A small indie record store owner in Ottawa, Canada, has plead guilty to a
charge of copyright infringement for importing rare CDs from abroad.
Apparently, these discs (which are themselves licensed, as far as I can
tell) aren’t licensed for sale in Canada, and Canadian law (apparently)
bans this kind of parallel importation.
But none of these CDs are actually available in Canada. And no one
orders rare, expensive imports unless he’s already got the artist’s
entire catalog. And, of course, the record labels that went after this
record store owner (whose whole purpose in life is to sell their CDs) are presently being sued for $60 billion in copyright damages for ripping off artists, and have admitted to $50 million in liability already.
Sebastian Tomczak, who blogs his fascination with sound and technology at little-scale.blogspot.com, reports that “My ten hour white noise video now has five copyright claims!”
The culprit appears to be YouTube’s hapless and hostile contentID
system, which automatically matches portions of different videos, makes
stupid conclusions about intellectual property, then invites corporate
customers to “claim” and monetize other people’s work as their own.
Crazy as it is, YouTube is obligated to take down copyright claims or lose its safe harbor status under the dreadful DMCA, so cultural suppression through copyright takedown is not a surprise…. well, unless you’r Ajit Pai. He and his friends at The Daily Caller were very surprised indeed.
