From the article:
"This is the opinion of the Copyright Board, but Canadian courts will decide this issue."
This is simply what the board has concluded after doing their own research and the courts will decide what to decide, after all, that is what courts are for, to interprete and decide how the law will be implemented to society and if it is feasible to do so. If there are no clear law, then there will the amendments made.
Canada is kind of crazy, it is legal to download music, and smoke and posess marijuana. I think there is something wrong with this picture, it seems Canada is going the wrong direction.
Poetner, Canada is not legally/illegally allowing downloading or uploading of copyrighted material (that is decided by the courts, not the industry) but I completly agree with you in the direction Canada is going. Hopefully things will be straightened out with Canada's new Prime Minister. But again, you can't smoke any amount of marijuna in any province. Only a couple of provinces allow smoking of marijuana in under a small ounce(not sure what the maximum legal amount is), and one of the provinces is Canada's largest (population-wise), Ontario.
And the federal gov't is appealing the decision anyhow. This is what they decided, since the courts in Canada have more legal power than the politicians:
"Justice Rogin agreed that the federal government had failed in its obligation to change the law to allow for medical use of marijuana, and so the entire law was void."
(
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/2958.html)
So it was more of a legal decision than an ethical one.
But back to the file-sharing discussion, the board is saying that you can share your material (be it a study you created or otherwise) but downloading a file (who's origin can be pretty much anywhere in the world) is not permitted under the law.
So essentially, the board is doing the world RIAx people a favour. They're saying if Canadian citizens want to share their files, go right ahead (just like the U.S. courts decided to make anal intercourse not illegal; the gov't has no business meddling in citizen's affairs.), be it an unprecedented study on the DNA of a cow or otherwise.
But if Canadian citizens download anything off the 'net, then it is not permitted, becuase you are possibly (knowingly or not) downloading copyrighted material, which is not beneficial to th RIAA's cause.
Now this is a perfectly fine decision for artists, since they want the world to hear/see/ smell etc. their stuff. And they don't neccessarially download tons of the latest Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. But in terms of the average p2p user, this leaves us scratching our heads.
