Quote:
Originally Posted by Chobyhy
Can anyone confirm that? So as long as I don't upload, downloading is legal in Canada?
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It hasn't been tested in court.
The opinions I've read said they believe prosecuting someone uploading would probably result in a conviction, but until it is actually tried there is no way to know for sure.
The way things stand right now, I don't think there ever will be any charges for uploading music. Most ISPs have fought to avoid being forced to supply customer names associated to IP addresses, and the sheer effort to litigate this to conclusion would be of questionable benefit.
Video is a whole different ball game. It is not legal to upload or download video. There haven't been any court cases to validate that opinion, but the reasoning behind the legality of audio downloads is that there is a levy collected with every blank recording media sold (cassettes and CDs) to the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars. This money is in an account to be distributed to parties affected by music piracy. However, there is no equivalent levy to pay back parties affected by video piracy. And I doubt the networks or movie studios want a levy, they want to shut the practice down. They learned from the music industry that a levy makes things legal to download.
Interestingly, the CRIA, Canadian Recording Industry Association (which all the actual Canadian companies have pulled out of, and now only consists of the Canadian arm of multinationals), actually wants to have the laws changed to make downloading music illegal, similar to the US, but still collect the levy.