The hits just keep on comin' up here in the Great White North.
The Supreme Court here will hear a landmark Internet case on Wednesday Dec. This is from my report on this today:
Canada's songwriters will ask the Supreme Court of Canada next week to force Internet service providers to pay them royalties for the millions of digital music files downloaded each year by Canadians. The case has broad ramifications for the Internet industry in Canada, legal experts say.
“This is the big case for the Internet. This will set the position on how we are going to treat Internet service providers, whether they are going to be seen as people who are responsible in some way for content that goes through their services,” said Mark Perry, a professor of law and a professor of computer science at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont.
If successful, the legal pleadings of the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) could open the door to other rights holders — groups as diverse as software publishers or Hollywood movie distributors — who could use SOCAN's precedent to force Internet service providers You can read the full version of this story and watch my TV version of the same story at CTV's site. Or you can read a shorter version of the piece at the Globe and Mail's site.
The piece is also getting kicked around on Slashdot.