http://www.cippic.ca/index.php?page=...-sharing-legal
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According to the Federal Court, in a decision issued by Justice von Finckenstein on March 31, 2004, neither downloading a song for personal use nor merely making that file available to others to download from your computer (without some more active sharing activity) amounts to infringement under Canadian copyright law. The court ruled that “the mere fact of placing a copy on a shared directory in a computer where that copy can be accessed via a P2P service does not amount to distribution” or “authorization of the reproduction of sound recordings” under the Copyright Act. On appeal, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that Justice von Finckenstein had ruled prematurely on the issue and set aside the ruling without deciding the issue. See CIPPIC’s webpage on File-sharing lawsuits for more information on this case.
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The exception in the Copyright Act (s. 80) only applies to musical works:
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The Copyright Act contains a special exception for “private copying”: it permits the copying of music files “onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy”, but does not permit copying for the purpose of “distributing” or “communicating to the public by telecommunication” (s.80). It is generally accepted that downloading music for personal use is legal under this section. However, the record industry disputes this on the basis that a computer’s hard drive does not constitute an “audio recording medium”.
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