Sorry for the delay. Stop biting your nails, curl up in a comfortable chair with a hot cup of tea and read this final chapter of my essay.
So the Federal Court of Appeal made it clear that the area of downloading, hard drives and file sharing remains a very grey area. In future cases, which the CIRA will no doubt file in the coming months, these aspects of the Copyright Act will be tested. This foreboding was voiced in one of Sexton’s final comments: “[I] wish to make it clear that if this case proceeds further, it should be done on the basis that no findings to date on the issue of infringement have been made.” (Sexton, par.54) Read more…
Digital Music, Legal Studies
copyright, Digital Music, disintermediation, ecommerce, file sharing, retail, royalties
Please see (Part 1 and Part 2)
Part 2 ended with the judge suggesting that file-sharing in this case, was not copyright infringement at all…
The Copyright Board of Canada in 2003 amended the Copyright Act’s section on private copying to include language for better definition of an “audio recording medium” and to define levies on the sale of these items. (CBOC, 2003) The point of the Private Copying amendment is to allow an individual to make copies of protected material strictly for their own use, while still paying artists for their work. This money is collected via a levy placed on blank media that is collected by the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) as royalties. Read more…
Digital Music, Legal Studies, Media Technology
, CBOC, CCA, copyright, CPCC, Digital Music, Geist, WPPT
Dr. Bakker uses an objective tone, rational arguments and an abundance of references to show that the traditional music industry is defending its interests with inconsistent logic and rhetoric in “The end of the CD as we know it… Shifting consumer behaviour and changing business models in the music industry”. The article clearly explains the position of the music industry by citing reports by the RIAA and the IFPI that show declines in the sales of CDs, and a detailed explanation of the industries dialogue with the public.
The industry argues that “downloading music is illegal…and unethical, it is hurting the industry and artists… takes away the incentive for creativity… and is therefore harmful for national music cultures.” (Bakker, 2004) He then systematically “deconstructs” these “discourses” to show that although the industry “strengthens the argument that all kinds of illegal activities are harmful”, they “fail to reveal how much downloading contributes to the decline in music sales”. Read more…
Digital Music, Media Technology
CD sales, CRIA, Digital Music, diversity, IFPI, RIAA, soundscan
Wilfred Dolfsma is assistant professor of Innovation Management at the Rotterdam School of Management in The Netherlands. In his paper “How will the Music Industry Weather the Globalization Storm” (2000), Dolfsma examines the institution of copyright and how information and communication technology will impact its structure in the years following 2000.
In this “institutional economic analysis”, he explains the structure of the music industry, especially the functions of major record labels and music publishing companies, and their dependence on the current system of copyrights. He shows how the industry is directly related to both the national and international system of copyrights and that this system is based upon its historical capacity to influence governing bodies to change intellectual property law in its favour.
Dolfsma concludes that new communications technologies have made current copyright law obsolete and therefore should be “removed or appropriately changed, if and when possible”. The reliability of this conclusion is questionable because of the author’s subjective tone and self-contradiction with respect to financial gains for companies and artists. Although the conclusion is ineffective in illustrating the advantages of Internet transactions’ exception from copyright, it does succeed in proposing a plausible scenario for the future of intermediaries. Read more…
Digital Music, Media Technology, Social Media
copyright, Digital Music, disintermediation, ecommerce, file sharing, retail, royalties
