The
Canadian Recording Industry Association is a non-profit
trade organizationAn industry trade group, also known as a trade association, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry. An industry trade association participates in public relations activities such as advertising, education, political donations, lobbying and...
that was founded in 1964 to represent the interests of companies that create, manufacture and
marketA market is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby persons trade, and goods and services are exchanged, forming part of the economy. It is an arrangement that allows buyers and sellers to exchange things...
sound recordings in
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. The organization is based in
TorontoToronto is the most populous city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. With over 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth most populous municipality in North America...
.
CRIA is governed by a
board of directorsA board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. The body sometimes has a different name, such as board of trustees, board of governors, board of managers, or executive board...
who are elected annually by CRIA members. To be eligible for election a candidate for the board must be among the
chief executive officerA chief executive officer or chief executive is one of the highest-ranking corporate officers or administrators in charge of total management...
s of member companies of the organization.
The
Canadian Recording Industry Association is a non-profit
trade organizationAn industry trade group, also known as a trade association, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry. An industry trade association participates in public relations activities such as advertising, education, political donations, lobbying and...
that was founded in 1964 to represent the interests of companies that create, manufacture and
marketA market is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby persons trade, and goods and services are exchanged, forming part of the economy. It is an arrangement that allows buyers and sellers to exchange things...
sound recordings in
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. The organization is based in
TorontoToronto is the most populous city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. With over 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth most populous municipality in North America...
.
CRIA is governed by a
board of directorsA board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. The body sometimes has a different name, such as board of trustees, board of governors, board of managers, or executive board...
who are elected annually by CRIA members. To be eligible for election a candidate for the board must be among the
chief executive officerA chief executive officer or chief executive is one of the highest-ranking corporate officers or administrators in charge of total management...
s of member companies of the organization.
Graham HendersonGraham Henderson is a Canadian lawyer and the president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, a lobby group for a number of major record labels in Canada....
(Universal Music Canada) is the current president of the CRIA.
Representation
Currently CRIA is undergoing somewhat of a crisis of integrity of whom they represent. Several smaller but more domestically representative labels (such as
NettwerkThe Nettwerk Music Group is the umbrella company for Nettwerk Management, Nettwerk Records, as well as Nettwerk One Publishing, Nutone Records, and Artwerk. With over 150 employees, the Vancouver based company has offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, Boston, Nashville and Hamburg...
) have publicly disagreed with CRIA and claim it no longer represents them - only large American
franchiseFranchising is the practice of using another person's business model. The franchisor grants the independent operator the right to distribute its products, techniques, and trademarks for a percentage of gross monthly sales and a royalty fee...
labels. This controversy includes recent hard line stance against blank media tax and legal threats to BitTorrent websites - aggressive and
extremeExtreme or Xtreme may refer to:In music:*Extreme , an American band**Extreme , an album by Extreme*Xtreme , a bachata duo**Xtreme , an album by Xtreme*Extremes , an album by Collin Raye...
positions to take regarding filesharing.. A Canadian Press report on the departure of Nettwerk and five other labels from CRIA indicates that the split was 'over a disagreement about radio content rules and grant programs for emerging artists', and suggests that the labels have no issue with CRIA's other work, 'including advocating for copyright reform'.
Legal actions
On February 16, 2004, the CRIA applied to the
Federal CourtThe Federal Court of Canada is a defunct national court of Canada set up to resolve some types of disputes arising under the central government's legislative jurisdiction. It consisted of two divisions, a Trial Division and an Appeal Division...
to force five major Canadian
internet service providerAn Internet service provider is a company that offers its customers access to the Internet...
s —
Shaw CommunicationsShaw Communications is a Canadian telecommunications company that provides telephone, internet and television services. Shaw is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. It provides services mostly in British Columbia and Alberta, with smaller systems in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario.-...
Inc.,
TelusTelus is a national telecommunications company in Canada that provides a wide range of communications products and services including data, Internet protocol , voice, entertainment and video. The company is based in Burnaby, British Columbia...
Corp.,
Rogers CableRogers Communications Inc. is one of Canada's largest communications companies, particularly in the field of wireless communications and cable television, with additional telecommunications and mass media assets. It is headquartered in the Rogers Building in Toronto, Ontario.The company considers...
,
Bell CanadaBell Canada, commonly shortened to "Bell", is a major Canadian telecommunications company. Including its subsidiaries such as Bell Aliant, Northwestel, Télébec, and NorthernTel, it is the incumbent local exchange carrier for telephone services in most of Canada east of Manitoba and in the northern...
's
SympaticoBell Internet, originally and frequently called Sympatico, is the residential internet service provider division of Bell Canada. It is affiliated with MSN. As of June 2009, Bell Internet had over 2 million subscribers in Ontario and Quebec and was the largest ISP in Canada.- History :Sympatico was...
service and Quebec's
VidéotronVidéotron Limited is an integrated Telecommunications company active in cable television, interactive multimedia development, video on demand, Cable telephony, wireless communication and Internet access services, primarily serving Quebec, Canada, the francophone communities of New Brunswick as well...
— to hand over the names of 29 people accused of
illegalLaw is a system of rules, usually enforced through a set of institutions. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a primary social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus ticket to trading on derivatives markets...
filesharing. On April 2005,
VidéotronVidéotron Limited is an integrated Telecommunications company active in cable television, interactive multimedia development, video on demand, Cable telephony, wireless communication and Internet access services, primarily serving Quebec, Canada, the francophone communities of New Brunswick as well...
indicated its willingness to supply customer information to the CRIA.
On March 31, 2004, in the case of
BMG v. John Doe, Justice Konrad von Finckenstein of the
Federal Court of CanadaThe Federal Court of Canada is a defunct national court of Canada set up to resolve some types of disputes arising under the central government's legislative jurisdiction. It consisted of two divisions, a Trial Division and an Appeal Division...
ruled that making music available for download over the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
was not equivalent to distribution and was thus noninfringing. The Justice compared the file trading activities to "having a photocopier in a library room full of copyrighted material" and wrote that there was no evidence of unauthorized distribution presented. The Federal Court of Appeal upheld the lower courts ruling denying the disclosure of the customers' identities, but, in reference to "what would or would not constitute infringement of copyright," stated: "such conclusions should not have been made in the very preliminary stages of this action, since they would require a consideration of the evidence as well as the law applicable to such evidence after it has been properly adduced, and could be damaging to the parties if a trial takes place."
The
Copyright Board of CanadaThe Copyright Board of Canada is an economic regulatory body empowered to establish, either mandatorily or at the request of an interested party, the royalties to be paid for the use of copyrighted works, when the administration of such copyright is entrusted to a collective-administration society...
earlier that year had included downloading music in the list of "private copying" activities for which tariffs on blank media applied. (Private copying is the act of copying music for personal use from a noninfringing source, and is itself noninfringing.) That made it extremely unlikely that downloaders could be successfully prosecuted, leaving only the possibility of acting against uploaders, those supplying the works to others on the networks.
The CRIA has also threatened legal action on other occasions. For instance, on September 27, 2007, the CRIA sent a letter to
DemonoidDemonoid is a website and BitTorrent tracker created by an anonymous Serbian known only by the pseudonym "Deimos" and "Zajson". The website indexes torrents uploaded by its members. It was the second largest, and is the most popular, semi-public tracker, and was ranked the 499th most popular...
threatening legal action (copyright infringement), despite the fact that Demonoid does not host copyrighted material - merely torrents facilitating the downloading of copyrighted materials.
Demonoid shutdown
On November 08, 2007, the CRIA forced the closing of
DemonoidDemonoid is a website and BitTorrent tracker created by an anonymous Serbian known only by the pseudonym "Deimos" and "Zajson". The website indexes torrents uploaded by its members. It was the second largest, and is the most popular, semi-public tracker, and was ranked the 499th most popular...
by threatening the company from whom they are renting their servers.
The site was left as a blank page with a short statement written on it:
"
The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding."
However, the decision to take down servers is ultimately up to either
DemonoidDemonoid is a website and BitTorrent tracker created by an anonymous Serbian known only by the pseudonym "Deimos" and "Zajson". The website indexes torrents uploaded by its members. It was the second largest, and is the most popular, semi-public tracker, and was ranked the 499th most popular...
or the ISPs, as no legal order has been given.
As a reaction to the recent take-down of Demonoid by the CRIA, a few Canadians have banded together to form an organization called "Stop The CRIA" as an attempt to raise awareness of the situation and to help companies threatened by the CRIA to defend themselves in court.
Lawsuit against the CRIA
On September 8th, Gary Fung, President of Isohunt Web Technologies Inc. or '
isoHuntisoHunt is a BitTorrent index with over 1.7 million torrents in its database and 20 million peers from indexed torrents. With 7.4 million unique visitors as of May 2006, isoHunt is one of the most popular BitTorrent search engines. Thousands of torrents are added to it each day as well as deleted....
' announced on the
Isohunt front page that he had made a preemptive move against an impending lawsuit from the CRIA by filing a petition to the Supreme Court of British Columbia. isoHunt argues that it is merely a search engine to find torrents that are scattered around the web, much the same as Google or any other search engine can be used in the same way.
Gary Fung's affidavit can be viewed
here
The Petition to the Supreme Court of British Columbia can be viewed
here
Album certifications
The CRIA certifications for albums released after May 1, 2008 are:
- 40,000 units: Gold (previously 50,000)
- 80,000 units: Platinum (previously 100,000)
- 800,000 units: Diamond (previously 1,000,000)
Note: Multi-Platinum certification refers to albums that have sold 160,000 units or more (i.e. 160,000 is double Platinum) but have not yet sold 800,000 units (Diamond certification).
External links