Re: A very different Gaelic song

On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:35:12 -0700, HardySpicer <gyansorova@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Aug 23, 2:51 am, The Highlander <mich...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:10:28 -0700, HardySpicer <gyansor...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:



On Aug 22, 1:22 pm, The Highlander <mich...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:19:07 -0700, TandVh <t...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 21, 11:12 am, The Highlander <mich...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 02:16:45 GMT, The Highlander <mich...@xxxxxxx>
.

Someone queried me once and I pointed out that as I always include the
singer's name, it's free and good advertising for the singer, as the
songs are Scottish and so is the group; which includes many people of
Scots descent - Americans, Canadians, etc., the likeliest buyers of
Gaelic music after Gaelic-speaking people.

Thanks you for the song old chap but please don't encourage me to
break the law by downloading copyrighted music. Your spat about
'advertising the singer' wouldn't hold much hope in a court of law.
Like old times eh Highlander. Ignoarance is still bliss but it is not
a defense in law.

Your old friend Hardy

One of the pleasures of dealing with you is that your ignorance never
fails to make you look like the idiot I believe you to be.

Canada operates under a unique legal judgement which resolves the
problem of copyright and the downloading of music. In fact, there has
just been a national discussion of how the government has been picking
up a nice handful of change at the expense of people who download
copyright music and those who hold the copyright on such music.

In a nutshell, every time a Canadian buys a blank CD he or she pays a
copyright tax which ultimately returns to an organization which chases
down breaches of copyright music .

The current levy on CD-Rs is 21¢ each.

The new levy for non-removable memory permanently embedded in digital
audio recorders is $25 for each recorder with memory capacity of more
than 10 gigabytes.

This allows Canadians to download music without any fear of
prosecution and is a sensible compromise which has worked well to
date. However, there have been rumbles of discontent from the public
as the government is seen to be making a profit from this, rather than
returing the full amount to the various artistes whose music is
downloaded.

Regarding the BBC and the recording of music from that organization, I
suggest you read the small print regarding the terms of use of music
the BBC makes publically available. In brief, if it is for your own
personal pleasure and not for commercial reasons, the BBC will hold
you free and harmless from allegations of copyright theft.

So as far as I am concerned, I am breaking no law and neither is
anyone who downloads BBC music from SCS because I have already posted
it legally as I make no financial gain from that activity.

All this information is widely available on the Internet for anyone
who can be bothered to look it up. Unless people on SCS are
downloading the music, copying it to CDs and offering it for sale,
there is no legal problem,

I should like to remind you that I have four years of law at the
University of British Columbia under my belt and I would be astonished
if you could catch me out in such a matter.

What should concern posters in SCS more is your blatant attempt to
bully and blackmail me by implying that you can create legal problems
for me. It simply isn't going to happen, mainly because I believe that
you are too stupid to get even close to ever catching me out on such a
charge, given the juvenile level of your mind and inability to think
coherently and plan ahead beyond the next evacuation of your bowels.

I should also like to add that in my opinion - (that phrase is a legal
out for me, as I cannot be sued for holding an opinion) you are one of
the most repugnant and venomous creatures ever to post in this forum.
I believe that you have the manners and mindset of a pig on heat, and
your clear lack of more than an embryonic knowledge of legal and other
matters speaks volumes about your lack of character and education.

I cannot legally suggest that you should cut your throat as an apology
and gesture of minimal decency for your existence, because that would
involve me in a criminal act; to wit, encouraging someone to commit
suicide, but should you ever decide to end your life in that manner,
it will meet with my complete and total approval and applause.

I would suggest that you go and perform an indecent act with yourself,
but as you have already successfully done that as far as I and very
possibly other posters here are concerned, I bid you a good day.

The Highlander
Tilgibh smucaid air do làmhan,
togaibh a' bhratach dhubh agus
toisichibh a' geàrradh na sgòrnanan!

Oh dear - your slip is showing! There is a huge difference from you
downloading a file for your own personal use and distributing it to
the whole world. How do you think the artists feel? If you really want
to advertise them then play a short 30 second clip and publish where
the CD can be bought.
I would also bring your attention to this

http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5121479.html

update Downloading copyrighted music from peer-to-peer networks is
legal in Canada, although uploading files is not, Canadian copyright
regulators said in a ruling released Friday.

Clearly you are in fact breaking the law. Don' worry, I won't shop you
to the authorities. Along with a good many others in this newsgroup
you have overestimated your own knowledge even of simple things.

Really? Do you think I spend my days sitting on the doorstep of the
Copyright Board of Canada waiting to hear of any new changes in the
law. This decision was only made last Friday, and today I found out
about it. I'll find the actual decision and read it through and if it
penalizes what I'm doing, I'll stop doing it.

My first job is to find the Copyright Board's definition of what
constitutes a peer-to-peer group. I'll read up on it and go from
there.

As for your offer not to turn me in, I doubt that they will strike at
me first, rather than the music peer-to-peer groups. In the event that
what I am doing has now been made illegal, I certainly won't be
relying on your goodwill from day to day to decide whether to post an
MP3 or not.

I'm fairly sure that scs would not qualify as a peer-to-peer group. as
its purpose in meeting here is not primarily to download music; it
simply happens to be a incidental part of the cultural reasons for
which this group meets.

I'll call the Canadian Copyright Board and ask them for a specific
ruling, which should take no more than 10 minutes for the call and
several months for the ruling....
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's an opinion from Michael Geist, Law Professor, University of
Ottawa, Canada. Perhaps the lawyers among us might like to add their
own opinions of what this means in terms of SCS? (I have still to read
it myself).
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Recording Industry Association of America is suing hundreds of
Americans for allegedly sharing copyrighted music on peer-to-peer
networks.
But so far, their Canadian neighbors have not been targeted for file
swapping, even though networks such as Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus
appear to be just as popular north of the border.

A recent study, conducted by Canada's AssetMetrix, of 560 companies
whose employee numbers range from 10 to 45,000 employees found
file-swapping software installed on at least one computer in 77
percent of cases. Last fall, Bell Canada sought to ease congestion in
its network by imposing additional fees for broadband customers who
exceed download limits of between 2 gigabytes and 20 gigabytes a
month.

A big reason for the lack of lawsuits against file swappers is
Canada's different legal system, which provides additional protections
for peer-to-peer downloaders.

CNET News.com spoke to Michael Geist, the Canada research chair in
Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, about
copyrights, spam and other topics. Geist is also technology counsel to
Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt, and he writes a newspaper column on
cyberlaw.

Q: Can Canadians legally download copyrighted music from peer-to-peer
networks?
A: The short answer is: Nobody knows for sure. But the issue is far
murkier than in other jurisdictions like the United States. The key
provision in Canada's copyright legislation is a private copyright
exemption that lets Canadians make private copies for noncommercial
use. The way we justify the exemption is by way of a levy that applies
to blank media such as blank CDs and blank audio cassettes.

Canada has yet to enact any digital copyright legislation along the
lines of the DMCA.
With the exemption, there are many who believe that those who download
music for noncommercial purposes from P2P networks could avail
themselves of this legal defense. This has never been tested in court.
The recording industry is of the opinion that this violates the spirit
of the law if not the letter.

What do you think?
I'm inclined to think that you'd have a pretty good argument as an
individual user--that personal, noncommercial copying is permitted by
the exemption.

The one caveat--and this is where there have been many myths--is that
there is little doubt under Canadian copyright law that making those
same songs available to others is not permissible.

So you can download all you want, but you can't share what you've
downloaded?
That's right. It's very clear that the exemption applies only to
individuals who make copies and does not authorize others to make
copies.

When people compare the situation in the United States to the
situation in Canada, it's a bit of a misnomer to say we couldn't see
the same suits arise. In Canada, the making available of songs would
be treated in a similar fashion.

Do any countries let people share copyrighted material without
penalty?
I don't know of any. There might be jurisdictions that don't address
the issue, but I don't know of any jurisdiction that would explicitly
create an exemption for making copyrighted works available.

Because you don't have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and its
turbocharged subpoenas, is it more difficult for copyright holders to
unmask alleged pirates?
The vast majority of ISPs will only remove content when presented with
a court order--not a mere claim by a copyright holder.
Without a doubt. That, to me, is the bigger issue in terms of lawsuits
in Canada. Unlike in the United States, where there is the subpoena
power under the DMCA, Canada does not have a similar power under
either its copyright law or any other law for that matter.

Is there any serious interest in changing it?
Canada has yet to enact any digital copyright legislation along the
lines of the DMCA. This is a topic that has been under consideration.
Topics like the DMCA subpoena powers are part of the mix.

My sense is that policy-makers look at the experience in the United
States with a significant amount of concern. So, I don't know that
it's likely that even if we get digital copyright legislation, we
would see a similar set of subpoena powers.

What else would a digital copyright law cover?
There are number of things. A notice and takedown system is one. Here
in Canada, we don't have a situation similar to that of the United
States, so the vast majority of Internet service providers will only
remove content when presented with a court order--not a mere claim by
a copyright holder.

And the DMCA's anticircumvention section, which SunComm recently used
to threaten a Princeton University graduate student?
We don't have anything like that, either. Digital rights management
and circumvention issues are not part of our copyright law.

Is Canada a freer country when it comes to the Internet, as a result?
Based on an innovation perspective, we haven't run into the same
problems the United States has, with lawsuits brought against
researchers, garage door manufacturers and printing companies. Most
Canadians look at those cases and are rather puzzled.

How much pressure from industry groups is there to move in this
direction?
For the last few years, there's been a fair amount of lobbying and
promises from the government to move forward with some kind of
copyright reform. The government has set forth a five-year plan, and
digital copyright is at the top of the list. That said, I think
policy-makers have a real concern with the experience they've seen in
the United States.

What benefit is there in embracing the WIPO (World Intellectual
Property Organization) copyright treaty, which inspired the DMCA?
There are those who say there is very little. Canadian policy has long
been that it plans to become WIPO-compliant. It isn't clear yet what
the advantages would be for Canadians.

You mentioned the taxes the Canadian government levies on blank media
such as CDs. Right now, they're 22 cents (29 cents in Canadian
currency) on audio cassettes and 59 cents on CD-R audio. Doesn't that
create an incentive for Canadians to drive across the border and buy
bulk CDs in the United States?
There are some that might. For users who don't use a huge amount of
this media, that doesn't make sense. There are certainly fears that
the levy creates a gray market that hurts retailers and at the end of
the day doesn't provide much funding back to the artists, because
people shop elsewhere.

If you're a software manufacturer, and you buy thousands of blank CDs,
you pay the levy just as the file sharers might, and you're
effectively subsidizing file sharing. There's a real fairness issue.

Why was it enacted?
People have always copied music. This was initially designed to deal
with small-scale personal copying. The initial tariff was focused on
things like audio cassettes, through which much of the copying
occurred. Of course, that's changed dramatically in recent years.

The current taxes are called an interim tariff. What happens next?
Even more controversial are prospects that the levy would apply to
blank hard drives--to computers potentially and right now to MP3
players.

Would the MP3 device, or just its hard drive, be taxed?
It would be calculated based on the size of the hard drive. If the
Copyright Board of Canada were to accept that, it would raise the cost
of Apple Computer's 20-gigabyte iPod by about $77.

Is it just the Copyright Board that can determine how high the tax
will be, or does it require a new law from Parliament?
It's just the Copyright Board that's charged with setting the tariff.
But parties can appeal the decision. These cases can literally drag
out even on a single tariff 10 years or more.

But the tariff itself accrues retroactively. At some point, there's a
final determination, and the tariff applies. There won't be a tariff
set until 2008 or 2010 until all the appeals go through the Canadian
court system.

Is there a tax or tariff on music downloads?
There is no tariff yet. There is not even an amount that would be
raised. The initial questions are: Will there be a tariff, and to whom
would it apply? Those are issues the Canadian Supreme Court will
examine in December.


The Highlander
Tilgibh smucaid air do làmhan,
togaibh a' bhratach dhubh agus
toisichibh a' geàrradh na sgòrnanan!
.

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