The Canadian Recording Industry Assocation claims that Canada has the highest per capita rate of illegal music downloads. I say good for Canada.
Another reason to be proud of Canada. According to the The Canadian Recording Industry Association(CRIA) Canada has the highest per capita rate of illegal MP3 downloads in the world! In light of this, the CRIA has been complaining about Canada's lax copyright protection laws. According to the CRIA illegal downloading hasn't just hurt the music industry but also software developers.
Canada's failure to modernize its copyright laws has come at considerable cost to the economy. A recent study conducted for the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST), an industry alliance of software publishers, found that software piracy rates in Canada are significantly higher (36 percent) than those of major trading partners such as the United States (21 percent) and the United Kingdom (27 percent) that have enacted digital copyright reforms. As a result, Canada has lost more than 14,000 jobs and suffers $7 billion in annual economic losses in the software industry alone. For Canada's music industry, the rise of file-swapping coincided with a 41 percent - or $541 million — decrease in retail sales of pre-recorded CDs and cassettes between 1999 and 2005 and a 20 percent loss in employment.
So a number of large software and music companies suffer some economic loss. It's likely massively overstated because many of those pirates wouldn't own the software or music if they couldn't get it for free. And just think about all the wealth in digital products gained by the starving masses out there with high-speed connections. However dark clouds are gathering as Canada is looking to tighten up its copyright laws.…
Article comments
26 - Max
High taxes maybe, but we also have the best health care in the world, no to mention University education ten times cheaper than the Us, and social programs that help children, abused women. Appreciate it
27 - Pete Simmons
It's like when MS Word was $500.00 a copy in the late 80's.....at that price I could not afford to pay for it, hence no profit loss; as well, by copying it, I was not buying the competions products....Hence no profit loss to MS and no profit to thier competitors.
WHAT A PATHETIC STATEMENT. WITH THIS APPROACH WHY PAY FOR ANYTHING! DON'T YOU FEEL ANY GUILT ABOUT USING/STEALING A PRODUCT THAT A COMPANY SPENT MILLIONS DEVELOPING. THEN YOU GET IT FOR FREE. YEH, WHY DON'T YOU ALL DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING FOR FREE UNTIL THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY GOOD CDS OR DVDS PROVIDED FOR BY ANYBODY. THEN YOU CAN ALL BLAME YOURSELVES FOR ALL THE CRAP OUT THERE "FOR FREE" ON THE INTERNET...........IN ABOUT FIVE YEARS.
28 - Anonymous
Proud 2 be canadian. phuck da MPAA/music industry anti-piracy groups.
29 - anonymous
PHUCK DA RIAA/MPAA. P2P until you drop
Canada roxs 4r music piracy