A landmark case came before the Supreme Court of Canada this week,
with its music industry seeking an order for ISPs to pay royalties
for file-sharing by their customers. In effect it wants a tax to
compensate for what it cannot stop.
The music industry is fighting a desperate battle to control the
unauthorised downloading of copyrighted music that leaves artists
and recording companies bereft of their lucrative royalties.
Peer-to-peer file-sharing services like KaZaA are seen as the
biggest problem.
In the US, the Recording Industry Association of America has
taken direct action against users of these services, and only this
week sued 41 individuals in its latest wave of lawsuits. But the
Canadian music industry is attempting a different approach.
On Wednesday, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music
Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) went to the Supreme Court seeking an
order that would force ISPs to pay blanket royalty fees to cover
the music downloaded using their services as conduits.
SOCAN proposes that ISPs pay a royalty of CAN$0.25 per
subscriber per year as well as 10% of any gross profit that ISPs
make through the sale of advertising.
SOCAN also wants the court to decide whether or not ISPs should
be accountable for web content hosted in other countries but
accessed by Canadians.
The Canadian Association of Internet Providers
(CAIP), which counts IBM, AOL and Yahoo! among its
members, is defending the action. CAIP argues that royalties
should be sought from web site operators rather than ISPs, who were
just being used as a convenient target.
The case revolves around the definition of an ISP: is it merely
a conduit for the transportation of digital information, or is it
actually communicating that information in some way that makes it
responsible for the content?
No decision is expected until at the middle of next year at the
earliest.
In Europe, the E-Commerce Directive defines ISPs as a mere
conduit of information, meaning that in general an ISP is not
liable for the material transferred among its customers or hosted
their web sites.
