Artists revolt against CRIA policies
JACK KAPICA
Globe and Mail Update
The music recording industry will no longer be able to present the united front it claimed to have on copyright issues, after a group of prominent musicians and singers this morning announced an association whose philosophy is at odds with the Canadian Recording Industry Association.
The group, called the Canadian Music Creators Coalition, says they got together because the recording industry seldom speaks for recording artists.
"Record companies and music publishers are not our enemies," the coalition said in a statement released this morning, "but let's be clear: Lobbyists for major labels are looking out for their shareholders, and seldom speak for Canadian artists."
The new group's membership includes the Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sum 41, Stars, Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace), Dave Bidini (Rheostatics), Billy Talent, John K. Samson (Weakerthans), Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Andrew Cash and Bob Wiseman (co-founder of Blue Rodeo).
The group opposes demands of the recording industry for major changes in the Canadian Copyright Act. The former Liberal government had tabled an amendment to the act that was heavily influenced by demands from the recording industry.
The bill died on the order paper when the government fell, and the bill's champion, Liberal MP Sarmite Bulte, went down to defeat in the subsequent election amid accusations of catering to the CRIA.
In the wake of the bill, recording artists felt their views had been ignored by the Canadian Recording Industry Association, and sought to form a coalition that would represent their needs in the copyright debate.
The CMCC has a common goal of "having our voices heard about the laws and policies that affect our livelihoods.
"We are the people who actually create Canadian music. Without us, there would be no music for copyright laws to protect."
The CMCC says it's the government's responsibility to protect Canadian artists from exploitation, and calls for "a firm commitment to programs that support Canadian music talent, and a fresh approach to copyright law reform."
The coalition parts company with the recording industry in three major areas.
It calls the lawsuits the industry wants to launch against those who download music free from the Internet "destructive and hypocritical," and opposes any copyright reform that that would make it easier for the recording industry to sue the fans.
It condemns digital copyright protection measures as "risky and counterproductive," and opposes the criminalization of any attempt to circumvent them, a provision that exists in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, one of the world's most draconian pieces of intellectual-property law.
The CMCC also demands that any copyright reform should support the musicians and artists, not the record labels themselves.
The creation of the CMCC is not the first setback suffered by the Canadian Recording Industry Association recently. The independent label Nettwerk, which records Sarah McLachlan and the Barenaked Ladies, spoke out against CRIA's policy of suing people who share music files.
Six of Canada's leading independent record labels — Anthem Records, Aquarius Records, The Children's Group, Linus Entertainment, Nettwerk Records and True North Records — pulled out of the CRIA this month.
In a letter to CRIA president Graham Henderson, the six labels said that "it has become increasingly clear over the past few months that CRIA's position on several important music industry issues [is] not aligned with our best interests as independent recording companies.
"We do not feel that we can remain members given CRIA's decision to advocate solely on behalf of the four major foreign multi-national labels," the letter said.
The six companies then threw their support behind the Canadian Independent Record Production Association (CIRPA).
In another setback, the CRIA recently commissioned a study, conducted by the Pollara market-research group, on the downloading habits of Canadian music consumers. The study failed to prove that peer-to-peer file-sharing technology is devastating the music industry.
The Pollara study concluded that Internet downloading constitutes less than a third of the music on downloaders' computers, that downloaders use the downloaded versions as a sample before they decide to buy the music, and that the largest downloader demographic is also the largest music-buying demographic.
The CMCC was blunt in its criticism of the recording industry "has been suing our fans against our will, and laws enabling these suits cannot be justified in our names .... The government should repeal provisions of the Copyright Act that allow labels to unfairly punish fans who share music for non-commercial purposes."
The government, the CMCC continued, "should not blindly implement decade-old treaties designed to give control to major labels and take choices away from artists and consumers."
It also says that consumers should be able to transfer the music they buy to other formats under a right of fair use, without having to pay twice."
