Canadian artists start growlin'

Yesterday the Canadian music industry went a little crazy.

Canada's always been a little weird in terms of the way it treats music, piracy and copyright. While Americans strain against the mighty Digital Millenium Copyright Act and very strict anti-piracy law, their northern neighbours have been much more ambivalent in their position. There's no DMCA in Canada, and in fact the Canadian government has been arguing for close to a decade about how to revise its copyright law in order to meet contemporary digital challenges. CRIA, the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA, has charged users for filesharing but meanwhile there are other judges who have ruled the simple downloading of music (rather than uploading/"sharing") is legal, covered under home taping and fair use. And yet unlike the US, Canada has tariffs on blank media like CD-Rs and iPods, with those taxes being distributed (eventually) to artists. So it's a very mixed bag.

On April 25th came the creation of the Canadian Music Creators Coalition. This is a new lobbying group, and while not quite in opposition to CRIA, it comes pretty close. The CMCC wants to make sure that artists have a strong voice in these discussions, rather than being spoken for by CRIA and the industry at large. And they have three main assertions:

__1. Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical__Artists do not want to sue music fans. The labels have been suing our fans against our will, and laws enabling these suits cannot be justified in our names.

2. Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive

...Consumers should be able to transfer the music they buy to other formats under a right of fair use, without having to pay twice.

3. Cultural Policy Should Support Actual Canadian Artists

The vast majority of new Canadian music is not promoted by major labels, which focus mostly on foreign artists.

Okay, so a bunch of artists oppose crazy music biz policies? So what?

Well these aren't just any musicians. The CMCC's members include indie acts like members of Broken Social Scene, Stars, The Weakerthans, etc, but also artists like Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Sum 41, Billy Talent, Rain Maida (Our Lady Peace) and the Barenaked Ladies. Within the fairly tiny Canadian music industry, these are massive players, responsible for a sizable portion of all Canadian music sales and radio play.

Canadian Internet/E-commerce prof and analyst Michael Geist writes at length about the impact this is going to have.

No one should underestimate the importance of this development. After today, House of Commons committee hearings on copyright must include representation from the CMCC. Policy makers and politicians must take the time to consult with the artists themselves. Most importantly, government ministers will no longer be able to make policies in the artists' name, when those policies represent the views of lobbyists, not artists.