O Canada

Two more interesting bits on the Internet music front. First, Canada decided that downloading from peer-to-peer networks is legal, but uploading isn't. Story is here, with registration required. Don't know exactly what to make of this just yet, although I guess Canada is looking awfully good if you're a gay, pot-smoking music downloader. Or Saddam Hussein, but that's only if you watched South Park this week. Good lord, those last two sentences will make for really interesting Googlebait.

Second, a federal court told the RIAA that they couldn't demand the identity of online copyright scofflaws without actually filing a lawsuit. So instead of the big net of the subpoena effort, they'll have to focus their resources if they still want to cow the infringing parties into submission.

I haven't looked into this to see how it might affect the existing litigation. If it throws it out, then this could be very significant, as it effectively de-fangs and de-claws the current RIAA effort, which seemed to be achieving what it set out to do. That is, scare at least part of the public away from file-sharing. Time will tell if they find alternate routes to get at their targets.

As an aside, this is as good a place as any to mention that after constantly getting bogged down in online music news, because I've got so much to say about it, I've decided to write a book on the subject. That's my New Year's resolution, along with less practical stuff like being able to not worry so much about paying my rent, but if I do this right, it might help that, too.