Weekly edition	Kernel	Security	Distributions	Contact Us	Search
Archives	Calendar	Subscribe	Write for LWN	LWN.net FAQ	Sponsors

Record labels' man in Washington (News.com)

Posted Sep 4, 2004 10:28 UTC (Sat) by jeroen (subscriber, #12372)
Parent article: Record labels' man in Washington (News.com)

What's your take on Canada, where it's perfectly legal to download as much music as you can fit on your hard drive?

Canadian law was written a long time ago with the idea of getting material out to the hinterlands, to the northern territories, to the Yukon. I think that its legislature is going to have to grapple with laws written for a good purpose in a different time, when things like P2P weren't available at all.

It's actually the same here in the Netherlands, despite the music industry don't want to let you know by talking about "illegal downloads" etc. It's legal because our copyright act (and it's probably the same in some other European countries, but I haven't checked this) only talks about publishing and making copies. Downloading is neither, so it can't be illegal under the copyright act.

(Log in to post comments)

Downloading - not a copy?!

Posted Sep 4, 2004 13:22 UTC (Sat) by mali (guest, #4553) [Link]

only talks about publishing and making copies. Downloading is neither
Errrr... if downloading an mp3 file doesn't produce a copy, then I wonder what does...

Downloading - not a copy?!

Posted Sep 5, 2004 0:06 UTC (Sun) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]

Well, this is actually an interesting point of law. When you download something, you have not
made a copy. The other guy, the person providing the service, has, perhaps, made a copy. Or
maybe he transmitted a copy to you and destroyed his, for zero net copies.

Legal home copying in other legislations

Posted Sep 5, 2004 14:25 UTC (Sun) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

In Finland making a copy for personal use is explicitly legal (with some exceptions). As a kind of compensation, there is a kind of "cassette tax" levied on just about any media that can store music (this includes nowadays even CD-ROM and DVD-ROM blanks). The proceeds go to a music publisher's association, which is supposed to use them for grants to artists.

Nevertheless, the music publishers rail against private copying just as elsewhere, making many people needlessly feel like lawbreakers...

As to P2P, I think the current interpretation in Finland is that while downloading any files off the net for personal use is not illegal, making them available over the net without the rightholders permission is. Since P2P programs famously work 2-way, I guess it makes P2P users liable if they load and then provide files that are not cleared for net distribution.

Legal home copying in other legislations

Posted Sep 16, 2004 16:25 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Yes, and at least in Sweden, personal use explicitly includes your family
and/or close friends. That would even make "sharing" legal, as long as
you stick to your friends. And I think this is a good thing. When we say
copying, sharing, or listening, it's basically the same thing. The laws
are loosely stiched together with special rules for public performance,
publishing and playing. Technically now when music is all digital, these
are all equivalent. What a crappy world if we weren't allowed to listen
to records with our friends (no matter if they are physically here or
not) or play lousy covers together (infringing their "property").