Tag: Music Canada

@music_canada: Where would Google be without creators and the distortion of copyright protections?

PRESS RELEASE:

In a ground-breaking report, Music Canada, a national trade organization, documents the scale of harm being caused by the Value Gap – defined as the significant disparity between the value of creative content that is accessed, particularly through user upload content services like YouTube, and the revenues returned to the people and businesses who create it.

“This is the story you will not hear from Google,” says Graham Henderson, President and CEO of Music Canada.  “YouTube would never have emerged as the largest music service without distorting the use of safe harbour protections in copyright law that were created to protect ‘mere conduits’ or ‘dumb pipes.’  We now know that today’s digital platforms are the smartest pipes that have ever been imagined.”

Creators and governments around the world are taking notice, and taking action. In Canada, thousands of musicians, authors, poets, visual artists, playwrights and other members of the creative class, have urged the Canadian government to address the Value Gap in a campaign called Focus On Creators.

The Value Gap: Its Origins, Impacts and a Made-in-Canada Approach is available for download at https://musiccanada.com/resources/research/the-value-gap-report/.

@music_canada Wins $66 million Settlement Against Massive Infringer Isohunt and Founder

Massive infringer Isohunt and its founder Gary Fung agreed to a consent order with the Supreme Court of British Columbia finding him liable for infringing the copyrights of over two dozen Canadian and international labels.

The court found that isoHunt and Fung were liable for $55 million in damages and an additional $10 million in punitive damages, plus another million in court costs. As part of the settlement, Fung agreed to never be associated with any other service that makes music available without the authorization of music companies. A second consent order agreed to the dismissal of a [Lessig-inspired] countersuit filed by Fung against the labels.

“Music companies in Canada stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the fight against illegitimate sites that distribute massive volumes of creative works without compensation to creators,” said Graham Henderson, president & CEO of Music Canada, the trade group for Canadian music companies. “Thousands of Canadian creators, our creative industries, and their employees are directly harmed by these activities. This settlement is a step forward towards providing consumers with a marketplace in which legitimate online music services can thrive.”

Read the post on Billboard.