PUBLIC MARKS from multilinko with tags canada & music

Canadian musicians are rising up against p2p lawsuits, statutory damages, DRM and anti-circumvention legislation. They've started a new group called the Canadian Music Creators Coalition.

Digital Rights Management, to repeat my argument, is not about stopping piracy, but about shutting down fair use. The aim of shutting down fair use is simple: the copyright owners want to nickel and dime users.

TORONTO (CP) - The Canadian Recording Industry Association is calling on Ottawa to make sure Canada's copyright law is up to par after an Australian court ruled popular file-swapping network Kazaa was illegal. "The law that is currently on the books - that's enforced - is so antiquated that the net result has been, (that) despite all of our best efforts, Canada's become a piracy haven," association president Graham Henderson said in an interview Monday. "We have lobbied for years . . . to get those laws up to date so we're in line with everyone in the world - and I mean everyone else."

Canadians who share music files on the Internet can now be sued by the record industry, but it will not be an easy process, according to legal experts. A Canadian Federal Court of Appeal's decision, released Thursday afternoon, upheld a ruling last year denying the recording industry's demand that Internet Service Providers be forced to reveal the identities of 29 people that the Canadian Recording Industry Association had identified as major downloaders. But the appeals decision is being interpreted as a win by both sides in the music download debate, since it left the door open to future suits when the judge indicated copyright law must still be respected.