sharing was bringing ruin to performers and music industry workers.
“Marianne Goodwin, a spokeswoman for Heritage Minister Liza Frulla, said the minister met early Wednesday with representatives of the musicians and discussed the issue,” the CTV story goes on.
“Goodwin said her office is working on copyright reform as recommended by a joint report from the Heritage and Industry departments. The plan is to seek authority from cabinet this fall to begin drafting amendments.”
She didn’t say what those amendments were, but the cartel is praying Frulla will pick up where her predecessor, Hélène Chalifour Scherrer, left off.
Scherrer was ready to re-write Canada's copyright laws to enable the cartel to open Canada and Canadians up to lawsuits.
The real criminals File sharing and file sharers aren't responsible for entertainment industry problems: Poor product quality and outdated business models are.
Nor are file sharers crooks. The real criminals are making a fortune through fake and counterfeit product. But they'd be largely out of business without the physical product the labels, studios and software makers churn out in their billions for the hard-core organized criminals to dupe and copy.
Wouldn't it make sense for the labels and studios to use digital technologies and p2p networks to store, promote and sell their already digitized outpourings? That would cut back on overhead, slash physical production, and packaging and other costs, and the vast amounts of money being spent on 'enforcement' and other efforts such as the Parliament Hill promo farce could be used elsewhere - in making p2p work for the industry and its artists, for example.
Of course, without sales from CDs, DVDs and associated equipment such as burners, players, blanks, recording equipment and all the other gear used by ‘pirates’, Sony for one - which makes and sells a substantial part of the aforementioned equipment while bemoaning file sharing - would be in dire straits.
But that’s another story.
Mp3s - highly compressed, inferior takes of CD tracks - aren’t fit for use on home stereo equipment by virtue of the fact data are lost during the compression process. They are, however, ideal for mobile players and over computer speakers.
Mp3s aren't CD tracks. They're worth no more than a few cents each at best and the music industry has never been able to explain how one - or even 1,000 - mp3 downloads equal a single lost sale.
In the meanwhile, the Big Music backed and supplied corporate music sites charge an outrageous US dollar per mp3 download, and want to do the same in Canada where music lovers buy their CDs from retail outlets, as they’ve always done and still do, and where they get their recreational mp3s from the free p2p networks, as they’ve been doing since Napster – the original application, that is, not the disinterred Napster II that’s trying desperately establish itself in Canada.
As professor Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law and a law professor at the University of Ottawa, is quoted as saying in the CTV story, "File sharing is certainly here to stay and the lawsuits and attempts at new legislation are attempts to put the toothpaste back in the tube."
Musicians demand Ottawa protect them from music piracy, says a Canadian Press headline.
It should read, Canadians demand Ottawa protect them from Big Music.
