FEDERAL COURT OF CANADA RULES FILE SHARING DOES NOT INFRINGE COPYRIGHT
The Federal Court in BMG Canada Inc. et al. v. John Doe, Jane Doe, Docket No. T-292-04 has ruled that file sharing does not infringe copyright. Numerous record companies, through their association, Canadian Recording Industry Association ("CRIA"), had sued certain individuals who had over 1000 downloaded recordings on computer file sharing directories, facilitated through peer-to-peer services, such as Morpheus and iMesh. These individuals had only been identified by their Internet addresses and CRIA sought a court order to compel their Internet service providers to disclose their names and addresses.
The Court denied the order based in part on its opinion that file sharing did not infringe Canadian copyright laws. It held that downloading a song for personal use was not an infringement because private copying sections of the Copyright Act expressly permitted the making of such copies. Furthermore, the Court found that simply placing those copies onto shared directories, which other computer users could access through a P2P service, did not amount to authorizing infringement. There was no evidence that these individuals took any positive step to facilitate further distribution of the copies, such as sending out further copies or advertising that the files were available for copying. Relying on the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in CCH v. The Law Society of Upper Canada, the Federal Court found that merely providing facilities for copying (i.e. the shared directories) did not amount to an authorization to make infringing copies any more than providing a photocopier, which could be used to make illegal copies, was an authorization to infringe in the Law Society case.
The Court further noted that the Canadian Act did not yet give copyright owners an exclusive right to control the distribution or "making available" of his/her works. Such a new right is required under an international treaty called The WIPO Copyright Treaty, which Canada has signed, but not ratified. If a distribution and/or "making available right" is added to our Act in future, to comply with Treaty requirements, it would then be an infringement to place music files on shared directories, since that would amount to "making available" the works, without the copyright owner's consent.
The decision also reviews requirements to protect Internet users' personal information under privacy laws, including the recent Federal legislation "Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act". See decision at http://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fct/2004/2004fc488.shtml
|
