Canadian Music Industry Calls For Internet Regulation, Website Blocking 198
An anonymous reader writes "Canadian law professor Michael Geist reports
that the Canadian arm of the RIAA is calling for new Internet
regulation, including website blocking and search result manipulation. While the Canadian music industry experienced increased digital sales last year (sales declined in the U.S.) and the Ontario government is handing out tens of millions of tax dollars to the industry, the industry now wants the government to step in with website blocking and ordering search companies to change their results to focus on iTunes and other sales sites."
They need to keep teens apart too (Score:5, Interesting)
If they are really worried about piracy, they need to keep teens apart -- one of my teenaged relatives has a half dozen or so usb drives laying around with songs he's traded with various friends -- She's got a music library of over 10,000 songs (though oddly, she only seems to listen to 10 of those, over and over again). They trade entire music libraries at school, thousands of songs at a time. So no matter how tightly they lock down the internet, music will continue to be traded.
I'm a lost cause, the mainstream industry isn't likely to get much of my money no matter what they do. I'm well out of my teen years, and about the only albums I buy are for small regional artists, and I usually get them at concerts or direct from the artists. I already own several hundred CD's from the groups I listened to in my teens and 20's, and rarely hear a mainstream group I want to buy a CD from today -- Pandora and Spotify are good enough.
Not a Canadian... (Score:5, Interesting)
...but I thought that the Canadian RIAA had a tax tacked onto blank storage media that was supposed to help pay for the pirated tracks. Did that disappear?
What about highways? (Score:3, Interesting)
If Canada feels it's important to block public access to the internet because a few commit illegal acts, then why wouldn't they block public access to the highways for the same reason?
If we start/continue to block/disallow everything that can be used for unlawful purposes, pretty soon, everything will be blocked/disallowed.
Blame Canada (USA Putz) (Score:0, Interesting)
In other news, Edward Snowden through his attorney in Moscow has asked Federal Russian Agencies for protection as threats against his life mount.
Likely, the Obama Junta with DoD, DoJ and DoS backing will use the Sochi Olympic Games as a cover for infiltrating USA Green Beret and Seal Team personnel, through NATO countries Olympic programs into Russia to kill Snowden.
Each infiltration will have at least one Green Beret or Seal implant who will on arrival leave the NATO Country Olympic Team and rendezvous in Moscow to hunt then kill Snowden.
President Obama, following his remarks on the NSA disclosures and his proposed adjustments signed a secret executive order directing all USA resources toward the killing of Edward Snowden during the Sochi Olympic Games to be held in Russia.
Re:Drowns CRIA in poutine. (Score:2, Interesting)
Fortunately there are a few independent ISP's out there that possess their own howitzers. We were approached by certain law enforcement agencies first to invite us to participate, then stupidly they tried threatening us. Fortunately for us, we are the ONLY internet connection for most of our customers, we specialize in under served and unserved communities (~15k households). Our response to this threat was to send a letter to our customers that unless the government backs off, we will have no choice but to shut down, please call (insert number here) to let them know what you think of loosing your connection to the outside world.
it took 8 hours for them to back off.. never bothered again.