RIAA v. Almost 30,000 People

Ray Beckerman is a redoubtable and remarkable New York lawyer who has made it his mission to stop the RIAA's mass litigation campaign, which has now victimized almost 30,000 ordinary people, ranging from a 12 year girl living in subsidized housing to a dead grandmother. He has published an excellent article in the ABA's The Judges’ Journal, Volume 47, Number 3, Summer 2008. This is a journal that is read by the American judiciary.

Of relevance to Canada, he points out at the outset that:

The courts of other countries—notably the Netherlands and Canada—are not clogged with these cases for the simple reason that they were quick to recognize the paucity of the RIAA’s evidence and refused to permit the identities of Internet subscribers to be disclosed to the record companies.

It was the leadership of CIPPIC, who I was proud to represent, and the principled opposition mostly by Shaw but also of Telus that led to the successful resistance at the outset to a similar campaign in Canada. Canada was fortunate to have had the PIPEDA privacy legislation in place and and a federal judiciary with the wisdom and the will to dispense justice in the BMG litigation at both the trial level and the appellate level.

One should be very skeptical about Canadian music industry claims that there is no intention to sue ordinary individuals in Canada. There was certainly a major effort by CRIA involving three prominent law firms to do so in 2004 - 2005 and there very likely will be renewed efforts at litigation against individuals for common place activity by CRIA and/or others if Bill C-61 is enacted as it now stands.

P.S. - Ray has posted an epilogue on some key developments since March, when the paper was essentially done.

HK