The Canadian Recording Industry Association is a non-profit trade organization that was founded in 1964 to represent the interests of Canadian companies that create, manufacture and market sound recordings.

On February 16, 2004, the CRIA requested a judge force five major Canadian ISPs, Shaw Communications Inc., TELUS Corp., Rogers Cable, Bell Canada's Sympatico service and Quebec's Videotron, to hand over the names of 29 people accused of illegal filesharing. Only Videotron supplied the information.

On March 31, 2004, Justice Konrad von Finckenstein of the Federal Court of Canada ruled that making music available for download over the Internet 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 unauthorised distribution presented.

The Canada Copyright Board 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.

See also: RIAA

External links

• Canadian Recording Industry Association Website
• London Free Press article on the decision
• Full text of the decision (PDF)