Weed is not decriminalized in Canada... it's still quite illegal, on the books at least.

The fact that you wont' get more than a slap on the wrist for simple possession merely reflects two things:

1) Changing attitudes towards weed.... we just don't really care to make a big deal out of it
2) The police, courts, and government being more sensible and spending their time on more serious issues.


Non-commerical copying of music is okay in Canada. Distribution is not.
I can lend you a CD, and you can copy it, neither of us has broken the law.
If I make a copy and give it to you, I'm distributing copies without permission.

When this comes to downloading, the legal opinion, as silly as it sounds, is "Downloading is not illegal, uploading is"

IN the end, though, I think Canadians have better things to spend their time and effort on than criminalizing music copying.. it's made our society richer and more interesting, and coroprations often don't have the same amount of legal pull as they would in the US.
 

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Hah ;) Pirating anything (music, games, movies) was legal until a year ago in Sweden :D And Bittorrent is still very much legal, regardless of content. An IP'adress is considered a 'personal id' and protected by our privacy laws. weee,, and that's how we defeat the us backed WTO with TRIPS(Council and intellectual property in the WTO).
 

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In it decision a few years ago the supreme court of Canada heard arguments that sharing digital music was illegal, and a violation of copyright. They ruled that, although sharing digital media can be used in an illegal manner, they where not willing to circumvent our privacy laws to allow the recording industry to gain access to clients names. A persons privacy is more important that copyright. Further, the sharing of digital media is nothing more than an extension of the sharing of tapes, or other media which have persisted, up until now uncontested. The court ruled that it was not their place to make decisions regarding the digital use or non-use of copyrighted material.... they ruled that it was up to the industry to protect itself through technology, one it (the industry) proved it could protect itself, they could petition the courts for aid if this protection was being violated.
 

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Exactly.
Canadian courts are generally of the opinion that a financial dissagreement between two parties is a matter for the civil courts, not the criminal courts.

Having courts that try very hard not to act as corporate bully boys is hardly something I'd consider a negative.

OB Ed. I am Canadian. I don't pirate music, but I don't buy music from "record companies" - I purchase CDs (and a few MP3s) from artists, directly. The reason being - mass market, mass appeal music is like one-size-fits-all clothing. Its just not good enough to buy.
 

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The stereotypical Canadian interjection expressing puzzlement, indifference, or an incitation of commonality is spelt "eh" and pronounced in the same way as the first letter of the Western alphabet. It does not rhyme with "pie" and "fry", it rhymes with "day" and "broulé".

Lrn2Canadian.
 

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